
HostGator deletes my website, demands to see my passport - programmernews
http://www.collegetimes.tv/hostgator-sucks/
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zyxley
I've worked for a company that was acquired by EIG. Their whole support system
is incredibly terrible, but account fraud is a legitimate constant concern.
The fact that the guy prepaid doesn't really matter—Paypal accounts in
particular are a breeding ground for stolen money/accounts.

My reading of this situation is that the person who wrote the article did
something that got their account flagged as "this looks like a spammer we
previously kicked off our service", at which point the automatic system kicked
in to ask him for a copy of an ID because it thought he was probably some
Russian or Chinese scammer. Yes, there are false positives, but even at the
best hosting companies, there's a constant stream of foreign spammers and
scammers. Constant. Like, multiple obvious questionable contacts per day for
every single support/sales person on staff.

This is pretty much how it works at any major low-cost hosting company. EIG's
awful customer service system (which is centralized across all the companies
they own) means that they take forever to process everything, but _any_
hosting company with prices low enough to have to deal with mass fraud is
going to have similar procedures. It'll just at best (like it was at the
company I worked for pre-acquisition) be somewhere where you can talk to a
fraud specialist immediately on the phone, fax in a copy of an ID, and have
your site back up in a half hour.

Also, of course the support person closed the chat. What the hell do you
expect when you start talking about Homeland Security and the TSA? This is
some guy in a cubicle who has no power to change policies and is trying to
handle a half-dozen upset customers at once. He doesn't have time for your
crap.

~~~
CapitalistCartr
What do you think is the threshold to charge to avoid the scammer harassment?
I tend to use cheap hosting for people, and I'd like to step up a notch to
avoid just this sort of silliness.

~~~
zyxley
You're pretty much not going to find a LAMP shared hosting company that
doesn't have a similar policy.

That said, look for services with a minimum term of a year (this lowers
spammer numbers quite a bit), and look for services that have multiple contact
methods including an actual physical mailing address listed on their site
(even if it's just a PO Box, it shows that they're probably not a reseller...
there are _lot_ of resellers out there).

And avoid companies owned by EIG or GoDaddy (some web searching will get you
lists for both)—they're both just too big and too disorganized to provide
adequate levels of support.

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hyperliner
"why would I send a minimum wage support technician a copy of my passport and
credit card?"

Sorry, you lost all my sympathy there where you start clearly making fun of
the person's income for doing what they were trained to do and paid to do.

~~~
opless
The whole blog entry was a complete poor me post.

Sigh.

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giancarlostoro
I was asked for scanning of similar data from Limestone Networks, but I've
known them to never cheat anyone, so I didn't mind. But why for someone like
HostGator to ask for so much identification? Their services aren't like LSN
(Limestone) where it costs a lot of money, and you have to verify someone's
not duping you with information they found online. Never hosted off HostGator,
just not my cup of tea. Now I just use DigitalOcean, great service, for what I
need it for, and affordable.

~~~
zyxley
> But why for someone like HostGator to ask for so much identification? Their
> services aren't like LSN (Limestone) where it costs a lot of money

Cheap services make scammers and spammers _more_ likely to show up, not less.

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jwise0
The complaint seemed eminently reasonable to me... up until the point where
the author began taking an openly hostile tone with the support representative
that he spoke with. Even though he had a deeply unpleasant experience, taking
it out on the poor support guy is pretty unprofessional, and is really not
terribly likely to reinforce the image that he's worth doing business with.

Sigh. Nasty to watch what HostGator did too, though.

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coldcode
I'll send a copy of my credit card and passport over your dead body. Of course
then it own't matter.

Seriously what possible reason can they have for this for simple web hosting?
What are they afraid of or is there some financial angle?

~~~
zyxley
> Seriously what possible reason can they have for this for simple web
> hosting? What are they afraid of or is there some financial angle?

Scammers who use stolen credit cards and Paypal accounts to purchase cheap
bulk hosting and send out floods of spam emails (before the account gets shut
down) and/or set up imitations of other websites for phishing attacks.

Simple, cheap web hosting makes this _more_ of a problem, not less.

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nodata
The next GoDaddy! Perhaps they're planning an IPO.

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giancarlostoro
I always associated GoDaddy and HostGator as one, just realizing they're
different entities. Oh well...

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zyxley
At this point the cheap LAMP shared hosting field is basically EIG* on one
side, GoDaddy† on the other, and all the small companies in between getting
squashed or acquired by one or the other.

* They own Hostgator, Bluehost, Startlogic, Bizland, iPower, Startlogic, Fatcow, iPage, JustHost, MyDomain, Homestead, NetFirms, and a couple dozen other companies.

† They own MediaTemple, Wild West Domains, BlueRazor, and I think a couple of
other companies.

~~~
nodata
So NearlyFreeSpeech to the rescue then!
[https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/](https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/)

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audace19
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