Freewebtown.com IP blocked

[maiki]

I am a registered user of your paid product, and therefore have background scanning turned on.

Freewebtow is a free web hosting service. I have some web pages there, not in the slightest bit malicious.

I find it to be a better service than others, such as Geocities.

Whenever I try to go to one of my pages there now, or even to upload something to my site there via FTP, it will not connect, and I see the MBAM IP blocked message.

The only way i can resolve it is to turn off your IP protection. (Difficult in itself. I sometimes have to turn it off 3 or 4 times, before it realizes, that I really want it off.)

Why do you block that whole domain?

Being a free web hosting service, I guess it is possible that some bad guys have set up malicious sites there. Then--block those sites, not the entire domain, which is probably mostly composed of completely innocuous sites like mine.

Please reply about this matter. Thank you.

[MysteryFCM]

I'm afraid it's blocked due to over 70 malicious URL's being identified. Thus far, Freewebtown have failed both to respond to an abuse report, and failed to take down the malicious content (I've just re-checked a random sample of those I've got recorded, and they're still live, and still spitting malicious content).

Until Freewebtown start taking this issue seriously, and stop allowing it to continue, I can't unblock them I'm afraid.

[MysteryFCM]

Just an FYI, I've just sent a follow-up abuse report to them, so we'll see if they reply to this one.

[maiki]

I'm afraid it's blocked due to over 70 malicious URL's being identified. Thus far, Freewebtown have failed both to respond to an abuse report, and failed to take down the malicious content (I've just re-checked a random sample of those I've got recorded, and they're still live, and still spitting malicious content).

Until Freewebtown start taking this issue seriously, and stop allowing it to continue, I can't unblock them I'm afraid.

Couldn't you just block those bad URLs, rather than the whole domain?

If some bad guys put up bad sites on AOL-hosted web pages, would you block the bad sites, or the whole AOL domain?

Google also used to block the whole freewebtown domain (both in Chrome, and in their site-blocker used in Firefox), but now they do not block it any more. (I assume they block the bad pages though.)

Why block a whole domain, most of which is innocent, for some offending pages? I would say--block the bad pages, not the whole domain!

Freewebtown is a good free web site server. Unlike others such as Geocities, it does not require one to put advertisements on your web pages, and it gives one a lot of web space, at no cost whatsoever.

Being that their service is free, I would gues that they do not have a lot of money, to hire people to respond to requests such as yours.

Block the bad sites, not the whole domain. (Do continue to report the bad sites to them though, and hopefully they will clean it up some time.)

Thank you.

[MysteryFCM]

At present, no such facility exists within the IP blocker, to specify specific URL's/sub-domains/domains, only IP addresses.

I do understand your frustration, and contrary to popular belief, we don't like blocking IP's if we don't have to, but there has to come a time when we say enough is enough (I'm afraid "some time" just isn't good enough, free or not, their servers are their responsibility). If an ISP isn't going to take care of the service they're providing, to ensure it's not abused, then they must be held accountable, and the only way to do that, is to force them to take notice.

[maiki]

I'll give you examples of good content there.

I am elementary school music teacher. I put up pages for the children to practice singing with--educational web pages.

For instance:

http://www.freewebtown.com/mrspectormusic/odejoy.htm

Why freewebtown? I don't make any money from putting up such web pages for my students, and give much extra time freely for it. I shouldn't have to pay from my own pocket for a web hosting service. Freewebtown is free.

Other free web site services such as Geocities, require that one puts ads on your pages. On pages for kids like that, I do not want to put advertising.

Google Sites only accepts pages created with their online editor, and no other content, and no FTP. That would not work for me.

I'm sure that most Freewebtown sites are completely innocuous, like mine,

[MysteryFCM]

You'll be pleased to hear, whilst your hosting company hasn't gotten back to me yet, their hosting company (i.e. the company that actually provides hosting for freewebtown.com themselves) have gotten back to me, and have now suspended all accounts reported. As such, I've now removed the block on this range and this will be reflected in the next update.

[maiki]

You'll be pleased to hear, whilst your hosting company hasn't gotten back to me yet, their hosting company (i.e. the company that actually provides hosting for freewebtown.com themselves) have gotten back to me, and have now suspended all accounts reported. As such, I've now removed the block on this range and this will be reflected in the next update.

Thank you Steven.

I appreciate it.

[MysteryFCM]

No problem.