My HostGator Horror Story

JasonZ10 · Feb 25, 2012

So, I've relied on HostGator as my host for the past 7 or so months ($70), been an affiliate of theirs and made a couple hundred referring people, and been relatively satisfied until I got home from school a few days ago and found I was suspended.. So here's my story.

Get home from school, do a Google search for the site I set up the night before, see it's already ranked 5th on the first page, so I get excited and click it just to admire my achievement. I see "Webmaster please contact support.. blabla" So I try to login to my CPanel and see some error message. I email their support, ask them what the deal is and get this response:

On further review the suspension stands as a result of multiple 'clickjacking' related sites hosted on the account.

So by now I'm very confused, I haven't done anything close to clickjacking, so I email them back telling them that and asking for more information. They send me back this message

The sites involved have been reviewed by multiple Senior Security Administrators and/or Security Shift Leads. We do not allow the sort of content on these sites on our network.

I am attaching a file with liog entries showing these sites and their content all appear to be uploaded and maintained by a signle IP address hich matches the IP address from which you opened the account.

This account will not be reactivated.

Below that message is a giant log of everything I've done in the past month, which shows me absolutely nothing other than my IP address.

I'm tired of dealing with their incompetent staff, so I tell them all of that is useless bullshit and I'd like a backup of all of my files, they send me an email back saying something along the lines of "Due to the nature of your violation we can't provide you a full backup of your site". So I ask for three sites, CLP, site1 and site2, and they send me backups of all of them. I then send them another email asking again why I was suspended, first it was for Phishing, and then Clickjacking. They reply saying this:

The main issue was that a site under your control was actively stealing *big site* logins (This is just a smartdots website that was basically one page with 4 links I made to show the design I made for a client. His site had some hacking tools of some sort on them.). The excessive clickjacking combined with third-party complaints made it clear that these sites also fell under Section 2 of our Terms of Service (specifically the line regarding "fraudulent sites") as well. Should a complaint have been received over posts made by the youtube.php scripts under your account, that would have been grounds for a suspension under Section 3 of our Terms of Service as well. Please reply back if you have any further questions.

So now I'm very confused. I reply again saying that the website was made for a client and the only people that visited it was him and me, and it's one single page, no others. I get another message back saying this

Traffic did go to those fraudulent sites, which is how we received a third party complaint.

Hosting a site design which is designed to trick people about what site is receiving their interactions, whether those are login credentials or mouse clicks, is a violation of our Terms of Service. Hosting it for someone else does not make it less of a violation.

The only way we could reactivate the domain would have been if it was established these were not your actions and that the account had been compromised by some outside party. So far, no evidence for such a situation has surfaced in the logs or in this ticket. At this point the account is not eligible for hosting on our network.

Now I'm even more confused, I reply with this:

Are you sure the third party complaint was for that exact website? It's a smartdots extension, which isn't indexed by google, and the only thing I did with it is show it to my client, and he told me he didn't show it to anyone else.

Then big surprise, I get this back..

I apologize for any miscommunication. The initial complaint we received was in regards to the site "site1 (referenced above, this is also the site that got 5th in google right away)". However, we will still not be able to allow any of this content to be re-activated.

I ask what the complaint was for, and they tell me site1 is "a possible phishing site."

After that, fairly frustrated, this was sent two days ago, without any reply:

Did you guys actually do any investigation? I can assure you it was not a phishing site. All it had on it was an article and an email form.

So there it is, HostGator suspends without reason and doesn't give a fuck about the money I was giving them and all of the traffic I was sending with their affiliate program. They still owe me around $300, so I'm going to get that and then never deal with them in any way.

Any suggestions for PHP 5.3 CPanel shared hosting with fantastico?

Also a Jr. VIP now. Thanks for everything BHW! <3

tabore11 · Feb 25, 2012

you can try kualo.co.uk

jammie · Feb 25, 2012

Sorry to hear about what happened,

luckily you didn't loose too much money by the sounds of it, otherwise I'd be taking legal action for damages!

Bite your lip, find a new host, keep calm and carry on.

It's unfortunate but it happens! Hosting companies never learn unfortunately.

Tensegrity · Feb 25, 2012

JasonZ10 said:
So there it is, HostGator suspends without reason and doesn't give a fuck about the money I was giving them and all of the traffic I was sending with their affiliate program.

That is your problem right there.

Chances are you're going to deal with this problem anytime you put control of your website in the hands of someone paying you affiliate money who isn't a CPA network.

I'm going to assume that you are telling the truth here and that there are actually no misleading links happening on your site. If that is the case then I see 2 issues going on here:

1. The way HG probably sees their affiliate program is that they can get some extra sales by paying affiliates a commission for them. Those are sales they otherwise wouldn't have and so paying the affiliate cuts into their profit margin. So what happens when an affiliate starts bringing in tons of sales? Those are sales that HG would have otherwise made 100% profit on, so now they see you as a threat to their business model because they now have a large expense every month (your affiliate check). And I'm sure you are not the first person to rank high for a HG related keyword so just multiply your earnings by X (X being the number of affiliates doing what you're doing) and that expense gets huge. This brings me to the next issue..

2. Ranking for HG keywords may be the actual problem that pisses them off (assuming that is what you are doing) for reasons that you can probably imagine on your own. Consider for a minute that you are HG and suddenly you're getting sales from a site that ranks higher than you for a keyword related to your business and that site isn't entirely deserving of that rank because it's getting the rank through black hat means. Shouldn't really be a problem if you are ultimately getting the sale, right? Well, what if you see a website that is not well-formed, well-designed and/or otherwise making HG look bad (not saying your site was, just saying)? You would probably think twice about paying them for advertising, from a marketing and branding perspective. HG doesn't want to be associated with black hat techniques.

What this all comes down to is you shouldn't put the control of your site in the hands of HG or any company when they are paying you affiliate checks. That is putting all your eggs in one basket. You could have kept your site live and ranking high but removed the HG links if they decide not to pay you. Instead you're left with them killing your business.

Just some thoughts. Sorry to hear, though, that is some bad news.

dirtbag · Feb 25, 2012

Always keep as local backup of everything. Always...

Donkey Kong · Feb 25, 2012

Your story freak the shit out of me, I guess it happen to more people but they didn't expose it out. Sorry for your lost, bro. Better luck next time. For relaxing and contribute to this thread, can you tell us more about CPA and stuff?

therealmadhatter · Feb 25, 2012

I Got This Today

Hello Affiliates,
We have some very important announcements to included in this newsletter:
Two Terms of Service Policy Changes (the TOS is located here: http://www.hostgator.com/tos/affiliate-tos.php)
TOS Changes:
We are modifying our PPC policy. Please review our TOS here: http://www.hostgator.com/tos/affiliate-tos.php and note the new terms in section 5 regarding our PPC policy. Please note that the bolded sections are the changed sections. Essentially, we are prohibiting any trademark/brand name and trademark/brand name + bidding (i.e. HostGator coupon) on PPC search engines.

You are free to bid on PPC networks for keywords related to web hosting with the intent to direct traffic to HostGator. We do NOT allow any brand name / Trademark bidding (HostGator) or Trademark + bidding (I.e HostGator Coupons). Some examples of prohibited keywords:

"hostgator"
"hostgator.com"
"www.hostgator.com"
"host gator"
"Hostgator coupon"
"hostgator review"

You are prohibited from bidding on any HostGator and HostGator KEYWORD (example: coupon, etc.) terms on any PPC search engine. When setting up the display advertisement in a PPC campaign, it is not permitted to use the display URL "www.hostgator.com" or "hostgator.com", and ad text in a display ad may not contain the "HostGator" trademark. We do NOT allow direct linking from PPC campaigns.
The goal of our guidelines regarding pay-per-click advertisements is to preserve the integrity of the HostGator brand name and reputation. We do not want affiliates, or for that matter, any third party, representing themselves as HostGator or presenting themselves in a way that could be confused with HostGator.
Please note that organic search listings and results are permitted for the above terms.

New TOS Section:
Minimum payment threshold (Section 6 in our TOS). Due to the increase in cost associated with management and processing of single sale referrals as well as the amount of fraud associated with 1 off referrals, we have implemented a minimum payment threshold. This is something that is seen industry wide and will be beneficial for all affiliates in the long run allowing us to continue to payout large amounts per sale referred.

Minimum Payment Threshold:
Affiliates must earn a minimum affiliate account balance of $100 or more before their account is eligible for payment. Commission amounts earned for less than $100 (for example, 1 sale for $50) will remain pending until the full $100 minimum balance has been earned. All sales still pending due to the minimum payment threshold must remain active and in good standing according to our TOS requirements in order to be eligible for payment. Sales that are found not to be valid according to our TOS requirements at the time of the additional sale and earnings will be marked as invalid and not payable. Therefore there will be the requirement that 2 sales, or $100 in minimum earnings be valid according to our sale requirements listed in our TOS in order for payment to be sent.
Both of these policies take effect immediately.
Once again, please review these new TOS changes and please feel free to let us know if you have any questions.

Thank you for your continued referrals.
Best Regards,
HostGator Affiliate Team
[email protected]

cecle · Feb 25, 2012

Tensegrity said:
That is your problem right there.

Chances are you're going to deal with this problem anytime you put control of your website in the hands of someone paying you affiliate money who isn't a CPA network.

I'm going to assume that you are telling the truth here and that there are actually no misleading links happening on your site. If that is the case then I see 2 issues going on here:

1. The way HG probably sees their affiliate program is that they can get some extra sales by paying affiliates a commission for them. Those are sales they otherwise wouldn't have and so paying the affiliate cuts into their profit margin. So what happens when an affiliate starts bringing in tons of sales? Those are sales that HG would have otherwise made 100% profit on, so now they see you as a threat to their business model because they now have a large expense every month (your affiliate check). And I'm sure you are not the first person to rank high for a HG related keyword so just multiply your earnings by X (X being the number of affiliates doing what you're doing) and that expense gets huge. This brings me to the next issue..

2. Ranking for HG keywords may be the actual problem that pisses them off (assuming that is what you are doing) for reasons that you can probably imagine on your own. Consider for a minute that you are HG and suddenly you're getting sales from a site that ranks higher than you for a keyword related to your business and that site isn't entirely deserving of that rank because it's getting the rank through black hat means. Shouldn't really be a problem if you are ultimately getting the sale, right? Well, what if you see a website that is not well-formed, well-designed and/or otherwise making HG look bad (not saying your site was, just saying)? You would probably think twice about paying them for advertising, from a marketing and branding perspective. HG doesn't want to be associated with black hat techniques.

What this all comes down to is you shouldn't put the control of your site in the hands of HG or any company when they are paying you affiliate checks. That is putting all your eggs in one basket. You could have kept your site live and ranking high but removed the HG links if they decide not to pay you. Instead you're left with them killing your business.

Just some thoughts. Sorry to hear, though, that is some bad news.

This explains things perfectly, and corresponds to the recent affiliate email I received about PPC, domains and hostgator.

Affiliates are only your friends for so long, once they start to dominate they are going to be taking a huge percentage of your profits.

goinviral · Feb 25, 2012

if you are going to push hostgator affiliate offers.. NEVER use their servers for this! use another hosting company. Same goes with any of the other big guys. Invariably they get the shits with you and shutdown your account! If you are hosted elsewhere there is little they can do. If they suspend your affiliate account you can then send the sign ups elsewhere.

thetrustedzone · Feb 25, 2012

damn ... bad news I'm affiliate with them ..... i will not send customers for them anymore

silentthunder · Feb 25, 2012

Ruthless logic but it makes sense "corporation sense". Sorry for your lost OP.

Tensegrity said:
That is your problem right there.

Chances are you're going to deal with this problem anytime you put control of your website in the hands of someone paying you affiliate money who isn't a CPA network.

I'm going to assume that you are telling the truth here and that there are actually no misleading links happening on your site. If that is the case then I see 2 issues going on here:

1. The way HG probably sees their affiliate program is that they can get some extra sales by paying affiliates a commission for them. Those are sales they otherwise wouldn't have and so paying the affiliate cuts into their profit margin. So what happens when an affiliate starts bringing in tons of sales? Those are sales that HG would have otherwise made 100% profit on, so now they see you as a threat to their business model because they now have a large expense every month (your affiliate check). And I'm sure you are not the first person to rank high for a HG related keyword so just multiply your earnings by X (X being the number of affiliates doing what you're doing) and that expense gets huge. This brings me to the next issue..

2. Ranking for HG keywords may be the actual problem that pisses them off (assuming that is what you are doing) for reasons that you can probably imagine on your own. Consider for a minute that you are HG and suddenly you're getting sales from a site that ranks higher than you for a keyword related to your business and that site isn't entirely deserving of that rank because it's getting the rank through black hat means. Shouldn't really be a problem if you are ultimately getting the sale, right? Well, what if you see a website that is not well-formed, well-designed and/or otherwise making HG look bad (not saying your site was, just saying)? You would probably think twice about paying them for advertising, from a marketing and branding perspective. HG doesn't want to be associated with black hat techniques.

What this all comes down to is you shouldn't put the control of your site in the hands of HG or any company when they are paying you affiliate checks. That is putting all your eggs in one basket. You could have kept your site live and ranking high but removed the HG links if they decide not to pay you. Instead you're left with them killing your business.

Just some thoughts. Sorry to hear, though, that is some bad news.

JasonZ10 · Feb 25, 2012

Thanks for the help, everyone, really appreciate it!
If they never pay me my affiliate commissions I'll open a fraud report and try to convince others to do the same.

Nigel Farage · Feb 26, 2012

So, in layman's terms, the OP was selling Hostgator better than Hostgator was, so they killed his sites, then made up a new set of rules and applied them retroactively to the OP?

lanbo · Feb 26, 2012

That's unfortunate - what are you going to do about your data now?

Dumper · Feb 26, 2012

Yeah sorry to hear that, i know how it is when you have a good think going and then log-in to see it's been ripped out from under you. I was kicking ass with a adwords campaign and login one day and it's been suspended for no effen reason.

Tensegrity · Feb 27, 2012

JasonZ10 said:
Thanks for the help, everyone, really appreciate it!
If they never pay me my affiliate commissions I'll open a fraud report and try to convince others to do the same.

FWIW, I know HG pays on something like a 60-day thing. Not fun to wait for that, but the payments do usually come.

MLMGUROO · Feb 27, 2012

JasonZ10 said:
Any suggestions for PHP 5.3 CPanel shared hosting with fantastico?

Try

Code:

http://www.247-host.com/

tanger69er · Aug 2, 2012

I haven't had this happen to me yet. I hope it never does. OP, have you heard anything else back about this?

JimmyConway · Aug 2, 2012

I have a question, did you use commision junctions way of referring people in or did you use their little referral program that's in the cPanel?

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