About a week ago, we drew your attention to a wild thread about CharityHost.  Long story short, a LowEndTalk member won 500GB of FTP storage and filled it up with porn.  CharityHost discovered this, and since adult content violates their TOS, they booted the user.  There was a lot of hostile community reaction to a provider scanning someone’s private space.

Since then, the story has taken on a life of its own.  Besides the original thread, there have been numerous others:

• Charityhost.org Review – Provider or Dominator!!!
• Are Charity hosts servers running OK?
• CharityHost Bribes Customers for 5-Star Reviews on Trustpilot
• HilarityHost Trustpilot Development
• CharityHost_org banned.

That’s a lot of drama for one provider in a very short span of time.

But now it’s gone to a whole new level.  A member (different than the porn-stasher) created an extensive web site documenting the whole saga, with extensive screenshots.  There’s even an AI-generated conversational audio discussion (created with Notebook LM) which is quite entertaining.

CharityHost responded by complaining to the host, IncogNET, and asking that the site be taken down.  IncogNET is known for its free speech ethos (read our interview with the owner, @MannDude) and ignored CharityHost.

So to date, CharityHost has

• Snooped (intentionally or otherwise – see our earlier post) on a user’s private files
• Bribed customers for 5-star reviews on Trustpilot.
• Changed customers’ root passwords in order to enter their private VMs.
• Tried to get a site critiquing all this taken down.

…and more.  See the site for full details.

Has the CharityHost drama run its course, or do you think there will be another leg to the story?  What do you think?  Give us your reactions in the comments below!

raindog308

Raindog308 is a longtime LowEndTalk community administrator, technical writer, and self-described techno polymath. With deep roots in the *nix world, he has a passion for systems both modern and vintage, ranging from Unix, Perl, Python, and Golang to shell scripting and mainframe-era operating systems like MVS. He’s equally comfortable with relational database systems, having spent years working with Oracle, PostgreSQL, and MySQL.

As an avid user of LowEndBox providers, Raindog runs an empire of LEBs, from tiny boxes for VPNs, to mid-sized instances for application hosting, and heavyweight servers for data storage and complex databases. He brings both technical rigor and real-world experience to every piece he writes.

Beyond the command line, Raindog is a lover of German Shepherds, high-quality knives, target shooting, theology, tabletop RPGs, and hiking in deep, quiet forests.

His goal with every article is to help users, from beginners to seasoned sysadmins, get more value, performance, and enjoyment out of their infrastructure.

You can find him daily in the forums at LowEndTalk under the handle @raindog308.