More trouble at StartLogic

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

I am not using StartLogic anymore, but still have an account paid up for a couple more months.

After I decided to leave SL, they reset the PW on one of my dbs and refused to correct it (fortunately it was nothing critical)

here is more bad news:

Dear Randall,

To ensure the security of your hosting account, we have changed
your StartLogic control panel/FTP password. We apologize
for any inconvenience this password change may cause; to access
your account, log in using the information below:

Username: ******
Temporary Password: **********

This is only a temporary password; the next time you log into
your account, you will be prompted to change your password to
something different -- something you'll remember:
http://www.startlogic.com/controlpanel

Use this new password to log into your control panel, as well as
to access your site via FTP (or FrontPage, or other Web authoring
program). Please note that, if you have FTP subusers, you will
need to re-enable them.

WHY HAVE YOU CHANGED MY PASSWORD?
To provide all of our customers with the most secure hosting
environment possible, we have changed account/FTP passwords.
Unfortunately, online criminals are continuously developing new
ways to exploit Web sites, and we are committed to taking
every possible precaution to protect our customers.

We recognize the inconvenience this may cause you, and we
regret this necessary security measure. Information is also
available on our Web site:
http://www.startlogic.com/info/systemnotice.bml?id=7211

Sincerely,

The StartLogic Team

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

How is this bad news? They sent you the new password, so I don't see how you could be locked out of your account.

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

pr0gr4mm3r wrote:
How is this bad news?

Their servers are hacked so bad they need to reset the passwords - yes, at least they took action to counter the attack, but don't tell me this is a common occurrence!

In addition to disabling my db, before I fled the same pages took anywhere from 15 seconds to 3 minutes to load - and their response was to try to sell me up to VPS.

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

Their servers are hacked so bad they need to reset the passwords - yes, at least they took action to counter the attack, but don't tell me this is a common occurrence!

Did they say what was hacked? It could have been your site. It's not their job to make sure that the individual sites are secure. I'm guessing that they detected suspicious logins or repeated failed attempts.

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

pr0gr4mm3r wrote:
Did they say what was hacked?

They said:

WHY HAVE YOU CHANGED MY PASSWORD?
To provide all of our customers with the most secure hosting
environment possible, we have changed account/FTP passwords.
Unfortunately, online criminals are continuously developing new
ways to exploit Web sites, and we are committed to taking
every possible precaution to protect our customers.

So it seems they found it necessary to change account AND ftp passwords for "all our customers" to protect them from "online criminals" who "are continuously developing ways to exploit Web sites"

Changing Cpanel and ftp passwords are unlikely to stop some site-specific attack... I think they had some server problems...

BlueHost also told me, a few months ago, that they have locked down their servers following DOS attacks so I was unable to install ffmpeg and Subversion, although I have SSH.

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

So it seems they found it necessary to change account AND ftp passwords for "all our customers" to protect them from "online criminals" who "are continuously developing ways to exploit Web sites"

That's just a typical generic message from their PR department. I bet it was a few sites that were hacked. They were probably linked you yours somehow which is why yours got reset.

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

I do not understand why you are so intent on putting the blame on my code.

I am not using StartLogic anymore (for reasons explained here) and moved my domain to BlueHost.

I still have a few Drupal sites sitting there, probably, which I moved but did not delete.

Are you are suggesting that Drupal code was causing a problem on SL?

I think a better explanation is that SL sucks, and they discovered vulnerabilities that could only be addressed by making changes and resetting their customers' passwords. more posts about problems with SL

Another testimonial:

"I thought I was the problem with StartLogic -- they are certainly very good at making you feel that way."

pr0gr4mm3r's picture

He has: 1,502 posts

Joined: Sep 2006

I do not understand why you are so intent on putting the blame on my code.

No I'm not. It could be another site on the server and they did it as a precaution. Or, it could be because your password was weak and they were detecting logins from Nigeria or something.

The point is, from the information you provided, blame can't be put on either party.

I think a better explanation is that SL sucks,

You can't link to a {insert company name here}sucks.com and actually call it a credible review. It's biased and all major companies have unsatisfied customers.

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

My own experience with SL was a disaster and similar to other negative reviews.

From webhostingunleashed:

StartLogic currently has 27 user reviews: 6 positive and 21 negative. So far, 22% of the reviews submitted said they would recommend StartLogic

the most recent positive review was 2006 (I should have done my homework better, but I signed up in early 2008)

greg's picture

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

Yeah, but most reviews for most things are by people complaining and giving negative feedback.

If something is working, most people go about their business and don't think to find the review place and give them some nice feedback.
Whereas when someone has a problem, no matter how trivial, they often whine about it and often post some feedback/complain.

When I worked in a vehicle dealership, people came in with faults with their (almost) brand new cars, and people complaining about stuff, no one ever stopped by or phoned up and said "Hey, we have had no faults with this car, thanks".

So from that perspective, all the cars with our dealership manufacturer were rubbish, always breaking and only had dissatisfied customers, and as with most things in life it's never simple or black and white and you have to look at it from all angles.

You can look at it another way, maybe YOUR site from YOUR code has been hacked, maybe it's another site, maybe it was something completely trivial that made the host change your passwords, but as soon as yours/someone else's or the host's servers get hacked and DB data is compromised, you will be questioning their security and why it isn't good enough.

IMO, although it could be bad decisions by taking action when it's not necessary, be thankful they take an active interest and have security measure.
It's not the end of the world having to reconfigure some password changes, whereas your site DB's and code getting compromised is to be avoided even by methods that are perhaps a little over the top.

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

greg wrote:
Yeah, but most reviews for most things are by people complaining and giving negative feedback.

If something is working, most people go about their business and don't think to find the review place and give them some nice feedback.

I think that is the point and the reason sites like webhostingunleashed give you a breakdown and percentage.

A bunch of bad reviews is not a good sign.

I am no longer using StartLogic for reasons I have explained (some pretty severe non-trivial problems) but I thought someone considering SL should know about the development.

greg's picture

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

decibel.places wrote:
I think that is the point and the reason sites like webhostingunleashed give you a breakdown and percentage.
But it's only a percentage of people who have actually given a review.
So it's still a completely inaccurate representation of a sites value.

Without all the required data you can't really make a reliable and accurate evaluation of them. And that would need total users that had a bad experience who did and didn't leave a review, total users that had a good experience who did and didn't leave a review.

decibel.places wrote:
A bunch of bad reviews is not a good sign.
I do agree to a point, and if it's all you can go on then you have to at least consider it, but I've read bad reviews about all sorts of things where my experience with the same software, company, service etc have been fantastic.

Also, there will be plenty of people complain about errors and issues with software or a service like web hosting when it's their input/code/site/server that's causing the error.

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

The philosophical / logical / statistical discussion is quite interesting, but it has gone way beyond the point of this thread.

In my experience (and in the opinion of many others), StartLogic s*cks! Sad

greg's picture

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

decibel.places wrote:
The philosophical / logical / statistical discussion is quite interesting, but it has gone way beyond the point of this thread
The point of this thread was a bash at another host. The host may well be completely rubbish, but I personally have not dealt with them so can only debate it from a neutral viewpoint.

And that means benefit of the doubt for the company and acknowledging that people complain about things unfairly or for inaccurate and unjustified reasons.
And also people spend time by writing/posting to complain about a product or service MUCH more than they do giving praise.

If you want, I'll get off the fence, but don't be upset if I decide to choose their side Laugh

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

I suppose you have a point if you interpret this thread as a hosting provider (me) bashing a competitor... hmmm

Actually, I do not consider my hosting "in competition" with the Big Boys, I am complaining as a customer/consumer.

IMO StartLogic =

3 minute page loads
Resetting of passwords (announced and unannounced/unaddressed)

I am not the only one who reported these problems

If you want to take their side, go ahead, and I have a bridge on the East River to sell you too! Sticking out tongue

greg's picture

He has: 1,581 posts

Joined: Nov 2005

decibel.places wrote:
I suppose you have a point if you interpret this thread as a hosting provider (me) bashing a competitor... hmmm

well, the thought didn't actually cross my mind, as you aren't really a major hosting company. I simply thought you were giving your opinion for others to go by.

Me being me, I just gave an all round fair view from both sides of the story as I always like to (try to).
Although, I do love a good debate too Sticking out tongue

decibel.places wrote:
If you want to take their side, go ahead, and I have a bridge on the East River to sell you too! :P
Did someone say "troll" ?

decibel.places's picture

He has: 1,494 posts

Joined: Jun 2008

Well, I deleted all my old unused files at SL

It was really a pain, the Vdeck cp "File Manager" was useless deleting directories, I had to do it with Filezilla ftp.

This is the billing notice on the admin panel (I am closing my account)

Date Product Amount Payment Method Status Pay Now
3/15/2008 Prologic Hosting Plan $59.40 CC Paid
3/15/2009 Prologic Hosting Plan $83.40 CC Pending

A 40.4% increase? No thanks Shocked

It's not the $$$ - I am paying $14.95/mo for HotDrupal - which provides 2 servers (one is dedicated only to web site files) and a "Virtual Private Server" with only 40 or so IP neighbors.

Here is a brief (and telling) history of my support tickets:

Start Logic support tickets

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