I’m pissed at Godaddy’s virtual private server service.
Checking my sites to find one of my Godaddy Virtual Dedicated Servers is down!
I rent multiple virtual servers from Godaddy and it happens to be the server with most websites on, about 60 domains that was offline!
GoDaddy Hosting Account Suspended
I go to the Godaddy control panel to find the following notice:
Current Hosting Account Status: Suspended
If you have a question about the status of your account or need assistance with anything else submit a trouble ticket by clicking on the link below. Ensuring that we have your latest passwords on file will help us assist you more quickly. Click the “Sync Passwords” button to do so now.
Say what!!!
As you can imagine that wasn’t what I expected.
I check my email to find an email from Godaddy hosting:
Copyright Dispute for your Virtual Dedicated Server (resolving to IP address xxx.xxx.xx.xx) – [Incident ID: 00000000]
The email dated 7 Dec 2011 15:48:27 is a response to an email from a company dated Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:34:26 (7 days ago) that there’s been a copyright infringement on one page of one of my 100 domains that I host with Godaddy.
I currently don’t have access to the content of the site since the server is down, but looks like someone has copied content from a website and used it in an article that’s been submitted to an article directory which I’ve legally copied from the article directory to one of my sites.
Basically if it’s what I think it is, it’s an honest mistake.
Godaddy Copyright Infringement Notice
If I’ve got a copyright infringement on one of my sites I’m happy to remove it, just need to know there’s an issue which apparently isn’t the way Godaddy Copyright Department does things.
Interestingly on the same domain I’d used an image of a celebrity that I thought was OK to use, the celebrity who the image was of asked me to remove it (they offered an alternative), I have no idea if it was a copyright infringement, but as I was asked to remove it I removed it within a couple of hours: life is too short for messing around with copyright infringement issues.
No, Godaddy apparently take 7 days to investigate and with no warning to the site owner take down the entire virtual server with dozens of domains on it!!!
How bloody idiotic is that to take out dozens of websites because of one post that as it happens isn’t even indexed in Google.
Fecking idiots.
Godaddy Support
I called the Godaddy support number and spoke first to Aaaron who didn’t have a clue what to do, he passed me on to an Inbound Supervisor Tray who was equally useless.
I gave Tray the option to get the server back online before the end of the telephone conversation or lose me as a customer (been with them 5+ years I believe).
Tray from Godaddy failed to get the server back online, I ended the call and went back to the incident email.
These were my options:
Copyright Dispute Resolution
In order to resolve this situation and re-activate your site, you have 2 options.
Option 1: Remove the content that is the subject of the copyright complaint.
In order to reactivate the site in question we will need you to provide the following information in a single email response:
A. An electronic signature. (This can be a scanned copy of your physical signature, or as simple as typing your full name.)
B. Identification of the material in question.
C. A statement, under penalty of perjury, that the material has either been removed or promptly will be removed.Option 2: Submit a complete counter notification regarding the works in question in accordance with our Copyright Infringement policy. You will need to reply via email and include all of the following elements:
A. An electronic signature. (This can be a scanned copy of your physical signature, or as simple as typing your full name.)
B. Identification of the material that has been removed or to which access has been disabled and the location at which the material appeared before it was removed or access to it was disabled.
C. A statement under penalty of perjury that you have a good faith belief that the material was removed or disabled as a result of mistake or misidentification of the material to be removed or disabled.
D. Your name, address, and telephone number, and a statement that you consent to the jurisdiction of the Federal District Court for the judicial district of Arizona, or if your address is outside of the United States, for any judicial district in which Go Daddy may be found, and that you will accept service of process from the Complaining Party or an agent of such Party.
I went with option 1 and sent the email about half an hour ago, so far the server is still down.
Was days away from ordering a third virtual dedicated server from Godaddy as well, now I’m thinking twice about using Godaddy for anything.
Got over half my sites down which is going to be costly in lost revenue.
Dedicated Server Reviews
Used a number of companies for dedicated servers between 2005 and 2019, here they are in chronological order. The last link is the review of the company I’m using in 2019.
- Server4you Review
- Hivelocity Hosting Review
- 123-reg Review
- EsecureData Review
- GoDaddy Server Review
- GoDaddy VPS Review
Will add an update via the comments.
David Law
Website - SEO Gold Services
SEO Dave,
Pardon my barging into the middle of this conversation, but I wasn’t sure of any other way to contact. I respectfully request that you remove my WordPress blog entitled ‘Delightfully Scattered Thoughts’ from the ####.####.info and set your search engines or whatever you use to ignore my site in the future.
You have yet to even credit my writing correctly; it’s listed under a different username in both posts you’ve pinged back. If you continue to ping back to my blog I will set it so that no one can do so, and I’d rather not place such a restriction on people who would like to use the information correctly.
If necessary, please contact me at the email address listed with this comment. I appreciate your cooperation.
–englishrain
Hi Englishrain
Your not the first person to assume because someone is using one of my WordPress SEO themes on a site, that I must own the site.
The site you refer to is NOT owned by me or anyone I know.
They have downloaded my theme from my website (anyone can do this) and used it with some kind of script to scrape your site (very easy to do).
Nothing I can do about it, I would suggest starting a DMCA complaint as that will at least get the site removed from Google for copyright infringement.
I get my content copied like this all the time and it sucks, if I tried to get them all removed that’s all I’d do all day! Better to complain about the ones that are ranking well in Google for your SERPs, the rest are probably not harming you and might even help (a lot link back). Not condoning this, just saying it can help you as well as harm.
Good luck.
David
The Godaddy virtual dedicated server was reinstated in under an hour from sending the email to the Godaddy Copyright Department email address.
Took a few minutes after the server went back online to check the page the server was taken down over and as I thought it was someone had copied content from a website and used it in an article I’d copied from an article directory legally (Articlebase). Basically I’d inadvertently infringed another website owners copyright material, a mistake, took a minute to fix.
I’m sending the Godaddy Copyright Department (emails are from/to Brian) another email asking why I didn’t get a 24 hour warning or something before Godaddy shut down a virtual server with over 60 domains hosted on it over one page that was clearly copied from an article directory. I’ll post here the response.
Now I have to think about moving to another server company now after the New Year (no major rush).
David Law
Are they running a Free Hosting.
When you pay for their service they need to act according to it.
If that particular website you mentioned was the case, then they could have notified you about the same and If you didn’t act to that complaint, they could have suspended that Particular Site only.
How the fck can they suspend your server?
This sets a very bad example for Godaddy !
They don’t even have chat support for you to solve the issue promptly.
I have had an account with Godaddy and closed it as I couldn’t cope with those godaddy idiots. I had to keep on sending 10’s or 50 emails and replied to sort a single issue.
Move to some other good hosting.
Regards,
Santhosh.
Today my website just taken down by Godaddy because of copyright infringement, while he not confirm me first and take it down.