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Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

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Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#71

Post by epochwolf »

lsc wrote: post #25
fido wrote: post #20

Rackspace (and others) need to call their clients on the phone in these situations. They feel it is so important that it must be taken care of in one hour, yet they use email. Not exactly fair to the client....

Isn't the rackspace cloud their cut-rate service? would they have called if it was a slicehost (premium price) customer? Still, I think it is a good idea, and one I ought to implement in my own service. The problem is that we all hate dealing with the phone, but that sounds to me like a lazy answer. On the other hand, really, if you are an abuse problem, honestly, I don't want you as a customer.

Slicehost doesn't have phone support last I checked.

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#72

Post by epochwolf »

chopsueyar wrote: post #62
nl wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

is it reasonable to shutdown a suspect case of abuse without giving time for the service provider to investigate and respond to this case? Yes, if there are enough complaints and harm that may come from it is serious enough.

So, the writer of the article had one complaint. The forms cannot take passwords. A second complaint, without any investigation, would result in the termination of his account and destruction of data. That is not reasonable.

> So, the writer of the article had one complaint. The forms cannot take passwords.

We don't know this. We have no idea how many complaints rackspace has against this guy. It could be one or it could be dozens.

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#73

Post by epochwolf »

goosmurf wrote: post #51

Post is lacking information on whether the site was actually a phishing site and who (or which entity) submitted a complaint. I think verification of the legitimacy of a complaint should be a critical step before disabling a site, otherwise you're prone to DoS. It would also be good to know what steps the complainant took. Did s/he try to contact Pandaform, or immediately go to Rackspace as the owner of the IP? Witho…

I'm also wondering if this person has a history of complaints.

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#74

Post by goosmurf »

bconway wrote: post #70
goosmurf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even something simpler - call the account holder's phone and play a simple recorded message that says "hey, its Rackspace, we need you to deal with an urgent issue, please check your email ASAP". Cheap for Rackspace, gives the customer fair warning, and if there's no response within some reasonable time frame then shutdown the machines in question.

What if I'm on a two-hour flight, though? A one-hour response time is ridiculous.

Well I didn't agree or disagree with one hour, I said "some reasonable time frame" explicitly because the expected response time needs to consider what the real risks are.

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#75

Post by paolomaffei »

matrix wrote: post #2

I'm thinking Rackspace might well have been in the right on this one. If the customer was in fact phishing, Rackspace was well within their rights to shut down the account. It's really up to the application creator to prevent that abuse. That said, it's good to have a reminder of the risks of outsourcing your hosting. I still think the tradeoff is worth it for experimental products where you don't want to invest too…

They were in their right. And I'm in the right of choosing a provider that won't disrupt my business. I'm not talking about bulletproof hosting but 1 hour notice before takedown? Can't upvote this story enough.

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#76

Post by paolomaffei »

Linode isn't really any better. I sent an email campaign to an optin list from campaignmonitor - someone (1 person out of 1000) reported spam.

Campaignmonitor asked us what was going on - while this is debatable they may have been damaged from the complaing

But even linode asked us about it, just because the website where people signed up was on a linode hosting.

1 complain, nothing to do with hosting a part that the link is the here, and they asked us if there was something wrong.

I wonder if you can just blast a spam email with a competitor website (hosted on linode) inside and get him offline...

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#78

Post by xiongchiamiov »

bconway wrote: post #70
goosmurf wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or even something simpler - call the account holder's phone and play a simple recorded message that says "hey, its Rackspace, we need you to deal with an urgent issue, please check your email ASAP". Cheap for Rackspace, gives the customer fair warning, and if there's no response within some reasonable time frame then shutdown the machines in question.

What if I'm on a two-hour flight, though? A one-hour response time is ridiculous.

What if I'm asleep in bed?

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#79

Post by [deleted] »

epochwolf wrote: post #71
lsc wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Isn't the rackspace cloud their cut-rate service? would they have called if it was a slicehost (premium price) customer? Still, I think it is a good idea, and one I ought to implement in my own service. The problem is that we all hate dealing with the phone, but that sounds to me like a lazy answer. On the other hand, really, if you are an abuse problem, honestly, I don't want you as a customer.

Slicehost doesn't have phone support last I checked.

[deleted]

Re: Rely your web startup on Rackspace Cloud? Think again

#80

Post by A1kmm »

watchandwait wrote: post #30
nl wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. Hosting providers usually reserve the right to shutdown your server if it has been hacked, and phishing is often more directly harmful to people.

Agree. This wasn't a simple DMCA issue-- phishing is an active, criminal activity. Even one hour notice is generous.

Taking the contents of the article on faith, I think the point was that their customers were abusing the startup's service for phishing.

This would be analogous to, for example, AWS taking reddit offline because a user posted a phising link.

Nearly every web business which lets people put information on the web that others can see will face abuse issues at some point or the other - and cutting off a business and its legitimate customers because of one client misusing the service does not inspire confidence.

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