Wasn't I just talking about the perils of using free services to host your blog?
Burstnet client, Blogetery.com which offered free and paid services for more than 73,000 blogs, was “terminated by request of law enforcement officials, due to material hosted on the server†according to a Burstnet spokesperson on WebHostingTalk.
The spokesperson went on to say “We are limited as to the details we can provide to you, but note that this was a critical matter and the only available option to us was to immediately deactivate the server.â€
The server name was bn.affiliateplex.com. I'm sorry if your blog was hosted there and this is the first time you are hearing about this issue.
From my reading of the thread, affiliateplex offered a free blog hosting service (called Blogetery) supported by Adsense. He had been hit with numerous DMCA complaints which were dealt with — however he failed to police the server for bad content. It also looks like affiliateplex had no backups of any kind.
What amazes me is that the operator, affiliateplex, rants endlessly in this thread – apparently oblivious to the serious nature of the offence.
His very first post to the thread “After being BurstNet customer for 7 months my server was terminated without any notification or explanation. They did it on July 9, Friday at 10:40 PM EST. I was out of the city and when I came back on monday….” invalidates his assertion that he “always responded to any abuse report or complaint within 24 hours and remove abusing material“. He goes on to say:
I didn't do anything illegal, so I'm not worrying about this. But you concern should be your customers in the 1st place, then some law enforcement officials.
The ‘you' in that statement refers to Burstnet. What affiliateplex fails to acknowledge is that part of Burstnet's contract which reads”
Your use of the Internet is subject to all applicable local, state, national, and international laws and regulations, Without limiting the other rights available to BurstNETâ„¢, BurstNETâ„¢ retains the right but not the obligation, in its sole discretion and without prior notice or liability, to restrict and/or terminate your access to the Internet and BurstNETâ„¢ if your use of the Internet violates any such laws or regulations, any prohibitions upon your conduct in connection with the Internet raised in this paragraph or otherwise restricts or inhibits any other user
from enjoying the Internet or BurstNETâ„¢.
What type of illegal content was on those blogs, we do not yet know as the authorities have seized the server and are investigating the matter. We can only guess that it was very bad stuff.
Anyway, that's what you get when you put your blog on a free hosting service operated by children.
Don't run that risk. Put your blog on a REAL hosting service that actually manages their business and protects their clients from bad actors.
