ApplyHost.com - scam at its best

Artashes

Artashes

Administrator
Staff member
For the past three weeks we have been battling a very strange enemy: www.applyhost.com has been attempting to steal from our community.

In the most strange phenomena, ApplyHost.com has attempted to run a mirror image of HostingDiscussion.com on their domain. If you were to visit the URL, what you would see is the exact replica of this community, with all its content. The only difference was the logo, which they change to ApplyHost name (and an ugly as hell on top of that). This was extremely strange to say the least and was something I was witnessing for the first time in my life. ApplyHost doesn't actually have the content. It looks like they simply mirror the site by proxifying requests to our server. Our community security developer has very quickly come up with a custom solution that helped block the attempts. However, they pretended to be a Google bot, trying to spoof certain variables that are sent to the server, so more advanced blocks had to be put in place. Because I got alerted to this website by a member of ours in the first place (you know who you are, so thank you for your vigilance), I am making it known to everyone - I assume the saga is not over yet, so the more eyeballs on this kind of actors out there, the quicker we can handle it.

Because the person behind this URL (applyhost.com) is being so direct trying to damage this community by stealing from us, I have no problem making this event as public as possible (after all, that is what they are asking for). For this purpose, I need the help of the community in exposing every bit of information about the person and/or the company behind them. Preferably to the point of this page getting the highest search engine ranking when someone were to search for the URL and/or name of the owner.

I will start by posting whois information:


Registrant Name: Jian Jiao
Registrant Organization:
Registrant Street: WenJing JiaYuan 26-1-12
Registrant Street: Haigang Qu
Registrant City: Qinhuangdao
Registrant State/Province: Hebei
Registrant Postal Code: 066000
Registrant Country: CN
Registrant Phone: +0.3353588327
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax:
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: jiaojian1983@hotmail.com



As a next step, I will of course attempt at shutting the site down by contacting the web hosting provider. Can someone accurately determine this site's host?

Let the fun begin! :smash:
 
That sucks! I've done some digging and it seems they're using Enzu.com (or at least their hosting provider is using them). You should contact them and they can pass it onto the hosting provider if they're not direct.

Also, you could send a DMCA to Google which should remove their listings. You'd then appear as #1 in the results.

However, his domain appears to redirect to Google already so maybe those abuse complaints will now be invalid.

He does have a few other sites that he runs however:
https://who.is/whois/whatcoupons.com
https://who.is/whois/tiaocong.com
https://who.is/whois/eeesearch.com
https://who.is/whois/domaineden.com
https://who.is/whois/clickbbs.com

All associated with the same user.
 
Last edited:
I have just dispatched an email to Enzu.com abuse department and will update the community on their response.
 
Interesting (and thanks!) Do you have to be a client of FraudRecord in order to leave a report?
 
Artashes said:
Interesting (and thanks!) Do you have to be a client of FraudRecord in order to leave a report?
Click to expand...

Yes you have to have a fraudrecord account to file a report, but a lot of hosts are these days, so if he gets kicked off his current host and tried to join another host them their is a chance his new host will do a check on him
 
In good news, you're #2 on Google for 'ApplyHost'.

The best part, the #1 spot seems to be some totally unrelated site so he doesn't appear to have the top spot :).
 
Alex HubRocket said:
In good news, you're #2 on Google for 'ApplyHost'.
Click to expand...
That is terrific! And with that, ApplyHost.com URL value is lost forever. :thumbup:

easyhostmedia said:
well it seems his site is down as its just a white page
Click to expand...
That is our doing. We blocked his IP address on the server level.

I haven't heard back from Enzu.com hosting company yet. I am waiting to see the "account suspended" page. At least that is my expectation.
 
Artashes said:
I haven't heard back from Enzu.com hosting company yet.
Click to expand...

Good luck with that, i have had spam from their network and they never reply to spam reports.
unless they have corrected the issue then the email they give in their whois record does not exist, so anything sent to that just bounces back.
 
the Whois files make for some good reading.

Jian Jiao is associated with ~583 other domains
Whois History 63 records have been archived since 2004-09-29
IP History 35 changes on 21 unique IP addresses over 13 years
Registrar History 6 registrars with 2 drops
Hosting History 21 changes on 13 unique name servers over 12 years

he has been rather busy, which most likely he will just move hosts and IPs again
 
I have just received a reply to my complaint from his web host's abuse department (Enzu.com).

Hello,

Thank you for contacting us regarding this issue. We have forwarded your notification to the end user and are awaiting an update from them.

Generally speaking we don't have the resources to provide any further status updates to you, but please be assured we are working with our customer towards resolving your complaint.


-----------------------
Kind Regards,
Alexander A
BudgetVM Support
Click to expand...


We will wait to see what kind of outcome this will result in.
 
Artashes said:
(you know who you are, so thank you for your vigilance)
Click to expand...

Isn't there some kind of reward like free advertising or something like that? ;) Serious, glad you sorted it! :thumbup:

It seems to me it might be for competitor reasons, as in to make it affect HD's rankings to make their site rank higher? Not sure who, just a guess. Pretty low if that's the case. Or did you ban the member from the HD forum? I'd not heard of ApplyHost before. Eitherway, not good at all.

Enough room on the Net for everyone, and so need to do such things.

Hopefully, that's the last of it.
 
HostXNow said:
Enough room on the Net for everyone, and so need to do such things.

Hopefully, that's the last of it.
Click to expand...

I have seen things like this happen more often now as scammers and fraudster come up with new ways to con people.

its not that long ago i come across some software online that would allow you to actually copy a full website page for page. The only thing would be if sites use databases etc. these would not be copied
 
In other good news, I have just heard back from Enzu (his web host):

Hello,

This has now been disabled!


-----------------------
Kind Regards,
Alexander A
BudgetVM Support
Click to expand...


Thumbs up to Enzu :thumbup:

I knew the company would care about the lawfulness of content hosted on its servers, as everyone should.

This was a fun ride, everyone. Thank you to those who first alerted me to the issue, as well as those who helped with advice and action. Very appreciated! #hugs
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Supporters

Back
Top