Yahoo has bigger problems than we realize!!

M

Mike Levy

New member
A few weeks ago, I got an email from Yahoo (which I used for hosting my business email, website, and blog). They told me I was violating their TOS (Terms of Service) but gave me no specifics whatsoever. After a bit of research, I found that my blog had been “hacked” by someone who inserted hundreds of links back to their “drug related” site among other things. Within 24 hours of receiving the email from Yahoo, I “cleaned up” the “hacked” blog – this took me about 3 hours of work to do. Then 24 hours later, without any warning, Yahoo DEACTIVATED my account. I lost all my business email, my website, my blog, my Yahoo groups that I was managing, etc. etc.

When I contacted Yahoo customer service, they said there was nothing they could do and that I would have to “email” the Yahoo Abuse team. (An interesting process, especially since they had just TERMINATED my EMAIL account!) Despite my efforts to contact Yahoo Corporate, Yahoo Abuse Department, etc. – I was NEVER able to reach ANYONE at Yahoo that was willing to even talk to me. All communication was via email.

The net result – Yahoo said they would not reactivate my account, and would not give me back any of my data files. They said I had violated their Terms of Service (TOS) and even though someone else “hacked” my blog, it was MY RESPONSIBILITY. And even though I immediately “cleaned” the hacked blog, they claimed there was still something wrong with the blog – but would not tell me ANY DETAILS as to specifically what was still wrong.

Also note that Yahoo provides its customers access to a version of WordPress for doing “blogs” – but the version they provide is very outdated, and the version they provide has significant security holes in it!!

If I had been hosting my other business website on Yahoo I would have immediately been “out of business” and it would have cost me literally tens of thousands of dollars.

From a legal perspective, I see a possible violation by Yahoo of the Federal Trade Commission Act prohibiting unfair acts in trade and commerce in that Section 15 [Termination] of the Terms of Use is unfair to impute that unexpected technical or security issues or problems that I did not cause is a “Cause” for termination. In addition, there may also be a violation of the Yahoo Privacy Policy under its section on Confidentiality and Security. There could even be a possibility of a Sarbanes Oxley securities issue.

My questions to Yahoo which still has never been answered:
1. How did I violate the TOS?
2. What section did I violate?

If Yahoo fails to return valuable data to me, then I believe I can find sufficient legal bases to convince Yahoo to release the data to me – but at what cost? I can’t really afford to go up against their big corporate legal team!

I hope someone (hopefully you?) can publish my story to at least warn other small business owners to NEVER use Yahoo hosting services for their business. The risk is way too high!

What appalls me the most is that I have been a loyal small business customer of Yahoo for over FIVE YEARS! And this is how they treat a “good customer”? Seems like they’ve chosen to punish their good customers for the acts of unscrupulous hackers!

Is this the way Jerry Yang (Yahoo co-founder) is choosing to treat his customers? Perhaps he has more problems than just what the AllThingsDigital blog posted a few days ago:
“There are very real questions about whether Yang has the right talent and temperament for the job at hand … After all, the stock is in the basement, after Yahoo (YHOO) lost a lucrative bird in the hand in the form of a $31 per share offer from Microsoft (MSFT). Next, a weak economic environment is forcing it to cut deeply into the muscle of its many businesses, with slashing out 20 percent or more of costs, a worrisome trend if Yahoo hopes to grow when we all eventually emerge from the downturn. And, of course, more key executive departures, weak employee morale and an overall inability to clearly articulate the changes Yang has been trying to make at the company, such as its laudable open platform efforts.”

Maybe we should add “atrocious customer service” to the list of Jerry’s problems/issues?
 
it's a wordpress issue and many outdated wordpress blogs were hacked, indirectly is their fault if they provided an outdated version and then deactivated your account.

my opinion
 
Hi Mike, sorry to hear about your experience.

Could you please describe what you mean by a "hacked WordPress"? I think that if a hacker changed your blog with information that it either illegal or promotes illegal activity - that might put Yahoo! in the right of you violating their terms. However, if the hacker simply attacked your blog with spam or changed your blog to drug related sites (as in pills and not illegal substances), then I think Yahoo! is over-reacted.

Quite honestly, in either of the above scenarios, if you corrected the issue, I think Yahoo! shouldn't go to the extend they did. But then its Yahoo, a multi-billion dollar company that doesn't care about a couple of lost customers, and who would rather cancel your account then spend time investigating the issue. In their eyes, as horrible as it sounds, its just not worth the effort.
 
Here is a good analogy, web hosting is very much like renting out an apartment. If you leave the door open and the vandals destroy your furniture, would you hold the apartment management responsible?

Shared hosting terms are a one way street. You are agreeing to hold the provider harmless of any damages that may result from an exploited script. That said, your provider agrees to keep their server software up to date and secured. Beyond that there isn't much they're going to do for you.

We've had customer websites get exploited in the past. We've helped them in the past but in some severe cases we had no choice but to shut them down at the risk of losing other customers due to downtime, etc.
 
couldn't they have answered though?

Whether or not we agree with the fairness of it, Yahoo does have the right to shut down your site. However, I cannot agree with any company that can't be bothered to at least respond with the details on why they did it. That is just lousy customer service, period. I would never host with them after hearing this (as well as other horror stories on the net). If they were going to bother emailing the warning at all, they should have given him time to take care of the situation and it doesn't sound like they checked for that before deactivating his sites.
 
Well I saw this same thread on WebHostingTalk.com and a thread was brought up on a similar matter in the past where somebody attempted to sue Yahoo for shutting down their site and they lost.

It was ruled that their Terms of Service are valid and enforceable and that they have the right to do exactly what they have done to you although it's a poor customer service/business practice.
 
newzone said:
it's a wordpress issue and many outdated wordpress blogs were hacked, indirectly is their fault if they provided an outdated version and then deactivated your account.

my opinion
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That could be true but I always thought that that would be on the user of the yahoo account, aka, the person that posted this. If a client of mine is running a 3rd party script that gets hacked I am going to pull the site down to protect others if said site is on a shared account. So how does Y! do this, they install the blog or the client does?
 
I agree. As rule web sites are being hacked due to the holes in the scripts. That is situation when web hosting provider can do nothing about it
 
I have heard terrible terrible things about Yahoo's hosting and domain service. I personally have never used them but had the unfortunate job of moving several sites from their hosting and found it to be much more complicated then it should of been.
 
Well you know Yahoo really does have a lot of problems right now, with the loss of not only the MS offer but the Google ad deal too. It was deemed to be a violation of the whole anti trust commision thing-they would have held too much of the market perhaps, and they decided not to fight it. It cost them a whole lot of money.
 
See these big guys can do anything they want and you really can't do anything about it. Be it Yahoo, Paypal, Wordpress etc. I had a PR 5 wordpress blog and had links linking back to my own sites and one fine morning my blog was deactivated saying I was using it commercially. Nothing you can do about it. I learn a good lesson. Never ever waste your energy promoting a blog/website that you do not own fully. Spend a little bit of money and get your own domain, hosting, blog, website etc.
 
now i know,Thats the reason Yahoo's share price has fallen to 10.82$
but Yang and Filo need to adress this guys issue. :)
 
Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do but switch hosting providers.

Google is doing basically the same thing with their "This site may harm your computer" moniker. They don't give you enough information about how to clean your site or what's wrong with it, just that "something" is wrong.

I believe Yahoo is using McAfee for their website security scans. At least that's how it was a few months ago.

None of this will help you get your site going. We all feel the pain with your situation and thank you for alerting the masses so we all know who to avoid.

The only thing you could do is see if their TOS states anything about their responsibility to keep the software they provide up-to-date. I'm sure there isn't but that appears to be an optional angle.

Have you moved the site already? Just curious. It would be a shame to let them disrupt your business any more than they already have. I think you've already struck back at them by posting here.
 
Well my opion yahoo sucks. If you are a blogger. Find a web host with cheap hosting. There are free blogging prebuild sites you can install. If you find someone with fantasico it usaually has free blogging modules you can install.
 
I agree

There are plenty of free hosting places out there with free accounts, cpanel and fantastico...

What you need is a small space you can call home without being forced to move or live with someone else!

Make your own mark on the net my friend. Yahoo sucks!
 
Yahoo's terms state the they can pull the site at any time with reasons determined soley by their team. So because of that statement you really don't have a leg to stand on against them.

Do I agree with it? No. I think there should be some sort of explanation as to what was going on. We do suspensions on accounts here on a regular basis for sites that are defaced, or scripts we find etc, but we give the users 48 hours to resolve the issues. Often we change permissions on the folder that was exploited, tell the user, they resolve it within 48 hours (or at least have contact with us) and the site is not terminated or suspended.

At the same time, if a hacker/spammer was on our network, the site is suspended immediately and then the owner contacted. It would be the owners responsibility to resolve the issue (if it was site related).

It's a shame that this happened, but hopefully you have backups of your site and have already moved your business to another host and restored your backup files.
 
The-Pixel said:
I have heard terrible terrible things about Yahoo's hosting and domain service. I personally have never used them but had the unfortunate job of moving several sites from their hosting and found it to be much more complicated then it should of been.
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I have but not with Y!, it was always dealing with past dreamhost clients instead. :(

AbbieRose said:
Well you know Yahoo really does have a lot of problems right now, with the loss of not only the MS offer but the Google ad deal too. It was deemed to be a violation of the whole anti trust commision thing-they would have held too much of the market perhaps, and they decided not to fight it. It cost them a whole lot of money.
Click to expand...

The only issue I seem to get from them anymore is the random blacklisting of emails (random clients of mine all on different servers).

handsonhosting said:
Yahoo's terms state the they can pull the site at any time with reasons determined soley by their team. So because of that statement you really don't have a leg to stand on against them.
Click to expand...

Quite true, but was that always Y's TOS or is that something just added in to CTOA?
 
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