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Seeking non-US host with reasonable abuse handling
Hello,
I am looking for a hosting provider that would not react to simple text complaints or vague letters from law firms, or from people presenting themselves as lawyers, meaning ordinary letters without any court involvement or action by government authorities.
Let me clarify: there is nothing illegal involved. There is a company that, over time, stopped shipping orders but continued taking prepayments. They cheated us out of thousands of dollars. For the past two years, they have not responded to claims or anything else. We left reviews everywhere, contacted the BBB, and so on. In the end, rather than let this go, we created a reveal site exposing them and the beneficiaries of that scam business. There is nothing improper there, just public information we found through Google, along with screenshots of evidence that personally belongs to us.
Cloudflare suspended our main account after the very first complaint, which they did not even show us, and gave us 48 hours. Meanwhile, the fraudulent company, which is hosted on Fastly, continues to operate. I sent abuse reports to Fastly and GoDaddy, and they did not even reply for six months. Our provider, Cloudflare, took action against us immediately. In other words, without even looking into the matter, Cloudflare is protecting a fraudulent business.
I do not want to give up, and I want to move the hosting somewhere else, to a place where this kind of complaint would be ignored completely.
For some reason, Switzerland sounds appealing, but I am open to other options outside the United States.
The site is a one-page site, so even shared hosting would be enough, or a VPS with around 4 GB RAM and 40GB+ SSD/NVME storage.
Comments
They are protecting themselves from a court over a $15/year service
@tentor themselves is a chill guy fwiw perhaps they can help
@alexhost @aluy are two other people I might trust, I recommend reading their terms of service to get proper understanding beforehand.
Hope it helps in your case.
Cloudflare is a bit odd company. Sometimes they can protect people who are clearly abusing their service and running something hack oriented and act within multiple days sometimes.
And then there are cases like these. They have essentially fought against Italy in court for something so it isn't as if they haven't fought things in court, they are just an odd company in how they work in these particular things.
I think sometimes I feel the same way about Namecheap, sometimes they are the chillest guys on the planet and then other times they will ask you things out of the ordinary. I currently have my domains on namecheap but yeah.
maybe incognet can help
Sorry, my risk appetite does not account potential court dealings, don't want to deal with this territory anytime soon
There are a lot of speculations that they are US honeypot. If you think about it, it starts to make sense.
No problem broski, have a nice day with your servers, I appreciate that you are upfront about it, perhaps others can help.
They are incorporated in the US.
Even though I recommend them, Incognet is probably not the best fit for OP's request.
That is understood, but that is not what I mean. I mean that they do not care about the actual situation, they are not even trying to understand it, and at this point they are siding with evil. In essence, they are protecting Darth Vader. What motivates them is a separate question.
They might or might not agree who is evil in this story, but they clearly don't want to be a part of these dealings
I will resolve the hosting issue one way or another. In the worst case, there are options like Moldova, Ukraine, and so on, although I am waiting for your options first.
At the same time, I have another question. The domain is also with Cloudflare. If I remove the content and leave only the domain there with DNS proxying, would Cloudflare still take any action against me? And if so, where would be the best place to move the .COM domain?
I am prepared to share the site URL privately with anyone who may consider hosting it, so they know in advance what to expect. The site will not change materially. It is a single scrolling page and is already about 90% complete. Essentially, it just needs to be preserved and kept online for at least 3 to 5 years.
DM me if you would like me to send the URL.
Have you considered doing .onion mirror as well?
Oh no, that is too much. I just need a normal website that Google can index and that is accessible to everyone. There is really nothing unusual there. In essence, it contains the same information that is already on Trustpilot and BBB.org, plus people’s contact details from Google and from a real estate website. That is all. It may sound like a complex task, but in reality it is trivial.
This is not porn, drugs, carding, or anything like that. It is a legitimate project intended to help protect others from losing money by making information available, since the police are doing nothing. I am also not prepared to sue them because I am in another country, and the other affected customers are as well.
@WiFi hey man, perhaps something like this can help https://www.autistici.org/services/website
I do feel like these folks there might be interested in helping you for free even too perhaps. Its worth checking them out perhaps.
Hope this helps ya mate.
From their website:
A/I (Autistici/Inventati, pronounced [au’tistiʧi]-[iŋ’vɛntati], or [iŋvɛn’tati]) was born in 2001 from an encounter of individuals and collectives of the autonomous anticapitalist movement interested in technology and active in the digital rights struggle. We believe that this world is far from being the best world possible. We react by providing a platform and tools for digital self-defense addressing the need of free communication for activists and other individuals.
It's Cloudflare. They knowingly host all kinds of actual cybercrime.
As a rule of thumb, you should never, ever, ever have a domain with Cloudflare unless you're ok that it could suddenly vanish or be redirected to a completely different website or one that impersonates yours.
If not Incognet (even tho it's US, but that's a good thing for speech) and moving the domain to other free-speech provider (or any other than CF, domain bans are rare). Privex/@mynymbox is a good option too imo.
Incognet hosted a website about CharityHost scandal and didn't remove it even when the guy sent the report, I don't remember which domain was used to host this exactly.
Got it. I will move it away from them.
What would be a good option for transferring the domain? Njalla?
They seem to work through a major US registrar, so I do not understand how they can be considered reliable or bulletproof.
Thank you! This is the fantastic info! I will dig into as well!
Njalla is everything but reliable btw, does not require too much research to find it.
Njalla isn't bulletproof. If they don't like you, they will kick you off. But they are run by someone who used to run The Pirate Bay, so they're probably not that scared by courts.
Njalla domains are registered in his name, not yours. Because they are his, he can mess with them if he wants to. So far, he only does that with Nazi sites and child porn sites, and then proudly brags about stealing their money. It's up to you to decide if you still trust the guy after that.
Cloudflare, on the other hand, just hates freedom and does shit like this. Never heard of a "this company sucks and here's the evidence" site getting pulled down from Njalla, but your choice to risk it or not.
Big registrars like Namecheap are better than Cloudflare but not by a whole lot. But they usually don't get any legal letters because they're just the registrar. Those go to the host. Cloudflare is both the host and the registrar, and you don't want them to cancel your registrar account just because they got hosting-related letters. You should never let your host and registrar be the same company.
Since you mentioned Switzerland, the best option there would be PrivateLayer. They are pricey but has been solid for a lot of people.
I would recommend checking out @aluy and kyun.host
Alexhost is pretty common recommendation but it seems to be hit or miss.
For Ukraine, there is @vsys_host
I would also contact @Mevspace they are surprisingly pretty good at this as long as it doesn't violate Polish law.
I would also look into making mirrors of your site across multiple providers if there are concerns. Having .com domain isn't great since it is controlled by Verisign/US. I would recommend .st from Incognet or another provider. I believe with Incognet, as long as the content is not hosted with them, there really isn't any issue with the domain being there.
Yes, I did find negative feedback about them. However, somehow they managed to build a certain reputation, and about five years ago I came across them as a bulletproof provider. Even now, when I try to probe AI tools, they still show up in the global top five. Apparently, AI relies on Google results, forums, and related articles.
Hi, dear WiFi.
We read your text and your concerns. We are abuse tolerant, which means we don't takedown for whatever reason. It needs to be valid and under our rules.
Before proceed:
We will be happy to host your website if the points above are valid for you and us.
Check our Dedicated Servers:
https://ava.hosting/dedicated-servers/
Our VPS in Moldova
https://ava.hosting/vps/
Anything you should contact us through ticket (best way).
Kind Regards.
Ava.hosting
The US is the best country in the world to host controversial speech as long as it is legal, you are very misguided in looking at Europe or other regions for that.
If the website is really as you describe, I don't get why you got kicked from Cloudflare, but plenty of US providers will have zero problem in hosting you.
I have already sent you an email with the link to the site. Please review it and reply there, and give me a brief summary: are you ready to welcome me with open arms, or would it be better for me to keep looking elsewhere?
I believe it is easier for one American company to pressure another American company through letters, calls, and similar tactics. Everyone has lawyers, and someone will start flooding the other side with demand letters. But if you know of a U.S. provider that is actually willing to stand up for freedom of speech, let me know. I do not know of any. The large companies simply click a button in their web interface, and after that it becomes your problem. Nobody wants to look into the details or act as an arbiter.
Fastly and GoDaddy handled it more cleverly. They simply stopped responding to me.
As for Europe, international law firms that operate worldwide usually do not have the right to practice law in Iceland or Switzerland. Of course, that is probably not relevant in my case. The matter is too small, and the people I am dealing with are too greedy and too fraudulent, and they do not provide evidence to independent auditors. Still, that was my reasoning, because I knew this from my previous experience in international business. It is possible that my thinking was wrong, and that the country of the hosting provider should be chosen based on other factors.
Thank you. But $720 per year, even for the lowest plan, is not an option either. Over five years, I would lose another $4,000. That would put me $8,000 in the red in total, 50% because of the scammers I am fighting, and the other 50% because I tried to tell the world about it. LOL.
https://host.charity/
Thankfully, nothing surprising has happened lately, and as such, we've not needed to make any updates.