This blog post was preceded by a different post by Jules. That post was deleted and this post by Doug took it's place instead.

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The Reddit Incident

POSTED BY Jules ON August 16, 2011 AT 4:45 pm UNDER Uncategorized
I’m sure you may have heard about it by now, and if not I’m sure you soon will! I wanted to take this opportunity to make a blog post about the situation and post some information from our side of the fence. Before I begin though, I’d like to thank the tens of people who felt the need to e-mail us death threats and general profanity. We have forwarded these on to your ISP’s abuse departments.

Yesterday on Twitter we were asked by a user why their friends account was suspended because of a PayPal dispute. Our terms and conditions are very clear that in the case of any PayPal disputes, or other payment disputes, all services are suspended until the dispute is closed and the payment issue(s) resolved. These are typical terms that most web hosting providers have, and in some cases a provider will even charge a fee to restore any accounts that have been suspended because of a payment dispute. We don’t, for the record.

So, when asked why their friends account was suspended we told them “Our terms are very clear. Your friend should not have opened a fraudulent dispute.” We then sent a DM to the individual who asked, saying the following: “Please mind your own business. Your friends account, and PayPal dispute has nothing to do with you.” Of course, as a hosting provider we cannot discuss the details of another account and its status with others. Because of this message, we were informed that they would be canceling their accounts due to our “unprofessional-ism”. After much continued pushing from these users, we then responded (rather sarcastically I might add) with the following: “Fantastic. Perhaps you can sign up with a hosting provider who doesn’t take privacy seriously then. Enjoy.”

We take privacy very seriously. If your friend has an issue with their account, your friend needs to contact us. Despite being your friend, it does not mean we will discuss their account(s) with you and it does not entitle you to demand information about a specific issue or incident. Your friends account is theirs, and theirs alone.

So, cue more pushing and baiting on Twitter and we then come to the conclusion that this situation is obviously some attempt for these users to attack us for reasons unknown, and we decide to end our business relationship with them. What this effectively means is that we decide to suspend their account(s) and offer them a full backup of their data with us. Of the two users we did this for, one of them was extremely polite and requested a backup of their data, which we provided to them. This user also had domains in their account which they still have full access to, and we even informed them via e-mail that they should transfer them to another provider as soon as possible as we would no longer be providing support to them.

The other posted on Twitter that they were looking for another hosting provider, to which we responded “Best of luck with your new host!”. This was not intended to be a taunt, this was intended to be the closing line to our discussion with them. Our way of saying “OK, best of luck, we consider this matter closed now”. Unfortunately, this user interpreted it to be a taunt or goad. They then responded with direct profanity aimed at us. At this point before the profanity I’d like to state that their account was only suspended. They had full access to a backup of their data and files.

After the profanity (which was completely unnecessary) we terminated the account immediately, no longer wishing to do any form of business or communication with the client. As part of our termination system, any backups we store for an account are automatically removed via an action hook we have deployed. We don’t see any logic in storing data for terminated accounts that we no longer host, so they are removed instantly. Please note; this wasn’t a manual “Oh I’m going to remove your backups because you swore at me!” situation. This was an automated process that occurs immediately after any account on our servers is terminated.

So let’s just recap a little; we have 1 account that is suspended with full access to a backup of their data and their domain names. We have another account that is fully terminated, with all data removed, due to severe breach of our terms.

And then we have the Twitter/Reddit aftermath….

Now, I fully understand how as a customer or potential customer, a hosting provider terminating your account and deleting your data without notice is a bad thing. Hell, if it happened to me I’d be very angry indeed. But what you have to remember is that this isn’t a typical situation, and certainly isn’t a random event. This is the direct result of publically swearing at and abusing your hosting provider, something which is actually covered in our Acceptable Usage Policy and results in instant account termination. Please also remember that before the termination, the customer was able to obtain all of their data in the way of a backup should they have requested it. The moment they decided to cross that line and become abusive in that manner, they made a conscious choice to break our terms and the result is the enforcement of that. The other friend who didn’t decide to abuse us? They still have full access to their data and domains, and are presumably looking for a new host.

I’m not saying we’re right and the users were wrong. I’m not saying that perhaps some other hosting providers would’ve dealt with the suspension(s) and termination differently, to each their own. What you need to discern is that this is an extremely rare situation. Our terms and conditions were broken, something that very rarely happens, but when it does the outcome is always the same. These are our policies and these are how we respond. Many of you won’t know because quite frankly, you’ll never break our terms – which is precisely the issue here. Ridicule us for it if you will.