Account (website) suspended without warning

[obitori]

I was unpleasantly surprised to find my client's website, sportjudo.org, down today. I went to my hotmail account, which is my default email address for Web Hosting Buzz, and found an email. It told me that the account had been suspended for violating the TOU requirement that 90% of my disk space usage needed to be tied to publicly accessible HTTP links.

I confess I was not aware of this requirement and had backed up my web site and a few other things in my user directory. I would gladly have taken the files off and put them somewhere else. I must say that I am shocked and unhappy that my site was suspended without warning. I only I needed a head's up and I would have taken off the non-linked backup files.

Instead, my sportjudo.org website was taken down and my email service disrupted. This made me look bad, disrupted my email service, and seriously inconvenienced my client.

I searched my hotmail account. I received no advance warning. Your folks went straight to suspend. That's not professional and I am very unhappy. Please turn back on my account and ssh access so that i can move the files and turn back on my website.

Thank you,

Bud Roth

[Anna M.]

Hello Obitori,

Our acceptable usage policy states:
'WebHostingBuzz employ an Acceptable Usage Policy to maintain the performance and integrity of our computer equipment. Breach of our Acceptable Usage Policy may result in account suspension or termination without refund.'

To learn more details, please visit http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/?hosti...t-usage-policy

This link is located on the bottom of our main page. There are also the list of terms, privacy policy and other information which might be helpful

[obitori]

Anna.m:

Your reply completely misses the point. I am neither disputing the fact that your TOU states that there is a 90% linkage rule nor disputing your right to suspend my account if I fail to comply with the rule.

The fact remains that you could have notified me of the fact that I was not in compliance before suspending my website/email and disrupting my business. Instead, you went straight to suspend. THAT WAS A POOR WAY TO HANDLE THIS MATTER. A warning before escalating to suspension is the right way to do business. I hope you and your firm will be more professional next time around.

Regards,

Bud Roth

[Sergey S.]

Dear Bud Roth,

Unfortunately currently we do not provide the preliminary notifications in case of AUP violations before the suspensions. Please take a look at the piece from our Terms which states the policy of giving notices:

(http://www.webhostingbuzz.com/?terms)

“8. …Violations of these or any other provisions of this Agreement may result in termination of the services provided by WebHostingBuzz, with or without the grant of a notice or cure period, such notice or cure period to be granted at the sole discretion of WebHostingBuzz based upon the severity of the violation. WebHostingBuzz reserves the right to refuse service if any of the content within, or any links from, the Account Holder's website is deemed illegal, misleading, or obscene, or is otherwise in breach of WebHostingBuzz's then current Acceptable Use Policy, in the sole and absolute opinion of WebHostingBuzz…”

Even though we do not provide the notifications prior to suspensions we are always open to any questions regarding the AUP or terms themselves and every single customer is more than welcome to ask us to clarify the policy for him/her and make the rules clear and easy to follow. All the above is done for the best convenience of both the customers and WebHostingBuzz.

Let us know if you have any other unclear points in the AUP so that such unpleasant events do not take place in future and your business with us becomes as convenient as possible.

[Matt R.]

To add to Sergey's post, we do continually evaluate our policies. We will shortly be introducing a two-tier policy (suspension for those with massive warez/copyrighted music/movies etc but a warning for just diskspace AUP violators).

I anticipate this will be in place by the end of the month.

[Tony]

a warning for just diskspace AUP violators)...

Thank goodness because if we were taking a vote, I'd have to vote to notify first. Everyone can make a mistake, but how can they correct it if the site is suspended? This is what email is for.

To clarify, does this mean we can't keep a site backup online? I know my own has grown to like 700mb which would take half a day to upload, so I've been seriously considering it.

[Anna M.]

2Tony

When a site is suspended our technical department sends notification about that and the ticket on helpdesk (https://www.whbsupport.com) is created.
In order to be unsuspended one needs to reply to this email or login to the helpdesk and reply to the ticket that he or she agrees to fix the problem and a site gets back online.
You may always come to livechat to speed up the procedure but a confirmation in a ticket regarding resolving the issue is mandatory.

As for backup, unfortunately it's not possible to store backups this big on shared servers as it violates our AUP, section 5 regarding disk usage provision



Hope this information will help to avoid different kinds of misunderstanding in future
Question as always are welcome if any

[Matt R.]

Thank goodness because if we were taking a vote, I'd have to vote to notify first. Everyone can make a mistake, but how can they correct it if the site is suspended? This is what email is for.

To clarify, does this mean we can't keep a site backup online? I know my own has grown to like 700mb which would take half a day to upload, so I've been seriously considering it.

We make our own backups of all the hard disks to a secondary disk. The safest way for your own backup is to download it locally.

[Alan B]

We make our own backups of all the hard disks to a secondary disk.

You do? Has that begun recently? I had asked if backups were done on RS14 and VPS5, and was told that there were no off-disk backups.

[Matt R.]

On VPS servers, we do not. These are RAID protected servers and the best option is for you to create a /backup partition in your VPS that you can back up to as frequently as you like. We'll be writing a blog article on this shortly.

On all other servers, we have at least 1 disk configured as a backup disk.

[Tony]

On all other servers, we have at least 1 disk configured as a backup disk.

So those of us on shared servers already have online backups. Is there a charge to restore our sites, and what is the average turn around?

Anna, I think you missed the whole point of this thread. In a case like this, the site shouldn't be suspended until after you notified the user and gave them a few days to offload the files. The notification letter should also explain that backups are already kept online anyway, and explain how to get a site quickly restored and the cost to do it.

[Anna M.]

As Sergey.S has previously mentioned it is stated in section 8 of our terms that we may or may not notify about the fact of suspension or termination in case of AUP violation
So I thought this part has been already clarified

I just answered your question: "..but how can they correct it if the site is suspended?"

We restore accounts from our daily backups free of charge, unless your account has been terminated. In this case the backup itself will cost $25.
But if you want to be double sure that all your data is safe it is recommended to make your own backup and store it on your local computer.
In order to restore your site from a backup you need to submit a ticket to our tech dept

[Tony]

So I thought this part has been already clarified

I just answered your question: "..but how can they correct it if the site is suspended?"

Yes, it's been clarified and answered. But I wasn't asking a question. I was suggesting policy.

So what do you think of the policy of notifying prior to suspending for a non-critical issue like this?

[Anna M.]

We are reconsidering our policy regarding this.

[Tony]

A nice diplomatic answer.

Oddly, this subject just came up over at my other host (HostGator). They have an online form you have to fill out to have your site restored. If you supply the backup, it's free. If they have to go get it, it's $15.

They do offer unlimited disk space, so apparently it's just fine with them if we keep a site backup online.

I've always made full site backups monthly via cpanel. But those are downloaded. I guess now I'm going to have to start uploading them back to the site.

[Matt R.]

We have now modified this policy.

[Tony]

Cool. We look forward to hearing the details.

Oh, and please let all the live tech support people know about site restoration services. The last time I needed it, the guy on chat seemed to be highly amused that I had stupidly deleted half my site, but never actually offered to restore it for me at any price! As I uploaded my backup over the next 4 hours I kept thinking that I never in my life have ever wanted to strangle someone so much. Good thing he wasn't anywhere nearby.

[Maxim M.]

At this time we have the following.

If the client violates Disk Usage Provision he will be sent the notification and have 48 hours to remove some files and to notify us back. The suspension occurs if the ticket's not updated within this period.

And we can restore client's full account from the backup if we have it on our server. Daily backups are usually made by our automatic system. But this has low priority. I mean if the server requires resources for other operations, backup creation may be postponed.

[omniuni]

I would like to add that WHB does indeed do a great job backing stuff up. I once had a terrible mishap where I completely screwed up my folder tree with my FTP client, and WHB was able to get back at least a few of the missing files despite my mistake being nearly a week old. It was enough to get things moving again until I located the missing folder and replaced it. Basically, if you want an off-site backup, do it to your own computer, otherwise, WHB does a very nice job with it themselves!

Oh, and in reference to the original post, I hate to point out the obvious here, but WHB is a HOST, they are not a backup service. No host allows backups to their servers unless they SPECIFICALLY state it. I've also found that WHB is very lenient about space usage. Use it, but don't abuse it, and you're likely to be fine. I regularly use my space to provide a download for larger files to my clients (like 100+ event pictures), or displaying a Flash video, but it is directly linked from my website, does not over-use resources, and it is not a backup. After all, it's more efficient than trying to shove that much data through their mail servers! If you've put enough extra "stuff" behind your website to have WHB notice it and suspend your account, your own conscience should have warned you that it could cause trouble.

[Tony]

WHB is a HOST, they are not a backup service. No host allows backups to their servers unless they SPECIFICALLY state it.

I think you may be confusing the issues. The OP wasn't too specific, but he said he "had backed up my web site and a few other things". He didn't say he was trying to use his WHB account to back up all his computers.

As a web host, they should certainly have and allow web site backups!

I agree though that web hosts shouldn't start allowing shared accounts to back up everything from home too. But then, why would anyone do that when you can get e.g. Mozy ($5 USD/mo) or Jungledisk (maybe less) to do it so much cheaper.