Delisting 101: Bad Webhosting Can Even Get You Banished From Google

You thought cheap webhosting was a bargain. Maybe … but bad webhosting isn't just a bummer — it can get you delisted, added to badware lists, etc.

And it doesn't have to be your fault (directly, anyway).

rip seo

Use IX Web Hosting | ixwebhosting.com web hosting at your own risk. One day you might just get hacked and/or defaced. Even worse, you might be — courtesy of some Turkish hacker — installing malware on users' computers by proxy. The hackers seem to be pretty good, if a little mean. Fix it, and then it just might happen the next day anyway. That seems to be the story reported everywhere.

A few associates of mine have — they got hacked … and finally delisted.

Now that's OK. People get hacked all the time because of their own incompetence. But at least one of them that I know has a totally static web site. That leaves brute force and/or password sniffing cleartext passwords. Both are unlikely en masse.

So it's that, or your web host itself is hacked!

A possibility. I found this all suspicious. I Googled it. What I found is absolutely appalling —

Hundreds and hundreds of hacked domains, with a similar vector.

Some of these people are upgrading often and responsibly, using custom applications, etc.

The same vector simply can't apply to everyone's web sites. They're running various applications with various flaws. So that's unrealistic. Some had weak passwords, I'm sure — but so many? Hence, it's more likely that it's an underlying problem with the web server. IX continues to tell everyone to use stronger passwords, upgrade their anti-virus software (¿que?), and be more careful. As if key-loggers are that common? Um no.

Maybe they should take their own advice and tighten up their own boxes before blaming the user. The users are reportedly get hacked over and over — and over. Scary. So all of them have the same flawed anti-virus application, and use weak passwords? No. Probably not.

If your web host gets hacked, you're at their mercy. So they'd better know a thing or two about security. But you paid $2.99 per month, did you? Bad move. That was your mistake.

Several References:
http://ixwebhostwarning.wordpress.com/
http://forums.applenova.com/showthread.php?t=18025
http://www.vistainter.com/reviews/I/ixwebhosting.com/
http://kuscsik.blogspot.com/2008/01/ix-webhosting-default-backdoor.html
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showpost.php?s=01a9f3f779beec5274cdc25a9856c8e0&p=5396336&postcount=13
http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?p=5403583#post5403583
http://hostjury.com/reviews/IX-web-hosting
http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?p=1422266&sid=72538fc95043a14ad091c82e0f161195#p1422266

Find more:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=ixwebhosting+hacked&btnG=Search

The worst part is, when you get hacked courtesy of their lackadaisical security, they throw up a monetization page while you're down. So they're profiting while you're getting delisted and Google thinks you're either dead, hacked, or someone snapped up your domain to monetize old links and random traffic. Awesome IX … awesome.

That's some pretty lousy SEO. Cheap web hosting can really be the end. Google might notice of course, and give this lot (of presumably similar IPs) a second gander. But what if they don't?