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information Is this what bookburning looks like in the Digital Age?

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Rob Monster

Founder of EpikTop Member
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At least 20 VPS providers --many of which allowed unlimited subaccounts -- will go offline after Monday, December 9 with essentially no notice.

More details here:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/20-vp...giving-customers-two-days-to-save-their-data/

This news has since been confirmed in hosting industry chatter, e.g. here:

https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1790105

ColoCrossing was acquired by checkprinter Deluxe Corporation in June 2018.

As I began to diligence the topic, it appears that those Colo Crossing VPS services were hosting a number of phishing operators. However, what we don't know how much "baby" gets mixed in with the "phishy bathwater".

Low cost VPS is actually a form of "Digital Empowerment". However, someone running a VPS for under $10 per month may not have the ability to manage a migration on a weekend. So, don't be to surprised on Tuesday when you hear about a bunch of websites that went offline, some with unrecoverable data loss.

So, why should domainers care?

1. Some of you might have hosting at one of these providers:
  • ArkaHosting
  • Bigfoot Servers
  • DCNHost
  • HostBRZ
  • HostedSimply
  • Hosting73
  • KudoHosting
  • LQHosting
  • MegaZoneHosting
  • n3Servers
  • ServerStrong
  • SnowVPS
  • SparkVPS
  • StrongHosting
  • SuperbVPS
  • SupremeVPS
  • TCNHosting
  • UMaxHosting
  • WelcomeHosting
  • X4Servers

2. Many of these VPS providers are also domain resellers, and will have domains that are about to find themselves in no-mans-land:

upload_2019-12-8_9-20-27.png


@Miao @ArmoredNet
 
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This VPS purge may be entirely unrelated but worth noting that a number of high profile conservatives were just purged from YouTube. The most high profile is probably Owen Benjamin.

There is actually a lot of speculation of broadscale shutdown of YouTube channels due to possible compliance concerns with COPPA legislation. It has put a number of YouTubers in a panic.

I did see this coming, and expect we will soon need more (anonymous) video hosting that can still be monetized legitimately by the publishers, e.g. BTC donations, or similar.

However, this is going to present a challenge for media personalities whose content can be arbitrarily deemed as "dangerous for kids". Slippery slope there.

I could be wrong on this one, but my strong sense is that 2020 will be a year where the bookburners try to push things into overdrive. People will think it is due to the US Presidential election cycle, but that is just aircover.

Keep decentralizing, folks.
 
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They probably are shutting down because almost all of them have been running unsustainable promotions over the past few months/year.

Cpanel announced a Major price hike, they continued to offer the same unsustainable deals. You cannot do that without taking a loss. Since they're all with colocrossing, it's probably colocrossing who decided to pull the plug on them.

It's colocrossing to blame as they have been allowing a lot of shady hosts/websites and resellers on their Network, knowingly, for years.

If you have your domains and/or hosting with any of these, and it's important, you failed to do your due diligence if you ask me.

It's not bookburning, it's an unsustainable business model that's causing this.
 
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They probably are shutting down because almost all of them have been running unsustainable promotions over the past few months/year.

Cpanel announced a Major price hike, they continued to offer the same unsustainable deals. You cannot do that without taking a loss. Since they're all with colocrossing, it's probably colocrossing who decided to pull the plug on them.

It's colocrossing to blame as they have been allowing a lot of shady hosts/websites and resellers on their Network, knowingly, for years.

If you have your domains and/or hosting with any of these, and it's important, you failed to do your due diligence if you ask me.

It's not bookburning, it's an unsustainable business model that's causing this.

Right, but you could say the same about OVH -- a much bigger player. There is a lot of nonsense happening with OVH VPS servers too. Digital Ocean seems to be more vigilant but is also more expensive.

The thing that I really don't know and which will likely surface in the coming week, is how many non-dodgy VPS customers are impacted.

If anyone finds a total tally of the unique hosts that are caught up in this abrupt shutdown operation, I would be curious.

I did read a few of the Terms of Service texts and could not get a sense of the legal entity, i.e. are these DBAs for individuals or something more organized given the obvious shared templates.

I am all for deplatforming phishing operations. Epik does not protect such folks either. The question is whether a large number of legit customers are going to be collateral damage.

No time for forensic work on this one but passing along in case anyone has insider intelligence on the customer base, or insight on the fate of their domain reselling operation.
 
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Right, but you could say the same about OVH -- a much bigger player. There is a lot of nonsense happening with OVH VPS servers too. Digital Ocean seems to be more vigilant but is also more expensive.

The thing that I really don't know and which will likely surface in the coming week, is how many non-dodgy VPS customers are impacted.

If anyone finds a total tally of the unique hosts that are caught up in this abrupt shutdown operation, I would be curious.

I did read a few of the Terms of Service texts and could not get a sense of the legal entity, i.e. are these DBAs for individuals or something more organized given the obvious shared templates.

I am all for deplatforming phishing operations. Epik does not protect such folks either. The question is whether a large number of legit customers are going to be collateral damage.

No time for forensic work on this one but passing along in case anyone has insider intelligence on the customer base, or insight on the fate of their domain reselling operation.

True. How they are able to raise millions and are able to expand at the rate they're currently growing is beyond me. Haven't looked into their funding closely but wouldn't be surprised if they're backed by the French government in some way. On french soil their operation seems sustainable, cheap power, etc.

Still... Lots of shady stuff going on in their Network like you said. They're the go to host for anything shady. They don't (seem) to care. I don't know much about French law but they must be relatively relaxed about a lot of things :).

As for the TOS of some of those CC hosts. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are actually owned by CC. They have a history of owning hosts and obfuscating owner details. They have been cleaning up their ip reputation over the past few years as an insane amount of their blocks were blacklisted so maybe it's just them turning it up a noth, trying to clean up their operation. Who knows for sure?

They're next to EIG in my book. For full disclosure, I do host some stuff with CC companies as it's insanely cheap. When part of a cluster it won't do me any harm if one of my hosts closes down.

Following this as well as no matter what, if you're caught in the crossfire of all this it's not gonna be nice.
 
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At least 20 VPS providers --many of which allowed unlimited subaccounts -- will go offline after Monday, December 9 with essentially no notice.

More details here:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/20-vp...giving-customers-two-days-to-save-their-data/

This news has since been confirmed in hosting industry chatter, e.g. here:

https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1790105

ColoCrossing was acquired by checkprinter Deluxe Corporation in June 2018.

As I began to diligence the topic, it appears that those Colo Crossing VPS services were hosting a number of phishing operators. However, what we don't know how much "baby" gets mixed in with the "phishy bathwater".

Low cost VPS is actually a form of "Digital Empowerment". However, someone running a VPS for under $10 per month may not have the ability to manage a migration on a weekend. So, don't be to surprised on Tuesday when you hear about a bunch of websites that went offline, some with unrecoverable data loss.

So, why should domainers care?

1. Some of you might have hosting at one of these providers:
  • ArkaHosting
  • Bigfoot Servers
  • DCNHost
  • HostBRZ
  • HostedSimply
  • Hosting73
  • KudoHosting
  • LQHosting
  • MegaZoneHosting
  • n3Servers
  • ServerStrong
  • SnowVPS
  • SparkVPS
  • StrongHosting
  • SuperbVPS
  • SupremeVPS
  • TCNHosting
  • UMaxHosting
  • WelcomeHosting
  • X4Servers

2. Many of these VPS providers are also domain resellers, and will have domains that are about to find themselves in no-mans-land:

Show attachment 138368

@Miao @ArmoredNet

I'm not surprised that all these hosters shut down in one day. If who not knew, in Russia practiced this scheme. Many providers with different sites, although the legal entity is one. For this reason, not surprised by the latest news.
 
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True. How they are able to raise millions and are able to expand at the rate they're currently growing is beyond me. Haven't looked into their funding closely but wouldn't be surprised if they're backed by the French government in some way. On french soil their operation seems sustainable, cheap power, etc.

Still... Lots of shady stuff going on in their Network like you said. They're the go to host for anything shady. They don't (seem) to care. I don't know much about French law but they must be relatively relaxed about a lot of things :).

As for the TOS of some of those CC hosts. I wouldn't be surprised if some of them are actually owned by CC. They have a history of owning hosts and obfuscating owner details. They have been cleaning up their ip reputation over the past few years as an insane amount of their blocks were blacklisted so maybe it's just them turning it up a noth, trying to clean up their operation. Who knows for sure?

They're next to EIG in my book. For full disclosure, I do host some stuff with CC companies as it's insanely cheap. When part of a cluster it won't do me any harm if one of my hosts closes down.

Following this as well as no matter what, if you're caught in the crossfire of all this it's not gonna be nice.

What's currently wrong with OVH, exactly?

Having several VPS servers with them for years, never had a single issue. So far it has been the most reliable provider we had. (and we have tried lots). Having 8 VPS there, not a single issue.
 
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What's currently wrong with OVH, exactly?

Having several VPS servers with them for years, never had a single issue. So far it has been the most reliable provider we had. (and we have tried lots). Having 8 VPS there, not a single issue.

Nothing to be honest. Besides being a safe haven for 'grey area material' :) They can be slow on support but their actual product offering is great concidering their pricing.

I have a couple of dedicated servers with them all well. Speedy, uncapped datatransfer. DDOS protection that actually works. I would recommend them in a heartbeat.
 
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Nothing to be honest. Besides being a safe haven for 'grey area material' :) They can be slow on support but their actual product offering is great concidering their pricing.

I have a couple of dedicated servers with them all well. Speedy, uncapped datatransfer. DDOS protection that actually works. I would recommend them in a heartbeat.

Same experience. They also have their die hard fans IMO. I believe DDoS protection was a big seller feature, it's also what drew us in. Our field isn't even a target yet over the years there were a few well mitigated attacks.
 
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Same experience. They also have their die hard fans IMO. I believe DDoS protection was a big seller feature, it's also what drew us in. Our field isn't even a target yet over the years there were a few well mitigated attacks.

Yeah, I have been using them for that same reason. I have been maintaining the website for an abortion clininc (Not a fan for personal reasons but that would require another topic ;P) suffering from attacks on a daily basis and as soon as I moved them to OVH I was able to keep them online.

Actyally moved to another host recently as I was able to free up more budget but OVH can mitigate some serious attacks. And yeah, in terms of pricing and performance there aren't many big players that can beat them.
 
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Nothing to be honest. Besides being a safe haven for 'grey area material' :) They can be slow on support but their actual product offering is great concidering their pricing.

I have a couple of dedicated servers with them all well. Speedy, uncapped datatransfer. DDOS protection that actually works. I would recommend them in a heartbeat.

I think I just figured out what makes them profitable. It's an upsell strategy, and it's hidden in plain sight.

Their best offer is the single core VPS at 3EUR. But if you need more power, your only next option is the 12EUR version with 2 cores. That' not so cheap in comparison with first one.

Now if you need even more power, you'll be drawn into either their cloud services or dedicated servers. They can make good money with both.

So I guess their VPS offering is more of a wide-scale net to catch lots of users, and funnel a % into higher margin offers.
 
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I think I just figured out what makes them profitable. It's an upsell strategy, and it's hidden in plain sight.

Their best offer is the single core VPS at 3EUR. But if you need more power, your only next option is the 12EUR version with 2 cores. That' not so cheap in comparison with first one.

Now if you need even more power, you'll be drawn into either their cloud services or dedicated servers. They can make good money with both.

So I guess their VPS offering is more of a wide-scale net to catch lots of users, and funnel a % into higher margin offers.

Thats probably it. Their dedicated offering is quite reasonably priced though. Plus they run the occasional offer. They can do it cheaper than most of Europe as they have insanely cheap (in comparison) power. France uses a lot of nuclear power, which is cheap. Because of this they can affort to keep older hardware (read cheap) running that's more powerconsuming at low(er) pricing.

It's impressive what they're doing though because they've been opening DCs worldwide like crazy over the past few years. For some small projects you can now use the smaller vps, deploy one at 3 locations, worldwide and have a nice failover maganism in place for about a tenner a month.
 
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Back on subject... over the past months close to 70 hosts reselling CC have closed shop to give some perspective. Now that is no coincidence.

If you look at all the hosts mentioned in the announced closure, no company info is avalable about either of them on their website. No email address listed, lookalike templates for the websites.

The number of clients that may have been using them can easily be estimated to run into the thousands... each. I predict a lot of them have been targeting the asian market. It's easier to run 'scams' like this when there's a geographical distance.

It's a classic scam. The reseller profits, the 'host' profits, the consumer gets stiffed.

In conclusion: Never keep your domain(s) with your host! It's asking for trouble no matter who you host/registrar is!
 
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They probably are shutting down because almost all of them have been running unsustainable promotions over the past few months/year.

Cpanel announced a Major price hike, they continued to offer the same unsustainable deals. You cannot do that without taking a loss. Since they're all with colocrossing, it's probably colocrossing who decided to pull the plug on them.

Perhaps they are all run by the same people who have decided to pack it all in.
 
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At least 20 VPS providers --many of which allowed unlimited subaccounts -- will go offline after Monday, December 9 with essentially no notice.

More details here:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/20-vp...giving-customers-two-days-to-save-their-data/

This news has since been confirmed in hosting industry chatter, e.g. here:

https://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1790105

ColoCrossing was acquired by checkprinter Deluxe Corporation in June 2018.

As I began to diligence the topic, it appears that those Colo Crossing VPS services were hosting a number of phishing operators. However, what we don't know how much "baby" gets mixed in with the "phishy bathwater".

Low cost VPS is actually a form of "Digital Empowerment". However, someone running a VPS for under $10 per month may not have the ability to manage a migration on a weekend. So, don't be to surprised on Tuesday when you hear about a bunch of websites that went offline, some with unrecoverable data loss.

So, why should domainers care?

1. Some of you might have hosting at one of these providers:
  • ArkaHosting
  • Bigfoot Servers
  • DCNHost
  • HostBRZ
  • HostedSimply
  • Hosting73
  • KudoHosting
  • LQHosting
  • MegaZoneHosting
  • n3Servers
  • ServerStrong
  • SnowVPS
  • SparkVPS
  • StrongHosting
  • SuperbVPS
  • SupremeVPS
  • TCNHosting
  • UMaxHosting
  • WelcomeHosting
  • X4Servers

2. Many of these VPS providers are also domain resellers, and will have domains that are about to find themselves in no-mans-land:

Show attachment 138368

@Miao @ArmoredNet
That the reason to do due diligence before choosing a host that will hold your digital investments like domain and website
 
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