- Report: #1145372
Complaint Review: Green Host IT - Austin Texas
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Green Host IT
3267 Bee Cave Rd Ste 107 Austin, 78746 Texas, USA
Phone:
5129618289
Web:
greenhostit.com
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Green Host IT, Greenhost, Green Host, GreenhostIT fraud, scam, domain theft, transfer scam Austin Texas
My friend's wife was killed by a drunk driver last year. He asked me to build a website for a non-profit memorial foundation in her honor. The foundation donates all proceeds to local community programs.
After some googling my friend decided he wanted to use GreenhostIT.com as both a registrar and hosting provider because they had a site template option. After paying for three years of service he saw the site template system and realized it had terrible, ugly templates and offered no flexibility. I installed and configured Wordpress instead. I constantly maintained the site and updated Wordpress + plugins as they became available.
Six months later the site was hacked. GreenhostIT.com claimed it was our fault but restored the site from a very old backup.
A local hosting business then donated a dedicated server and IP. I built a brand-new enterprise-class website from the ground up and deployed it to the donated server. GreenhostIT became just a domain registrar for us - the hosting plan we paid for had zero value. When we asked for a pro-rated refund of the remaining two years, GreenhostIT refused.
We began promoting the new website and building interest leading up to our annual fundraiser event. On the month of the event, we received an email from GreenhostIT stating the domain was up for renewal. We went to transfer the domain name to another, much bigger and less shady registrar. When the new registrar sent the EPP code to the domain's admin contact, we found that GreenhostIT had REPLACED our contact details with their own - [email protected]. Further, the registrant details had been changed to a Jamie Hughson, with a fake address. The registrant contact email had been set to info @ hostingbiz.com, which LOOKS real but was actually a fake website (it has since been taken down by ICANN).
When we couldn't get anyone on the phone at GreenhostIT, we opened 15 tickets (over time) with Greenhost IT regarding this issue. At first tickets were just closed without reply, but later all of the tickets were DELETED. New tickets were deleted right after they were created. One ticket had a response where the author blamed us for the problem (as if we'd somehow changed the registration details to their scammer email?).
Investigation turned out that our domain was stolen by the owner of the greentexaswebs @ gmail.com email. This scammer transferred our domain to a registrar in Australia and has been holding it hostage. We've been working hard with the registrar, their parent company, and Enom.com to regain control of our domain. The domain has been shut down pending the outcome of the fraud investigations being conducted at two companies.
greentexaswebs @ gmail.com is registered to Stephanie Rosendahl, who is listed as the CEO of GreenhostIT. She's also listed as a high-level employee at several similar companies, which may or may not be as fraudulent as GreenhostIT. We have attempted to contact Stephanie Rosendahl many times, through the contact info on the GreenhostIT website and through personal numbers (via Google). All numbers for her come back as disconnected. The only number that was ever answered was the one for her the clinic her husband (thyroid doctor Reid A. Rosendahl) runs. He was not helpful.
We are still trying to regain control of our domain. Be warned; if you're currently using GreenhostIT, you should update your registrant contact information and IMMEDIATELY transfer your domain to another registrar.
We have had to abandon our domain name, which has confused all of our donors. Because of GreenhostIT's scam we have to re-record all of our media spots, re-print all of our marketing materials, and notify hundreds of people of the new domain name.
1 Updates & Rebuttals
Green Host It
Austin,Texas,
Thank you for your feedback.
#2REBUTTAL Owner of company
Sun, June 01, 2014
Dear Steve Perkins
I have received your complaint from Ripoff Report. I understand that your complaint is regarding your friend’s domain name - maureenmengelt.org
First off, I would like to say that I understand your frustration. Second, I would like to say that I apologize for your experience. The last thing we want is for a customer to be unhappy. I am glad that you have your domain name back. I contacted Enom after I spoke to your friend on the phone (Kevin). I opened a “domain transfer dispute” with Enom and that is how the domain name was returned.
So, what have we been doing about the hacking that you reported? What is being done to improve our service?
WHAT ARE WE DOING TO IMPROVE?
You mentioned that your friend’s website was hacked. We are aware of many WordPress sites that were hacked in late 2013. Our company has identified the problem with security and taken steps to improve. First, we have employed a new data center and are migrating customers to the LiquidWeb data center. After a great deal of research we chose LW because of their security.
PCI Complaince - We are here to ensure that, not only is your infrastructure compliant with these standards that are now required to accept credit card transactions from the five major credit card companies, but also that your customers’ private data is kept just that.
Firewalls - With the ever-increasing threat of new and advanced malware, viruses and malicious Internet traffic, they designed Liquid Web Firewall Products® to give you a proactive defense to existing threats as well as potential future attacks to your infrastructure. We are able to provide this service by employing on-site, pre-server hardware firewalls, each containing its own OS and operating independently of the server/servers it’s protecting. This gives us the ability to keep a dedicated and constant scan on your server’s activity -- designed to adapt to new threats via signature based intrusion prevention -- while also ensuring that it does not slow down your traffic. You owe it to the security and resiliency of your content to deploy the most progressive firewall solutions on the market.
ServerSecurePLUS™ - With ServerSecurePLUS™, the data center has innovated on top of our exclusive ServerSecure™ installation service. A setup option available for our dedicated servers, ServerSecure™ ensures optimal compatibility, paramount integrity and the most efficient usage of your server/servers. We have upgraded this service to iron-clad standards by adding daily CSX scans and a multitude of server hardening features available exclusively to those opting for ServerSecurePLUS™. What would have taken hours of installation work and the help of an outside system administrator, is now at your fingertips with the help of ServerSecure™ and ServerSecurePLUS™.
Included Features:
- Firewall Protection
- Brute Force Detection and Evasion
- Apache Dos Prevention/Protection
- E-Mail Virus Filtering
- Exclusive to ServerSecurePLUS™:
- Daily CSX Scan
- SSH/cPanel/FTP Hardening
- WebServer & PHP Hardening
- Monthly Nessus® vulnerability scans
- Web Server & PHP Hardening
- SSH / cPanel / FTP Hardening
- Advanced Server Exploitation Prevention
LW owns and operates three state-of-the-art, private data center facilities located in Lansing, Michigan. Manned 24/7/365 with an on-site Heroic Support® staff that is stacked with highly trained technicians, our US-Central data centers feature some of the quickest response times in the industry. These data centers also feature numerous zones for added redundancy as well as the ability to team with our US-West region to provide true Geographic Redundancy in multiple Disaster Neutral US regions.
With a powerful network that includes an increasingly impressive list of peers and Tier-1 premium bandwidth providers, we have the infrastructure to accommodate clients that require consistent uptime.
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BOTTOM LINE: Green Host It has committed itself to not only improve our security, but we are working extremely hard so what you have explained, does not happen to any one else. We know that it is impossible to satisfy everyone, but we have made it our mission to try and make 95% of our customers happy. Either way, I want you to know that we are making changes, improving the quality of our service, and getting better.
Between you and me…. I want you to know that I am very appreciative for your feedback. I have used it to come up with a plan — a plan that will make our service better.
You should know that complaints like yours are what we use to improve our service. We take complaints very seriously and I want you to know that we have taken steps — very BIG steps, to improve.
Thank you again,
Stephanie Rosendahl
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