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Story of abuser

Asmar

New Member
Hello

I'd like to inform you all about what was going on with me. I own HostBaker.Net

I provide free hosting but can also arrange paid plans. One person requested me to arrange a paid plan for him - I did arranged it. He paid me and I made his account.

Some hours later - I checked his account to ensure he is not hosting anything illegal and found Pirated software downloads. I just suspended his account within a few minutes and emailed him about the condition. He requested me to give him a 2nd chance but I declined to do so. I asked him to pay $5 unsuspension fee. He just replied that he will take revenge.

Now on 23 feb 2010 I got email from him in which he informed me that he had started his own hosting company hostbaker.com and this will really effect hostbaker.net business.

Now I contacted his domain registerar but they said that they will only listen to me if I have trademark of the name "HostBaker". I don't have trademarks.

Please tell me what should I do prevent my business from being affected.

Your help will be very appreciated.
 
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Hello dmmcintyre3

You really helped me a lot. It's really appreciated.

Please tell me if you need premium hosting for free. :)
 
I used to provide free & paid reseller hosting long ago. Due to lack of resources I discontinued it. (Old accounts are still on the server)

I do not oversell so I will not be able to provide reseller hosting.

I plan to offer reseller hosting in comming future ( I will contact you when It starts.)

At the moment IF you need premium paid shared hosting - I'm ready to provide it for no cost. :)

I hope you will understand.
 
Without trademarks, you can't do anything about him owning that domain. If it was worth it, and you were losing business because of him running a clone of your company, then you can sue him for loss of earnings. But it won't be worth it.
 
Hostbaker.com is using a nulled WHMCS so you could report that to WHMCS
http://www.whmcs.com/members/verifydomain.php

I tried that with several hosting companies (hotbaker as well), and I got an unauthorized message (hostwise). Does this mean every one of them have nulled copies or just not installed?


Yours also came up like this.

"This domain is not authorized to be using WHMCS.
Please report the url to the installation to us here"
 
I tried that with several hosting companies (hotbaker as well), and I got an unauthorized message (hostwise). Does this mean every one of them have nulled copies or just not installed?


Yours also came up like this.

"This domain is not authorized to be using WHMCS.
Please report the url to the installation to us here"

I googled "powered by whmcompletesolution" and the first host in the resultes list showed "This domain is authorized to be using WHMCS." so it is not broken.
 
Hello

It's not broken at all. I tried it for hostgator.com and the result showed "This domain is authorized to be using WHMCS."

So it's not broken. :)
 
You could try a DMCA to his/hers datercenter/host as you do have copyright on word HostBaker?

File a complaint with the search engines to make them stop directing traffic to the copycat site.

Other then that the is not a lot you can do about it with out there being a trademark.
 
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Sorry Asmar for the nightmare that one of your formal clients has caused you. It is extremely immature of your ex client to retaliate like that and try to ruin your business. Unfortunately legally without a trademark or a copyright you really have no solid foundation to sue him. But I would definitely take the advice that dmmcintyre3 suggested. Best of luck.
 
That's where it's a best practice to get at least .com and .net for your host's name before taking on any customers. Most people I know wouldn't consider anything else to be part of an established business, since who is going to believe BakerHost.ru over BakerHost.net.

This seems like a little much for simple retaliation though. Definately follow up that WHMCS tip, but also check the content- if he had illegal content on your service that content is probably still there, and if you can find out where he's hosted at now you can notify his new provider of the situation and get him booted there too. Unless he relocated offshore I doubt he's complying with his new host's terms either.

Also I noticed on your forum that you apparently got hacked. Any chance there's log entries from this event that could trace back to this person? If you could get something conclusive on that you'd have grounds for legal action as an unauhorized access case.
 
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Hello

I'd like to inform you all about what was going on with me. I own HostBaker.Net

I provide free hosting but can also arrange paid plans. One person requested me to arrange a paid plan for him - I did arranged it. He paid me and I made his account.

Some hours later - I checked his account to ensure he is not hosting anything illegal and found Pirated software downloads. I just suspended his account within a few minutes and emailed him about the condition. He requested me to give him a 2nd chance but I declined to do so. I asked him to pay $5 unsuspension fee. He just replied that he will take revenge.

Now on 23 feb 2010 I got email from him in which he informed me that he had started his own hosting company hostbaker.com and this will really effect hostbaker.net business.

Now I contacted his domain registerar but they said that they will only listen to me if I have trademark of the name "HostBaker". I don't have trademarks.

Please tell me what should I do prevent my business from being affected.

Your help will be very appreciated.

People are very bad. You have to to start with this and in my opinian you did a big mistake that you didn't buy all existing domains like domain.net, org, info, etc. Me before to open my business I bought all existing domains with my business name. I am doing free-webhosting (my first thing in my business is fixxing computers) but is very dificult and never let your guard down or trust people in free webhosting. I have a lot of scripts perl that are performing search over user files searching for key words. It is very difficult to trust people in free webhosting.
 
Now on 23 feb 2010 I got email from him in which he informed me that he had started his own hosting company hostbaker.com and this will really effect hostbaker.net business.

My opinion is that, maybe you don't have to worry much about it now. Just concentrate on your business emphasizing you are the ".net" and not the ".com." This may even lead you to an interesting outcome in the long run. Because the thing is, with the fast bewildering way the internet evolves, many of the things we think are important right now lose their significance in the future. For example, if the new gTLD will materialize, then you won't be fighting with ".com" anymore, because a new platoon of ".kiss", ".nice", ".sex", and ".so-on-and-so-forth" will be up on the broadside of your business. Provided, however, that your business survived intact by then.
 
Ok guys I had somekind of the same issue. It was related with my paid web hosting copyrights. Before I have started web hosting service I had nothing no copyrights, not trademark, etc.
One day some kind of chap just contacted me saying that he owns the right to host1plus. I said ok no problems :) when he was really tried me sending the emails and other stuff to remove the logo of host1plus from official host1plus.com website :)
What I have done was.
1. Went to patent office and registered the trademark of host1plus.com and all related stuff with it.
2. Went to lawyer to have some consultations, after I have sent all information which that chap sent me.
3. In one month I have sorted with registered trademark and I have found that chap. The chap was trademark hunter which watches for your business and afterward does such a things like abusing your own trademark.

My suggestion: trademark registration is not a big deal and cost really cheap. So I guess if you want to save some money of lawyers just go to patient office and register your trademark :)
 
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