Host Reviews

These reviews are posted by actual clients or ex-clients of each hosting company. Although hosts do have the ability to respond to any review, they do not have the ability to modify the ranks or remarks given.

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Thursday, Feb 24, 2005

EarthLink Launches new Spam Lawsuits

Internet service provider EarthLink (earthlink.com) announced on Thursday that it had filed four lawsuits in its continuing battle against spam emails. The lawsuits identify defendants in California, Florida, Nevada and Washington state, as well as John Doe defendants.

"EarthLink is committed to protecting the Internet," says Larry Slovensky, assistant general counsel for EarthLink. "We will continue to pursue litigation, technical solutions, consumer education and legislative support to help ensure the quality of the Internet experience for all users."

In the Earthlink litigation, which was filed in US District Court in Atlanta last month, the defendants in all four lawsuits are allegedly in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act and other state and federal statutes, including the federal Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, the Georgia Computer Systems Protection Act and state and federal racketeering laws, and many others.

A few CAN-SPAM violations alleged in the lawsuit include falsifying "from" email addresses, failing to include a physical address in the email, deceptive subject lines and false and misleading header information. As in earlier lawsuits, EarthLink is requesting injunctive relief to prevent the defendants from illegally spamming any Internet user, as well as unspecified damages.

Wednesday, Feb 23, 2005

Web Host Compare Tool

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Tuesday, Feb 22, 2005

Top 10 Web Hosting Reviews (Updated February 2005)

Hosting-Review is an independent provider of web hosting reviews. We base our reviews on knowledge, personal experience with webhosts and user feedback.

Monday, Feb 21, 2005

Search and Compare Web Hosting Companies

Search over 1,000 web hosting companies for the perfect host for you. To search directly for a hosting plan, please click here. To search for dedicated servers click here!

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Vigilante Group Attacks Cyber-criminals

According to reports, an Internet vigilante group known as the 419 Flash Mob, launched a two-day bandwidth attack last Wednesday against spammers attempting to defraud people by providing hosting services for fake bank sites.

The criminals, reports say, run the "419 scam," which sends out emails, faxes and letters, asking individuals for help in recovering money from banks in exchange for a percentage. These criminals have reportedly graduated to hosting fake bank sites, hoping to lure victims to deposit money in their illegitimate accounts.

The 419 Flash Mob reportedly launched a distributed denial of service attack against the spammers' bandwidth and have reported them to their Web host and other legal authorities.

Reports said the sites attacked had the names Abbey Trust & Offshore Bank, First Global Trust, Crystal Bonds & Securities, Allied Trust Bank UK, KASH BANK CORPORATION and Liberty Stronghold Securities and Finance.

The 419 Flash Mob is supported by Artists Against 419 (aa419.org).

Thursday, Feb 17, 2005

February 2005 - Top 25 Web Host Awards

Each month HostIndex.com searches out the best web hosting companies that are listed in our directory! Our criteria includes feedback from our users, website navigation, features and pricing, financial stability, along with customer support. The host with the highest number of votes is not necessarily the top host. Instead HostIndex.com takes the time to examine each hosting company to obtain a more rounded picture.

Of the thousands of hosting companies worldwide, the companies listed at the HostIndex.com Top 25 represent the TOP 1% of HOSTING COMPANIES from around the world! A mere 25 companies out of the 8,000 web hosts in our directory make the cut. These web hosts have demonstrated considerable leadership and superior delivery of their hosting services. We recommend you include them in your consideration set of potential web hosts for your online presence.

Note: This ranking was prepared as of February 1st, 2005 and is updated on a monthly basis. The next Top 25 ranking will be released on March 1st, 2005. Any user feedback received about a web hosting company between February1st and February 28th will be reflected as of our March rankings.

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Wednesday, Feb 16, 2005

Verizon Communications Acquires MCI

Verizon Communications (verizon.com) announced on Monday that it has acquired MCI (mci.com) for $4.8 billion in equity and $488 million in cash, confirming reports that emerged late last Friday.

MCI will also pay a special dividend, Verizon said, bringing the value of the deal to $6.7 billion. Verizon will assume MCI's debt, estimated at $4 billion.

Verizon said the acquisition enhances its ability to serve large business and government customers with a complete range of services, and ensures that MCI's Internet backbone network will have the financial strength to be maintained and improved.

The acquisition comes just a few weeks after SBC acquired AT&T. Like AT&T, MCI is an attractive asset because of its extensive national infrastructure and strong corporate customer base.

MCI also has strong Web hosting capabilities, bolstered by a strong enterprise hosting base built through its acquisition of Digex. According to research and analysis firm Netcraft (netcraft.com), MCI is the world's ninth largest host, home to 878,000 hostnames. MCI's customer base, Netcraft says, has been growing at a rapid pace, adding 233,000 hostnames in the last year, with 61,000 coming in the last two months alone. MCI's high-profile hosting clients include The Weather Channel and Bloomberg.

Verizon has an extremely small Web hosting presence with just 10,000 hostnames, according to Netcraft.

The Verizon and MCI boards have approved the agreement and both companies expect to attain regulatory approval within the year.

Just last year MCI emerged from the largest bankruptcy in corporate history amid a massive accounting scandal. Former CEO Bernie Ebbers is currently facing fraud charges.

Tuesday, Feb 15, 2005

Anti-Spyware Activist Web Site Attacked

According to a report by research and analysis firm Netcraft (netcraft.com), the Web site of anti-spyware activist Ben Edelman (benedelman.org) suffered an extended period of downtime earlier this week due to a distributed denial of service attack.

Edelman said on his Web site, which is back online, that the site was down for much of Monday and Tuesday, as well as several hours last week. According to Edelman, his host Globat (globat.com) informed him that the site was the victim of a large-scale DDoS attack, the like of which the company had never seen, bringing traffic of more than 600MB per second.

In a posting Edelman said his site was brought back online with the help of the Internet Software Consortium (isc.org), which now provides Web hosting for benedelman.org.

Edelman's Web site documents the methods used to install adware and spyware programs. The information has reportedly been used in legal cases against adware and spyware advertisers.

Monday, Feb 14, 2005

Hosting ZOOM deploys ClamAV email anti-virus

Hosting ZOOM, a full-service provider of web hosting services, has upgraded security on its servers by installing ClamAV anti-virus software.

Every web hosting account now comes with complete spam and virus protection absolutely free.

“Recent market studies along with customer surveys clearly demonstrate that hosting customers rank email viruses as one of their major concerns,“ according to Kiet Duong, President of Hosting ZOOM. “With the addition of our free email anti-virus services, our customers will be assured that their systems will be free of viruses and other malicious programs that can arrive via email.”

The new measures safeguard hardware and software by eliminating the opportunity for end users to receive and deploy harmful viruses via email. They especially protect non-technical users from downloading attachments with viruses in them

Clam AntiVirus is an anti-virus toolkit for UNIX. The main purpose of this software is the integration with mail servers and attachment scanning. The package provides a flexible and scalable multi-threaded daemon, a command line scanner, and a tool for automatic updating via Internet.

To view more details of free spam filtering and virus protection on Hosting ZOOM, visit www.hostingzoom.com

Brinkster Announces New Referral Program

Brinkster, a popular web hosting company that grew to fame by offering free web hosting without ads, today announced a new referral program that offers 10% commission (cash) or three times that amount in web hosting credit.

The program also includes a unique feature that allows customers to forego their commission and pass it on as a 10% discount to the people they refer.

With the new referral program, Brinkster customers now have an added incentive to refer their friends. “Repeat and referred customers have long been a strong component of our business and we are very excited about the value this adds to our service, “says Jared Stauffer, President and CEO of Brinkster.

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Thursday, Feb 10, 2005

Web.com Selects SWsoft's PEM Data Center Hosting Automation Platform

Leading Domain Registrar and Hosting Provider Migrating to Comprehensive Windows and Linux Web and Application Hosting Solution

Today, SWsoft, the established leader in hosting automation and server virtualization software, announced that Web.com, an ICANN-accredited registrar and Web hosting company, has purchased and begun migration to SWsoft's PEM data center automation platform. Web.com will maximize the capabilities of PEM to offer a full range of integrated services including: shared hosting for Linux/Unix and Windows, VPS hosting, game server hosting, Microsoft Exchange hosting, and more.

"We made the move to SWsoft's PEM to align our infrastructure with our plans of integrating and centralizing our entire domain registration, Web and application hosting offerings," said Will Pemble, CEO, Web.com. "We have evaluated several solutions and adopted some, but those solutions came up short when it came to meeting our diverse needs. From domain registration to Web hosting to email hosting, DNS management, website promotion and more, SWsoft has created the most comprehensive integrated package of services available."

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Wednesday, Feb 9, 2005

MSN Outage Caused by Data Center Issue

February 9, 2005 -- According to reports, software giant Microsoft (microsoft.com) said late Tuesday that the outage suffered by its instant messaging service MSN earlier in the day was the result of an isolated data center problem.

According to comments by Microsoft, the outage began on Monday evening and affected a "significant" number of users. MSN representatives confirmed the problem was fixed by approximately 5:00 p.m. pacific standard time on Tuesday.

The outage came just days after the W32/Bropia worm hit the MSN service. But Microsoft said the most recent downtime was not related to the worm in any way.

According to some estimates, MSN has 145 million users worldwide.

Internet Security Weekly Review

Recently Linux vendors Red Hat, Novell and Mandrakesoft released patches for several vulnerabilities. The patches range from flaws to buffer overflows. Secunia rated five of the updates "highly critical". SuSE issued updates to resolve flaws including a vulnerability that could allow malicious code to cause a local denial-of-service attack. Red Hat issued recently a package of updates for its desktop and enterprise software.

The Spanish security company Panda Software warned last week that several companies are apparently using Microsoft Media Player's digital rights management (DRM) tool to fool people into downloading spyware and viruses.

Microsoft responded that the security risk does not arise from a flaw in its tool. It was found that some sites can use Windows Media Player to pop up a Web page with information about a video or song, and here the page was apparently loaded with automatic spyware. Microsoft representatives said that the automatic downloads would be blocked on any computer running the Service Pack 2 release of Windows.

Continue reading "Internet Security Weekly Review"

Web Hosting Company XO to Launch Flex VoIP Solution

XO Communications, Inc. (www.xo.com) today announced plans to launch XOptions® Flex, its new industry-leading bundled voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) solution that will give business customers enhanced features, functionality and value for their voice and Internet services.

XOptions Flex represents the first offering of the company's new XOIP services, a series of next generation IP services that will leverage the XO national IP network and softswitch technology to provide customers advanced IP-based voice and data services.

XO is the only national competitive carrier focused exclusively on businesses to offer a simple, integrated VoIP services solution with unlimited local and long distance calling over its own Tier 1 IP network. In 2000, XO revolutionized the telecommunications industry with XOptions®, the first bundled services solution for businesses that combined local, long distance, Internet access and web hosting services for one flat monthly rate on a single bill.

Continue reading "Web Hosting Company XO to Launch Flex VoIP Solution"

Wednesday, Feb 2, 2005

Microsoft and Digital Dimension Team Up for Super Bowl XXXIX

Microsoft Corp. (www.microsoft.com) and Digital Dimension (www.digitaldimension.com), a four-time Emmy Award-winning visual effects and animation studio, today announced that Digital Dimension used Microsoft® technologies to create the visual effects for the opening sequence of Super Bowl XXXIX.

"We are currently implementing Windows Server System and customizing it for our unique needs for many reasons: total integration, performance and collaboration capabilities unheard of on any other platform," said Ben Girard, president and founder of Digital Dimension, which was named one of 10 digital studios to "storm the world" in 2005 by 3D World Magazine.

When the Philadelphia Eagles meet the New England Patriots in the Super Bowl Sunday, Feb. 6, an estimated 140 million viewers worldwide will see one minute of cutting-edge visuals that were developed using Microsoft Windows Server System (TM) .

"The visual effects production market is booming," said Gerry Kaufhold, principal analyst with In-Stat. "But major networks need to keep tight control on what's being done, and the timelines for creating memorable images are constantly shrinking."

Digital Dimension, whose highly acclaimed visual effects have appeared in numerous movies, including "Scooby Doo 2: Monsters Unleashed" and

"The Last Samurai" starring Tom Cruise, has a reputation for leaving audiences amazed.

"For studios wishing to maintain a competitive edge, it's become increasingly important to keep up with technology advances," said Kimberly Till, vice president of the Worldwide Media & Entertainment Group at Microsoft.

Tuesday, Feb 1, 2005

HiNet Data Network Selects Cisco for Routers

Cisco Systems (www.cisco.com) today announced that HiNet, the data communications business group of Chunghwa Telecom (CHT), has selected Cisco's high-end Internet equipment to implement an all Internet Protocol (IP) Next Generation Network (IP NGN) to consolidate traffic of all its services.

"We are delighted to be working with HiNet to simplify and consolidate its network, not only to help it reduce capital expenses but also operational expenses," said Larry Chai, general manager of Cisco Taiwan.

The new CHT IP network will help CHT to reduce capital and operating expenses as it adds new services.

The Cisco 12800 Series Router is the industry's first field-upgradable 40gigabit-per-second (Gbps) core routing solution that can double the capacity of large IP MPLS networks without a complete equipment upgrade.

"Cisco and HiNet have developed a strategic relationship over the past few years. We truly value the advice provided by Cisco," said Dr. Yen-Sung Lee, president of Chunghwa Telecom Data Communication Business Group.

"We are also very pleased with the efficient deployment of the solution. We are confident that this new upgraded network will help achieve our objectives of increasing number of customers and reducing operating expenditure," added Dr. Lee.

The major installation of the CHT IP network took less than two months. The upgraded network is expected to serve more than three million customers, including the existing 2.5million ADSL broadband users. HiNet has been voted "Best choice of ISP" in Taiwan for five consecutive years in surveys conducted by Taiwan Information and Computers Institute for Information Technology.