
How-to take down any DigitalOcean-hosted website. - pjbrunet
Simply send an abuse complaint.  Digital Ocean doesn&#x27;t even read or verify the complaint.  They automatically power down the server (within about 30 mins) whether or not the complaint refers to actual URLs on the server.<p>This just happened to one of my clients today (hour ago) and Digital Ocean is not responding to support tickets and not responding on Twitter either.
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raiyu
Hi,

Thanks for inquiring, but this hackernews title is very misleading. We take
customer satisfaction very seriously at DigitalOcean. It wasn't one complaint,
but 76, and it wasn't immediate, but 4 days with no responses that led to
action being taken.

Of those, about 50 of them were done on the 25th, for which we received no
response.

If we do not receive a response for 50+ abuse complaints we unfortunately have
to take action, which was done in this case.

Hopefully that clears this issue up.

Thanks, Moisey Cofounder DigitalOcean

~~~
pjbrunet
So the images were deleted and everything was resolved on my end that same
afternoon of the 25th.

Not four days with no response, more like a few hours to resolve the problem
with productive back-and-forth communication.

However, DigitalOcean again threatened to shut down the server later that
evening of the 25th (automated email) because DigitalOcean support had not
closed all the abuse tickets. Somehow it's my job to close the ticking
timebomb tickets, apparently these tickets countdown to auto-shutdown of your
Droplet if they're not all closed within an unspecified timeframe. Luckily I
was online to click delete-refresh delete-refresh delete-refresh on the rest
of the tickets or no doubt the server would have been powered off again.

The 26th and 27th, no problems.

Today (28th) DigitalOcean gets a pile more rapid-fire complaints and shuts off
the server again, within 30 minutes of receiving the complaints. This time the
complaints are bogus because I already deleted everything on the 25th.

What does that tell me? DigitalOcean did not check if the complaints were
legit before powering off the server. All the URLs in the complaints are 404.
It wasn't until Zach got involved that I was given some assurance the server
wouldn't be auto-shutdown again in the event of more bogus complaints.

------
zacharybk
Hi PJ,

This is Zach from DigitalOcean. I'm very sorry that this was your experience
with us. We've replied to your ticket (and Tweet) and fully unlocked your
account.

We take abuse (DCMA complaints), account security and platform security
seriously. Sometimes it's a tough balance, and when accounts are incorrectly
locked we take quick action to resolve.

Please feel free to let me know if you have any further thoughts: zach at
digitalocean.com.

Thank you, Zach DigitalOcean Director of Support

~~~
pjbrunet
I feel bad posting this to Hacker News because I like Digital Ocean. But I
take downtime seriously. It's not my website that was shut down and I'm saying
this on my own, not on behalf of the client/owner. So I can't really comment
on the details.

I responded to your support ticket already, thank you.

This is just my opinion. I already posted some of these suggestions on
Twitter.

\- 30 mins notice before you power down a server sounds extreme. Why not a
24-hour notice? An emergency SMS, tweet or phone call would have been awesome.

\- Shutting down a server is a big deal. That particular server has several
background processes running all day. Maybe I'm dreaming, but if you could
have just shut down http (what the complaint was about) and not the entire
server, that would have been great. That way I'd still have ssh access to
delete files, etc.

\- I don't understand your policy of (paraphrasing) "Your account will
continue to lock and re-lock as long as you have open abuse tickets." Even if
the problem is resolved and the account is unlocked by support and everyone is
happy, your system continues to re-lock the account until all abuse tickets
are closed. The company complaining sends rapid-fire complaints (can't be that
uncommon) and clicking "delete ticket" 100 times (waiting for refresh) is
annoying. Seems like you could easily fix this by merging all the complaints
into one ticket or with some kind of "checkbox" option.

\- I don't get the impression you have someone at DigitalOcean familiar with
abuse complaints. Maybe you do, I don't know. I get the impression you don't
read or filter the complaints. Seems like you just press the "off switch"
willy nilly.

------
pjbrunet
The account is unlocked now. Just downloaded a backup in case this happens
again. Still no response to why they didn't bother reading the abuse
complaint. (Edit) DigitalOcean wrote back a nice response. I'll follow up with
them before commenting futher here.

------
throwa
It is troubling to hear that digital-ocean takes arbitrary action to shut down
servers without giving atleast 24 hours notice.

It is worrisome for me because I am a linode user and only recently created a
digital-ocean droplet and after playing with it, I liked their service and was
planning to host a new app with them instead of Linode while the existing
one's remain with linode.

But now I am not sure?

Can any digital-ocean staff please provide a link that shows your policy for
shutting down servers. I need to be sure this high handedness is not actually
in your policy.

------
pjbrunet
This is the email you get 30 mins before they shut you down:

"Oh no! We've found an issue with your account and issued you a new ticket
that needs to be addressed as soon as possible.

Please login to view the ticket:
[https://www.digitalocean.com/support](https://www.digitalocean.com/support)

Thanks so much, DigitalOcean"

~~~
pjbrunet
After 30 mins you get this:

"Account Locked by DigitalOcean Staff We are sorry to inform you that your
account has been locked by DigitalOcean Staff. None of your virtual servers
have been destroyed. We have opened a support ticket with you regarding the
cause of this lock. Please navigate to the Support Page to resolve the issue
that has caused your account to be locked. Thank you, DigitalOcean Staff"

------
theshank
And this is why I keep recommending Linode to all my clients !

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jMyles
annnnd this made me close the tab about using ansible to create a droplet.
Back to the pyrax docs!

