It has been widely reported that Yahoo is trying to rid itself some unwanted distractions so that it can focus on it's core mandate....whatever that is! It seems that it has also been decided that it should divest itself from its shared web hosting, Yahoo Small Business also.

If a suitable suitor can be found to ante up the bullion necessary for a larger web hosting operation, the move would be seen as part of a broader strategic refocusing, that includes a major marketing campaign that was unveiled. The company is said to be selling off assets that don’t reflect its new consumer focus.

It is hard to determine how many clients will be affected by Yahoo Small Business changing hands. They are one of the larger players in shared hosting hosts, with about 2.2 million domains. Corporate buyers, as well as private equity firms are the only likely candidates that could meet Yahoo’s price expectations of between $350 and 500 million, which may be slightly higher than what buyers seem willing to pay.

Review Yahoo Small Business or your host on HostJury

 

It isn't often that I single out an organization for something as harmless as harvesting email addresses & spamming with complete disregard, but this time I'm making an exception. I awoke to an email this morning from a small firm out of Toronto called NextTree. The company is operated by Jason Matheson (Founder of NextTree) and Christopher Hebert (Co-founder of NextTree), both of which have past experience at Netfirms as Marketing Director & Marketing Manager, respectively. After a few short moments I realized that not only had they spammed me (inadvertently, in attempt to contact one of our clients) but several other clients as well.

What made this particularly interesting is that the email address NextTree spammed one of my clients through was my own, completely unrelated to this particular site entirely & never having been associated with it. The greeting read 'Dear David', as though it were addressed to me but it referenced another website and client in the subject line entirely. Completely baffled by this, I immediately set out to figure out how NextTree would have confused myself and one of my clients. I dug through older whois records, left no stone unturned on google and still came up with not a single link associating my own completely unassociated email address with this particular client.

With still no luck in figuring out where they obtained the contact, I'm left wondering if Jason Matheston is possibly using old Netfirms whois database data to do the web web design related spamming. I did happen to take a few moments to call Jason but beyond stating that he couldn't disclose where he obtained the contact details, he didn't have much else to say. I suppose what's truly disheartening about it all is how someone with previous experience at companies like Netfirms (as large as they are) and even including a positions titled 'Marketing Director' and 'Marketing Manager' really need to sink as low as spamming my clients. Boo, can't you guys come up with something better?

Here's a copy of the email that I received below, along with Jason Matheson's contact details, he seems to be a massive fan of unsolicited email so I'm sure he wouldn't mind receiving some from you, all of your friends and that persistent Nigerian prince who wants to adopt you as his red-headed stepchild.

Dear David,

Have you ever wondered why some websites perform better than others? (Spamvertising, maybe? Or Ci4l1s!)
Some websites were designed by NextTree!

NextTree is a full-service web development company with a passion for spamming, creating highly usable, results driven websites. We'll make your business look better and perform better than the competition. We'll make your business shine.

Visit http://www.nexttree.ca/website/ to discover how we can help you launch a brand new website or put a fresh face on an old one. (Lipstick on a pig? You guys should move to Alaska and watch the Russians with Sarah Palin.)
NextTree can you give your website a professional edge!

Sincerely,

The NextTree Web Design Team Spammers
($10 off your next design if you can guess which cereal box we got our website out of!)
http://www.nexttree.ca/website/

--
NextTree is a registered trademark of NextTree Inc.
2-112 Petra Way Whitby ON Canada.
We are 100% Canadian eh?!

Luckily they're 100% Canadian, since spamming is illegal in the United States & CANSPAM is a $50,000 fine per unsolicited message.
Also luckily, our server infrastructure also resides in Chicago.
 
A few of Jason's email addresses, say hi:
mathesonj@mtonic.net
jmatheson@room100.net
jasonmatheson@HOME.COM

Let's make it official. For the last few months Amazon's lawyers have been urging Amazee to stop using Amazee as their brand name. While the attorneys representing Amazon's Luxembourg subsidiary are demanding the deletion of Amazee in the Swiss trade mark register (rather than waiting for the opposition period to expire and therewith provoking a costly court procedure) their US attorneys have filed an appeal against the registration of Amazee in the US.

Amazee peaceful and cooperative efforts to reach an amicable solution have not born any fruits. While I admit I am confused by this press release, it isn't the names that are confusing!

Amazon claims that the average consumer is likely to confuse AMAZON with AMAZEE. Amazee believe that Amazon is wrong, and that the average consumer capable of separating between Amazon and Amazee.

And since Amazee likes to take a sportive approach to challenges, they will give away a $100 Amazon voucher at the end of this lawsuit

You can vote on whether you'd confuse the names... kind of cute so we have posted a link. 

If you were online and couldn't access some websites today, we might know the reason why. The FBI raided a Dallas building that houses servers for several different websites.

CBS 11 News has learned that the raid is part of a general criminal investigation. Because of the confiscation of computers at Core IP Networks, a number of legitimate businesses have been affected.

From the downtown office building in the 2300 block of Bryan Street, FBI agents seized what one source described as millions of dollars in computer equipment.

Matthew Simpson, the owner of Core IP Networks, said in a letter posted online that FBI agents raided two floors and 'pulled the plug' on his clients' web servers starting at 6 o'clock Thursday morning. Agents also raided Simpson's house in Ovilla.

In the online letter Simpson said, "Neither I, nor Core IP are involved in any illegal activities of any kind. The only data that I have received thus far is that the FBI is investigating a company that has purchased services from Core IP in the past."

Simpson claims nearly 50 businesses are without access to their email and data. Some of those clients provide internet services to car dealers and other companies.

According to Simpson, some residents' access to 911 is also being affected because some of Core IPs primary customers include telephone companies.

The FBI isn't commenting on specifics but said it could take several days to restore the servers of the affected companies. Officials say they could speed up their analysis of the web servers if the affected companies would contact them.

Simpson closed his online letter with the statement, "If you run a datacenter, please be aware that in our great country, the FBI can come into your place of business at any time and take whatever they want, with no reason."

CBS 11 News emailed Simpson about the raid, but as of Thursday evening he had yet to respond.

http://cbs11tv.com/local/Core.IP.Networks.2.974706.html

Speculation by some..
"FBI agents have raided a Dallas data center, seizing servers at a company called Core IP Networks. The company's CEO has posted a message saying the FBI confiscated all its customer servers, including gear belonging to companies that are almost certainly not under suspicion. The FBI isn't saying what it's after, but there are reports that it's related to video piracy, sparking unconfirmed speculation that the probe is tied to the leaking of Wolverine."

http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/04/03/231220

Google says Ecatel.Net - Currently under maintenance!

It would appear from various sources, and rumors circulating the web that hosting provider Ecatel is enduring a variety of issues that could go beyond simple maintenance. One extermely popular site has the following :

Here's the bad news: Apparently, there was a fire in our datacenter this morning. There's another rumor that our provider's servers had to be physically transported to another datacenter. This is apparently not unprecedented. Either way, every single website hosted with them is now down, which includes both Appulous and AppScene. All things considered, we have high hopes that they'll be back.

They then go on to state in the following paragraph... If our provider doesn't come back, then we will search for other ways to bring Appulous back online.

Why not review your hosting provider on Hostjury.com

 

The community site Web Hosting Talk is continuing to reel from what can only be described as a major blow. Just mere months after a previous 'sophisticated' hack and exploit against the site they were recently brought down as a result of their backup servers being maliciously attacked and their content being distributed around the internet. 

Web Hosting Talk issued the following statement when the site became partially usable today after hours offline:

As reported yesterday,  our recent downtime was due to issues with our backup servers followed by the corruption of some db tables from a hack attempt.

We've since learned that this very deliberate, sophisticated and calculated hack against Web Hosting Talk was carried out by gaining access to our offsite backup servers. From our backup servers, the hacker gained access to the WHT db server. The malicious attacker deleted all backups from the backup servers within the infrastructure before deleting tables from our db server. We were alerted of the db exploitation and quickly shut down the site to prevent further damage.

This individual is still in possession of our user table that includes all user names, email addresses and hashed passwords. Absolutely no credit card or PayPal data was compromised.

Passwords are hashed with salt. It would be an unprecedented event to reverse engineer our passwords. My concern is the distribution of your email addresses and the potential spam you may receive. We know the hacker has posted the user table containing email addresses to various places (file sharing sites) and we're working diligently to remove the tables as we find them. If you see the user table posted anywhere, please let us know so we can get it taken off line.

We are working on recovering the deleted data. In the meantime, we've restored to an old db. We cannot yet determine if we can restore to a more recent db backup.

Why the backup system was remotely accessible by remote sources, no one will ever know but a slashdot thread arose just earlier today in regards to the exploit. Many users highly recommended ensuring that the backup systems were not remotely accessible, encrypted if necessary and only given 'write' access by the main webserver. In my opionion, even giving access to the backup server by the webserver was a mistake in itself. In this particular scenario it appears that both systems were completely open to remote sources which was a definite oversight on the Webhostingtalk team's side.

Many of the frequent users of WebHosting Talk lashed out at for what was seen as sloppy management practices... there have been past sucessful attempts to hack the community:

You're comfortable knowing that there's hundreds/thousands of people sitting in front of their computers with a copy of your password, and every other members? I know I'm not. - One particularly annoyed member

My personal advice is that WHT should secure their stuff properly and not just backup to one location. - Captain Obvious

Saying "this is unforgivable" may sound too hard. But it really is. WebHostingTalk, a place where we often read "make backup of backup" got hacked and lost their only backup. Great. - Lulz

 

When launched, Google Checkout  set out to create a fast, secure online shopping experience for their users. Now in their third year of helping merchants increase sales and attract user interest, they are announcing the decision to move from the previous standard fee schedule to a new tiered pricing model where rates decrease as merchants process more transactions through Checkout. For those interested, it would now mimic Paypal! The biggest change is the Adword fee Credit... it is history. While google may present an alternative to paypal... it can no longer clainm to be an attractive alternative!

On May 5, Google Checkout will now charge:

• Google Checkout's transaction processing fees will transition to a new tiered fee structure, where the rates will vary depending on a merchant's monthly sales processed through Checkout.

• With the new tiered fee structure, merchants can qualify for rates as low as 1.9% + $0.30 per transaction in the U.S., and 1.4% + £0.20 per transaction in the U.K.

• We will also be discontinuing the AdWords free transaction processing promotion at this time. As previously announced, Google Grants recipients will still be eligible for free donation processing until 2010.

The Canadian technology service company Millennium Data Systems, which owns web hosting provider HostMDS, has just opened up a new data center facility in the Toronto area. It will be total of 10,000 square feet and its  “Phase 1″ is now complete.

 

The present capacity of the data center is of up to 150 racks. The facility has all the bells and whistles including: Raised floors, Fire Supression, Redundant Power & Fibre, Controlled climate with redundancy, Key Card Access System & 24/7 Security, Video Camera Surveillance, Fiber-optic cross-connections, Multi Carrier (Bell, Shaw, Rogers, Cogent, Tata, etc.)

Millennium Data claims to offer 99.9% uptime guarantee and says it has 60 racks available in “Phase 1″ and are looking to find some tenants. The company is willing to provide package deals and help we hosts and companies that need data storage solutions to reduce their operating costs.

Tony Di Benedetto, CEO of Millennium Data Systems says that site tours are available for those who are interested to get hosted. The company sells full 42U Rack with 1 20amp Circuit for $599 USD. Millenium Data is probably one of the few companies on the planet with a reputation worse than that of iPowerWeb, so as always -- buyer beware.

Wired has a half-decent write-up on some of the more recent fiascos at Godaddy, something I've had a significant amount of personal experience with. Christians seem to be abandoning the service in leaps and bounds due to this years' racey superbowl ads that the company produced. This isn't the first time the ads have struck a nerve with the religion community -- I know of a significant amount of web hosting clients who have been migrating away from the service for precisely the same reason.

The article goes on to state that entrepreneur Brian Harrell, who manages hosting services for dozens of Christian churches and faith-based organizations and uses GoDaddy to host over 160 domains, says he's pulled several of his clients off of GoDaddy's servers after receiving numerous complaints about the company's racy ads that aired during Sunday's game. Although he's just one particular client with a significant amount of domains, he's not alone.

During Sunday's Super Bowl telecast, the domain registrar and hosting company ran two sexually suggestive ads featuring auto racer Danica Patrick -- one featuring Patrick and a few busty models tossing around double-entendres about their breast size, and another featuring Patrick stripping down and stepping into a shower.

Godaddy's response to the issue was:

Although we wish your opinion of our commercials was a favorable one, please know your feedback is highly valued. At GoDaddy.com, we strongly believe that the freedom to express one's opinions is one of the defining factors that makes the United States a great nation.

I love my free speech and freedom too, but with freedom comes great responsibility.
What are your thoughts?

 

There's some interesting rumors floating around on the web right now about a potential Myriad Network sale. Several existing clients have been posting on a popular web hosting related forum about network IP changes, different representatives in support and now suddenly an outsourced helpdesk. Myriad's own WHOIS information for their domain name now reflects another company name suddenly: EMC Telecom

A few quotes from the thread, and a link:

It's probably a long shot but I'm wondering if anyone here knows what happened to Myriad Network. It appears like as if they've sold off their VPS customers to EMC Telecom and the webhosting customers to sprhost, both of which I've not heard of before. Tickets are also getting responded to from supportcenter.tv which I've also not heard of before especially since Myriad had their own ticketing system in place years ago. -- Minglong

And another from a particular user:

EMC...........WOW they could not have made a worst decision where there customers were concerned. My experience with EMC was horrible and I have absolutely no respect for any VPS provider who oversells beyond a "reasonable" amount. With EMC my VPS on virtuozzo was already running 400% cpu load at times before I even had a chance to upload my files to there box. EMC did admit the box was "apparently" oversold and after talking with other VPS customers of EMC I found this was not uncommon but merely how they conduct business. If anyone got moved to EMC I would highly consider looking elsewhere immediately.

Suddenly, things aren't looking so good for Myriad Network clients if the company did in fact sell out to EMC telecom based on this users' previous experience. We'll see how things proceeds.

A logic bomb allegedly planted by a former engineer at mortgage finance company Fannie Mae last fall would have decimated all 4,000 servers at the company, causing millions of dollars in damage and shutting down Fannie Mae for a least a week, prosecutors say.

Unix engineer Rajendrasinh Babubha Makwana, 35, was indicted Tuesday in federal court in Maryland on a single count of computer sabotage for allegedly writing and planting the malicious code on Oct. 24, the day he was fired from his job. The malware had been set to detonate at 9:00 a.m. on Jan. 31, but was instead discovered by another engineer five days after it was planted, according to court records.

Makwana, an Indian national, was an employee of technology consulting firm OmniTech, but he worked full time on-site at Fannie Mae's massive data center in Urbana, Maryland, for three years.

On the afternoon of Oct. 24, he was told he was being fired because of a scripting error he'd made earlier in the month, but he was allowed to work through the end of the day, according to an FBI affidavit in the case.  "Despite Makwana's termination, Makwana's computer access was not immediately terminated," wrote FBI agent Jessica Nye.

Five days later, another Unix engineer at the data center discovered the malicious code hidden inside a legitimate script that ran automatically every morning at 9:00 a.m. Had it not been found, the FBI says the code would have executed a series of other scripts designed to block the company's monitoring system, disable access to the server on which it was running, then systematically wipe out all 4,000 Fannie Mae servers, overwriting all their data with zeroes.

"This would also destroy the backup software of the servers making the restoration of data more difficult because new operating systems would have to be installed on all servers before any restoration could begin," wrote Nye.

As a final measure, the logic bomb would have powered off the servers.

The trigger code was hidden at the end of the legitimate program, separated by a page of blank lines. Logs showed that Makwana had logged onto the server on which the logic bomb was created in his final hours on the job.

Makwana is free on a $100,000 signature bond. His lawyer didn't immediately return a phone call Thursday.

http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/fannie.html

You would think that people who work behind the internet stay behind it, but on December 15, #HoHoTo brought the techies and internet fans in Toronto out to party for a good cause last Christmas season.

Tickets for the event went on sale on December 9 and #HoHoTo was sold out in just a few days. The event itself was hosted at The Mod Club in downtown Toronto and was attended by nearly 600 people gathered from all across the internet, gathered mainly through the social networking site Twitter. The attendees were, as quoted from HoHoTo.ca, “geeks, phreaks, webheads, twitterfiends, techies, media, marketing, and PR types and all their friends. And everyone else!”

Within the first three days that #HoHoTo was publicized, $10,000 was raised for the Daily Bread Food Bank, and in less than two weeks, organizers raised more than $25,000 from its Twitter and corporate supporters. Toronto based web hosting provider, Fused Network managed to squeeze in a last minute corporate sponsorship amounting to $2,500.

The extra mile

So why go the extra mile to sponsor this event? Fused owner David McKendrick commented: “After checking out the project I was extremely excited to hear about a local event helping out the Daily Bread Food Bank, but they were completely sold out... I immediately went to the organizers and requested if they could open up an additional sponsorship slot so we could contribute.”

The Daily Bread Food Bank collects donations from individuals and the food industry, and distributes the goods among its agencies to provide for meal and food relief programs. The charity helps around 80,000 people in the Greater Toronto Area with meal programs where the hungry are served prepared food.Being an enthusiastic supporter of charities, David was thrilled to have sponsored an event that contributed to this charity.

“You really can't go wrong with helping people get fed, it's such a basic tenet of life that most of us take for granted yet millions die every year just from lack of food. There's a lot of need, every little bit we can do to help makes a huge difference in people's lives."

When asked what experience has Fused Network had with sponsoring charity events, David stated: “Well, this has been our first local charity event and I couldn't have asked for a better way to get the ball rolling with future sponsorships. It was amazing to experience and it helped raise over $25,000 for a local food bank -- it brings a permanent smile to my face.”

Can we expect Fused Network to sponsor future #HoHoTo events?

“We're always looking for great ways to help out locally here in Toronto and this was just a perfect match for us. IT oriented and for a great cause? Count us in!”

About Fused Network

Fused Network is a leading provider of quality web hosting and is headquartered in Toronto, Canada and serving clients in over 45 countries worldwide with infrastructure located in several cities across North America including Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston.

For more information on Fused Network you can visit our reviews page or their official site.

Alphared ceases to exist

As of 35 minutes from now, 10 AM EST, Alphared will have their entire network powered down and will be pulled offline. In the last and final blow to the company and firm after declaring bankruptcy, an email was sent out to clients mere hours before everything turned off.

A copy of the email is below:

This Morning December, 23 2008 at 9:30 AM CST, Alpha Red, Inc. entered Chapter 7 Bankruptcy. Doug Brickley of LECG was appointed the Chapter 7 Trustee. The receiver’s duties are to liquidate the assets of Alpha Red and collect past due balances from Alpha Red's current and former clients.

The business will not continue. All services including power, bandwidth, and technical support will be shutdown at 9:00 AM CST on December 24, 2008, tomorrow. We will begin shutting down servers this evening around 8:00 PM CST, December 23, 2008 starting with accounts which have outstanding/past due balances.

If you have paid your bill and are current, you may contact us at support@alphared.com or by phone: (713) 936-2388 to delay your shut-off time until 9:00 AM CST tomorrow morning.

A rundown of the recent events is available in another blog entry at Alphared files for Chapter 11, the company all but disappeared when the Washington state attorney general Robert McKenna filed suit against James Reed McCreary IV and his firm.

 

Clients of Web Hosting Providers who outsource their support services offshore may expect even slower responses than they've grown accustomed to.

There are unconfirmed reports of a major loss of web connectivity, reducing overall bandwidth to a crawl with very high latency, currently affecting most of the Middle East and parts of North Africa and the Indian sub-continent. The disruption started at around 07:30 GMT and has continued ever since. This is affecting all traffic in and out of the region - particularly SMTP.

Typical TTL to the US and Europe is currently around 1800ms on Broadband and 800ms on Tier 1 - compared to 180ms and 90ms respectively under normal conditions.

While unable establish the reason there is speculation it is likely to be a cable breakage somewhere between the Middle East and Europe.

Update

As an update to the above, it is now confirmed that 3 out of the 4 fiber cables that connect the Middle East, North Africa and Indian sub-continent to Europe and US have been cut.

These cables carry around 90% of the Internet and Voice communications to these areas, and will take considerable time to repair. On the last occasion (early 2008) it took almost 1 month to repair.

In the build up to Christmas this will severely affect eCommerce and Call Center activity - this will also affect hosting companies with customers in these regions which will not be able to access their servers/hosting accounts.

The affected cable providers are FLAG, SMW3 and SMW4.

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/

The 7 day graph also shows a slight drop in traffic and an increase in latency:

http://www.internettrafficreport.com/7day.htm

The recent Hostjury posts warning of impending doom for hosted clients of ByteHosting has proven to be accurate. Instead of seeing the familiar Byte Hosting webpage, Byte Hosting clients are viewing an vividly frank and honest explanation by Byte Hosting owner James Reno stating in part:

"As a result of a court-order we are currently required to cease operations (not for sure how, considering we've not even been convicted of any crimes, and have not even yet been able to go to court, but welcome to the USA; where you are now guilty until proven innocent).. This is greatly affecting all of our customers and we are working the best we can to return all equipment to our customers."

 

Previous Client Faulted

"As a result of one of OUR PREVIOUS CLIENTS (yes, client), we have been drug through an extreme legal battle resulting in this court order that we have not had a chance to defend ourselves against thanks to the courts actions. We again are doing everything we can but granted the courts hard-headed and disastrous actions we are very limited in our abilities" states Reno.

Reno continues "Since 1997 we have been providing webhosting services and I have been leading this company (long before we even met this client, and long before this client even existed [according to the courts]). 11 years of my hard work and 11 years of my life, as well as, this companies history have been ruined in 30-seconds by a single court action." 

- James Reno

Source: ByteHosting

A Sad Day  Maybe

The ByteHosting web site states  that there was a loss 28 jobs as a result of this action. Only a very limited number  of these jobs would appear to be connected to web hosting, judging from the public records available. Reno contends that the court is unfairly inhibiting his ability to function. Interestingly enough... that is what the court claims Reno and his co-conspirators allegedly attempted to purvey to the general populous with their little virus scan racket. Either way, a sad day for most ByteHost clients indeed

Update

A Baltimore federal court judge yesterday held Innovative Marketing Inc in contempt of court for ignoring previous orders commanding it to shut down and hand over financial records. This month, the Federal Trade Commission sued the company, claiming it ran an illegal "scareware" operation that tricked more than a million people into spending $100 million on bogus security software by making them believe their computers were under siege from various viruses and spy programs. In an order signed yesterday, U.S. District Court Judge Richard D. Bennett ordered the business to pay $8,000 for each day it fails to comply with the earlier orders. The company's chief executive and four other defendants, all of whom have had their assets frozen, did not show up for a hearing last week, prompting Bennett to promise he would have them arrested if they didn't respond. All but Innovative Marketing filed paperwork with the court Wednesday and agreed to comply with court orders by Dec. 23.

 

It isn't often that I take the time to write about issues going on within the hosting industry, we tend to leave that up to clients and end-users to add their hosting reviews but in scenarios like ipowerweb or buyouts I often can't help myself.

HostMDS drops the ball, but can they even dribble?

The most recent situation has arose where the firm Millenium Data Systems has purchased a slew of web hosting providers, namely Hostingplex, Vistapages & Hostvector. The former two were rated under 30% here on Hostjury for the longest time and Vistapages even once made our horrible web hosting providers list with gusto. 20% isn't saying much -- but over 53 users have reviewed both hostingplex and vistapages, that's a lot of negative commentary. Now, to even begin to describe what's happened since the purchase would be depressing.

Not only have the clients been frequently without email and their websites for days on end but HostMDS (the name of the new firm Millenium Data Systems created to house the brands) even went as far to outright remove their public forums. Note, they're still accessible at http://forums.hostmds.com/index.php but I recommend bringing eyebleach before heading there.

Clients aren't the only ones left in the dark

A difficult situation seems to have turned for the worse though, not only are the HostMDS clients being left in the dark for days (The HostMDS support emails seem to disappear into the void) but Kevin Moonlight, previous owner of Hostingplex seems to have run into a substantial amount of issues as well. On the Inverdigm blog he mentions, and I quote:

Quickly it was found that in fact the owners of the new business did not share the same vision that I personally had, which led to irreconcilable differences, resulting in termination of my employment agreement in October 2008, which of course did not include any form of severance or buyout, I had not even been there 90 days.

- Kevin Moonlight
Source: Inverdigm

After perusing the content further it does mention that the business deal for the Hostingplex acquisition was quick, thorough and almost seemingly without any solid agreements: Kevin seems to be left out in the cold as well, "I did not receive any money and do not hold any equity share in the new company, the sole basis for this decision was that I did not have the resources to continue hostingplex.com to where I was trying to take it, and being acquired by MDS would give me access to the resources to fully execute my vision."

A sad situation, dismal at best. I'm not certain what the future holds for Hostingplex and Vistapages' clients at HostMDS but it looks awfully bleak.

Related hosts:
HostMDS Reviews
Vistapages Reviews
Hostingplex Reviews

Web site owner hosted by ByteHosting Internet Services, LLC should be searching for a new hosting company today after ByteHosting was ordered closed down by a federal judge,  as another major online operation that duped more than one million computer users into buying bogus malware protection using fraudulent ads and false claims viewers' machines contained illegal pornography.

The order against two firms, Innovative Marketing of Belize and ByteHosting Internet Services of Ohio, resulted from a lawsuit filed last week by the Federal Trade Commission.

Recently, another company faced simular actions. Alpha Red chief executive officer James Reed McCreary IV  was sued by Washington state, who accused McCreary of selling "scareware," software that made Windows XP users falsely believe that their registry had become "damaged and corrupted."Alpha Red has recently gone into bankruptcy leaving all their clients scrambling to find new hosts for their sites and hardware

One of the defendants in the ByteHosting action, Kristy Ross of Maryland, spent more than $3 million  starting in October 2004 to advertise products including WinFixer, WinAntivirus, DriveCleaner and ErrorSafe, according to the suit.  The ads produced popup windows that falsely depicted a system scan that invariably found hundreds of pests. Some scareware titles also included a warning that the user's PC "stored numerous items that are dangerous to your reputation" and could result in "accidental or purposeful disclosure of adult materials" and "strong disapproval of your addictions to X+X+X sites." Others fabricated "illegal porn" and displayed "a series of hard-core pornographic pictures," to those viewing the ads.

Innovative Marketing, has its own pending lawsuit in Ontario Canada, against 2 of the defendants Marc and Maurice  D'Souza, alleging millions were skimmed from the IM company. (I'm sure the wisdom of proceeding with this case may be garnering a second look in light of the federal suit)

The order by US District Judge Benson Everett Legg halts the operation through Friday. A hearing is scheduled for the same day to entertain the government's motion for a preliminary injunction, which would remain in place while the lawsuit proceeds. The judge's order also freezes the defendants' assets. An FTC spokeswoman said she wasn't sure how much money that involved, but given the price of the scareware (around $40 per installation) it could easily be in the tens of millions of dollars.

Other defendants named in the lawsuit include: James Reno of Maryland, Sam Jain of California, Daniel Sundin of London, Marc D'Souza of Toronto, and Maurice D'Souza of Ontario.

Clients of ByteHosting can review their services  or review your present host on HostJury

About ByetHosting

Founded in August 1997 as a sole-proprietorship by James Reno, an Amelia, OH Middle School Student, ByteHosting Internet Services has evolved to become a leading Webhosting Solutions provider. ByteHosting has evolved into a full scale webhosting solutions provider and now provides webhosting solutions to companies & personal websites both large and small. We provide all the servers, bandwidth, and provide management services to run almost any application visable on the web. Since the beginning ByteHosting's founder has focused greatly on one thing, Providing Quality Webhosting and Colocation Services & support that you as a customer can trust and rely on.

 

 

The web hosting provider Alpha Red Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on Wednesday in the Southern District of Texas, claiming more than $10 million in liabilities.

Alpha Red, a hosting provider with two datacenters in Houston that hosts numerous adult-content sites and other high-bandwidth customers, has been in legal trouble in recent months. On Sept. 23, Alpha Red chief executive officer James Reed McCreary IV and the company were sued by Washington state Attorney General Robert McKenna, who accused McCreary of selling "scareware," software that made Windows XP users falsely believe that their registry had become "damaged and corrupted."

The suit claims that through another company he controlled, Branch Software Inc., McCreary sold Registry Cleaner XP software for $39.95 that was marketed by exploiting the Windows Messenger Service with Internet-transmitted messages that made misleading "Critical Error Message!" dialog boxes appear on user computers.

"Contrary to the representation implied by Defendants' message, the user's computer has not already been tested or examined to determine the presence of errors, damage or corruption," the suit states. "Through alarmist language seemingly delivered by a trusted source, Defendants misrepresent the extent to which installing the software is necessary for repair of the computer for proper operation."

The "Critical Error" messages were sent repeatedly to users. McKenna cites one user who allegedly received 214 such dialogs in a 24-hour period. Five causes of action were filed alleging violations of the Computer Spyware Act and unfair and deceptive trade practices.

"We won't tolerate the use of alarmist warnings or deceptive 'free scans' to trick consumers into buying software to fix a problem that doesn't even exist," McKenna said in a press release.

The top 20 debtors in the bankruptcy are owed more than $4.57 million, including $826,000 to the IRS. McCreary owns 82 percent of Alpha Red's common stock, according to the bankruptcy filing.

A Texas state court removed McCreary from management on Oct. 23 and appointed a receiver to run the company, responding to a court action by MegaUpload Ltd., a file-upload site based in Hong Kong that was an Alpha Red customer.

Although a Chapter 11 bankruptcy is designed for companies to reorganize and settle debts to continue operations, the filing includes this statement by receiver Douglas Brickley: "[T]he Receiver deems it to be in the best interests of the Company to file a bankruptcy petition ... for the purposes of winding up the Company's business affairs, liquidating the Company's assets and distributing payment to creditors."

Some Alpha Red customers have been discussing their difficulties with the company for several months on chat forums. Customers who sent servers to Alpha Red facilities in Houston posted that they have been unable to get them back. "The place is locked down and no one answering the phone/mails etc.," one customer complained in October. "Got 10 servers stucked inside and cant do anything."

http://workbench.cadenhead.org/

Everybody is talking about a new start up called CircleofMoms.com.

So you say you've never heard of it. Well neither had I, but with 850,000 uniques hits in 2 months, how could I have just missed it.

Really, with two historic elections, a financial meltdown encompassing the whole of one street, a failed coup d’état of sorts in Canada. Include 2 turkey dinners and a glass of wine at the end of November. Turkey does make you sleepy. Maybe I just missed it.

I couldn't wait to check it out. Even though the subject matter was less than inspiring from my masculine perspective, I am known to be in touch with my softer side. It has been said that I'll make a good wife some day. (I'm still at odds whether that statement is flattering). So I clicked on the link.

850,001 uniques!

It's a site for mothers... and we all love our moms... but it's a site for mothers. Something is sketch.

Checking the stats...

Alexa ranking: Alexa Trend/Rank: 1 Month: 649,962   3 Month: 914,570 (this is not number of hits)

Page Views per Visit: 1 Month: 3.4   3 Month: 3.9 of 945,261

 

Compete ranking: visitors 132,959         30325.4% (from zero in September)

facebook.com  87.81% (referrals from)

2 viximo.com  3.88% (referrals from)

3 yahoo.com  1.85% (referrals from)

ComScore:    not reported (i.e. under 50k UVs)

Quantcast:    42k US UVs http://www.quantcast.com/circleofmoms.com

Circle of moms facebook app: http://tinyurl.com/6h6y5k

831,413 monthly active users with a total of 98 wall posts and 161 topic posts by a slightly less amount of posters.

Enough stats. Daily I see hosting companies I've never heard of getting fake awards by a nameless panel of judges. I've emailed and called the purveyors of said awards only to have my emails bounce and my call reach temporarily out of service numbers. While trolling forums, I see countless posts asking for people to review their site. (All to raise their unique hits for ad revenue). Now we have respectable news sites misrepresenting the numbers!

I'm not implying that Circle of Moms isn't a great site, with a great idea, and a very qualified and impressive management. but so are sites like momforce.com  or  momtomom.ca  I am saying that most if not all web businesses require lots of tireless effort and elbow grease to be successful. Many willing to expend this effort naturally resent the ones who seem to circumvent the process ... and oh...I want my unique hit back.

 

It is being reported that the European Dedicated Server Provider Ecatel has been down since 10 eastern (November 26/08)

Clients are unable to contact Ecatel by the internet or landlines. At this moment they are completely down.

Update on Ecatel

At 3:31am, Friday November 28th, there are reports Esctel came partially back on line. There still seems to be no conection in parts of Europe and Asia, as well as much of the USA.

We will update this post as information emerges

Update on Ecatel

Ecatel has responded:

Dear customer,

Two of our main transit lines were cut off without any warning because of many
copyright infringements and spamming from our network.

We proved over and over again that there was no spamming out of our network, they
just laughed at us.
Normally it would take more than 5 working days to find alternative connections,
however after having put in more than 24 hours of solid trying, we've managed to get
back on line again via other operators.

Ecatel did EVERYTHING to get this issue solved at soon as possible.

We sincerely apologize to all our faithful customers for all inconvenience caused.


Best regards,
Network Operations
ECATEL (NETHERLANDS) LIMITED. 

Update Nov 28. 2:30 easten

 

---

 

It's astonishing how often people researching a shared hosting service do so without due diligence.

Shared hosting by its nature is similar to condominium living (might be better described as tenement buildings). You have your space to use as you like within the boundaries of the TOS. But you also have the common areas, used and shared by all the other residents of your complex.

It's astonishing how often people researching a shared hosting service do so without due diligence.

Shared hosting by its nature is similar to condominium living (might be better described as tenement buildings). You have your space to use as you like within the boundaries of the TOS. But you also have the common areas, used and shared by all the other residents of your complex.

Many people choose their shared hosting service based on price, services, uptime, and the reviews written on Hostjury by clients of various hosts. Many people overlook, or do not consider that their IP address may also be considered a common area. Until they are submitting a ticket for email errors and find out their IP has been blacklisted.

Before you sign up for a shared hosing account, find out how often the company was blacklisted in the last year. Discover if they're known to route hijacked network space, or if they have a history of spam/abuse support. If one of your 'neighbors' spams, you can end up listed. It stinks, but if you share the same IP with a spammer... you're banned also.

To determine a host's past record can be found using a handy tool like SenderScore. By entering the host's domain you can find:

MX record

SPF or Sender ID, is an email authentication protocol designed to verify that each email originates from the Internet domain from which it claims to come based on the sender's IP address

Related Sending Domains, are other domains ending in your-new-host dot whatever that are sending email.

SSL Certificate: owner, issuer, and expiration date

The Whois records.

I did a random search of a few hosts listed on Hostjury. I was surprised to find some with expired SSL certificates, and others with no SPF in place. Issues such as these are much better discovered prior to finalizing the short list. Clients uncovering this information after the fact always have a recourse...

Review your host on HostJury

Hostjury has a brand new look with all the same old attitudes. This attitude is the reason people have come to trust HostJury as a honest hosting review site.

Hostjury has a brand new look with all the same old attitudes. This attitude is the reason people have come to trust HostJury as a honest hosting review site.

But we're not done yet! We will continue in the coming weeks to implement many of the new features of HostJury including the forums. We're also implementing a way for hosts to provide special offers and coupons, as well as inform potential clients of services that may set them apart from other hosts.

Hostjury believes that there are many exceptional hosts available to choose from, and we want you to be as informed as possible prior to making your hosting decision. This is why we will continue to inform our users of the changing landscape of the hosting industry. If you haven't already subscribed to the HJ Blog , now may be a very good time.

You'll see many reviews claiming that a company was good in the early days but that was the good old days before they switched owners maybe. And hosting reviews is what Hostjury is based on. New site but same outlook. The ability to recommend and review your web hosting provider to other users and to share your real hosting reviews.

I think that my Wordpress has been hacked. I'm not a technical guy so looking at the PHP etc is not an option.In my dashboard the second box down on the left - the one that tell me all the recent news changed it tells me to Update WordPress 2.6.4 immediately! Then points me to a site called wordpresz dot org where a suspicious download of Wordpress 2.6.4 is waiting for me. Is my site compromised? What can I do? What other damage should I expect?

This post is not about the hoster... rather the hosted.

I think that my Wordpress has been hacked. I'm not a technical guy so looking at the PHP etc is not an option.In my dashboard the second box down on the left - the one that tell me all the recent news changed it tells me to Update WordPress 2.6.4 immediately! Then points me to a site called wordpresz dot org where a suspicious download of Wordpress 2.6.4 is waiting for me. Is my site compromised? What can I do? What other damage should I expect?

This post is not about the hoster... rather the hosted.

It would appear that some hack is trying to spoof the official wordpress site by leading the unsuspecting to a wordpresz dot org.

Peter Westwood, one of WordPress lead developers has responded saying:

It looks like sites which have not upgraded to 2.6.3 are being exploited in an interesting way whereby a hacker, probably using an automated script, is hacking into sites with the vulnerability and changing the settings of one of the dashboard modules to point to a different feed thereby encouraging people to go to a different site which is offering a dodgy upgrade.

"We recommend that people upgrade as soon as possible when we release a security release so as to ensure they are not vulnerable to issues which will likely have exploits in the wild.

Also in the upcoming 2.7 release of WordPress we are including a built-in upgrade mechanism within WordPress which will allow people to upgrade automatically with ease. I would however stress the need with any piece of software to check that an upgrade is real by visiting the website of the software provider manually rather than relying on a link that you have been provided. Otherwise, as with bank phishing scams there is the potential for someone to trick you into doing something you didn't want to do.

We did do any Alexa ranking on the wordpresz page but it came back with no data available!

http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details/wordpresz.org

This is the real site for wordpress upgrades!

http://wordpress.org/download/

Update on wordpresz dot org

Hostjury has attemped to contact the registered owner of the domain name, Don T Smith of Fort Myers Florida

His phone number doesn't seem to be functional and I have attempted to contact Don through his email address on record for this domain name. We will await his reply... what do you want me to say!

Clients of WebServe, a shared hosting service from Canada are reporting downtime reaching up to six days. They have stated that the Webserve servers are unreachable. Webserve's main site seems to be functioning, so Hostjury contacted their live chat to ask for clarification on whether the reports of downtime at Webserve were correct. It was a short conversation.

Clients of WebServe, a shared hosting service from Canada are reporting downtime reaching up to six days. They have stated that the Webserve servers are unreachable. Webserve's main site seems to be functioning, so Hostjury contacted their live chat to ask for clarification on whether the reports of downtime at Webserve were correct. It was a short conversation.

Below is the complete transcript of your chat session:

Company: WebServe Canada
Department: Sales Support
Operator: Alex <92e5Fbb10>
Visitor: david henderson <email>
Chat Info: Wed 11/05/08 02:58 pm
david henderson: are the servers down?
You are now speaking with Alex of Webserve Sales Support.
david henderson: Hi Alex
david henderson: Why do the webserve servers seem to be down -
Your party has left this session. - ===

Thank you, WebServe Canada

We will continue to update this story as it unfolds

Review the services of WebServe or your present host on Hostjury

About WebServe

WebServe Canada is an industry-leading privately held web hosting and internet solution provider company based in Vancouver, Canada Serving & Web Hosting the Canadian Internet Community since 1999. WebServe provide high quality web hosting services for companies of all sizes that are located across the world internationally and of course in Canada from Toronto to Vancouver, Ottawa, Montreal, Halifax

Everyone seeks peace and harmony, because these are what we lack in our lives. From time to time we all experience agitation; and when we suffer from agitation, we do not keep this misery limited to ourselves. How does one start generating negativity? By becoming very unhappy when one finds someone behaving in a way which we don't like. Unwanted things happen, and it create tension within myself. Me just a moment ago, 2008

Hence the story of dedicated server provider Vectoral Servers, who when they found something they didn't like, became agitated, and start generating negativity !

Everyone seeks peace and harmony, because these are what we lack in our lives. From time to time we all experience agitation; and when we suffer from agitation, we do not keep this misery limited to ourselves. How does one start generating negativity? By becoming very unhappy when one finds someone behaving in a way which we don't like. Unwanted things happen, and it create tension within myself. Me just a moment ago, 2008

Hence the story of dedicated server provider Vectoral Servers, who when they found something they didn't like, became agitated, and start generating negativity !

This story is not a reflection on the dedicated servers network of Vectoral Servers, in fact the poster noted 190+ days of uptime, and a general satisfaction with the service

"Espro", had been renting a dedicated server from Vectoral Servers since December 2007, paying his monthly bill on time without fail. Prior to the following story, had  only submitted a total of 1 ticket for information on a random reboot. His 3000GB bandwidth package, was often sliding in under 65% total usage. He was a dream customer, and all Vectoral Servers did was sit back , relax, and collect the check!

That is of course until October 19th when Espro's server became inaccessible. He submitted the ticket, and was shortly responded to by Ekin.  There was a routing issue which had been rectified, and the server was back up.

Fast forward to October 23rd when the server was down again. No doubt another routing issue, another ticket. After not receiving any response in 13hrs, a quick check of their interface showed the server had been suspended for bandwidth overages (their interface showed the server as 3018GB, 18GB over limit).

On October 19th (remember, the day the ticket was resolved as a routing issue), their graphs showed a massive spike of over 1000GB of traffic which is completely out of line with the usage history.

First ticket after outage: October 23rd, 01:17 (No response)
Second ticket after outage: October 23rd, 19:05 (Closed with no response some time after October 24th 17:54)

Espro's server was brought back online sometime between Oct 24 17:54 and his next ticket on Oct 24 21:03. to Vectoral and was subsequently told the following by Ekin in response (remember, still no explanation for them taking down the server):

Originally Posted by Ekin

You can ignore our interface for now.

On October 30th, Espro put in a ticket with their billing department for compensation for the outage he experienced at the hands of their staff and received no response except an e-mail from Vectoral Servers informing him that he owed $180 for bandwidth overages for a bill issued Nov 1st, due Nov 2nd

Until this whole ordeal, Espro had a very high opinion of Vectoral Servers and their service. But this ordeal had left Espro very little desire to continue being their customer, and even less desire to recommend them to anyone for any purpose. So he did what every webbie would do... he posted his story on the web!

Nov 3 16:57
"

"Vectoral Servers has now terminated my server citing a ToS violation, providing no information for previous outages, mention of compensation, etc."

Originally Posted by Vectoral Terms of Service

17. Public Feedback: We have a zero tolerance policy for posting negative feedback on any public location about our company and/or our employees before submitting a ticket to our billing department to discuss your issue will result in immediate account termination without any refund. Although it is your right to post feedback without discussing your issue with us first, it is undoubtedly unfair and unprofessional not to, which is not the type of client we want to deal with. We have the utmost respect for all of our clients, and are more than fair with all of our clients. We will do anything and everything possible to keep all of our clients satisfied. But in the unlikely event you are not satisfied, all that we ask is to discuss your issue with our billing department first.

Originally Posted by Ekin

There is a set of terms of service in place for a specific reason, the action that will be taken is specified in the TOS itself that you agreed to when signing up:

17. Public Feedback: We have a zero tolerance policy for posting negative feedback on any public location about our company and/or our employees before submitting a ticket to our billing department to discuss your issue will result in immediate account termination without any refund. (HJ edited)
and to quote section 7 about reversals and chargeback threat you made:

8. Refunds & Disputes: All services rendered by The Company are non-refundable. This includes, but is not limited to: setup fees, one time fees, monthly service fees, upgrade fees, additional service fees, administrative fees, and late fees. Customers seeking to resolve billing errors are instructed to open an accounting ticket inside the client area located at. Customer agrees not to chargeback any credit card payments for services rendered. A chargeback of payment for services rendered will result in an additional charge of $150 and will be subject to collection by an authorized collection agency.

If you actually waited for someone to investigate your issue and help you out, none of this would have happened - the minute you disputed the invoice, it was cancelled until further investigation, we have no intention of overcharging anyone.

Originally Posted by Ekin

I will not be able to help you while there is a topic out there, bad mouthing my company - I do believe there was a issue of miscommunication between us but this should not result in a instant topic on WHT.

(Hostjury has edited and removed certain post for breviety. This has not altered the general facts as presented on Wht)

We have contacted Vectoral Servers for a response. At time of this posting there has been no response. We will update this post as information becomes available.

Review Vectoral Servers or your present host