eHost.com Exposed: The Largest Web Hosting Scam In History (Burlington, MA)

eHost.com, a web hosting provider that at one point had more than 1,000,000 customers, officially holds the title as operating the largest web hosting scam in history.  The hosting company, which saw it’s corrupt plan put into motion back in October of 2017, affected virtually every single shared web-hosting account that was still active and billable.  Making up for as much as 90% of the companies business.

First, the admins of eHost.com intentionally sabotaged their servers.  They did this by deliberately opening their cPanel & WHM on those shared servers to known exploits.  This was done by intentionally allowing exploits such as; ElegantEagle, ElatedMonkey & EndlessDonut.  They did this by rolling back their cPanel & WHM to 53 instead of staying at the patched 54 (it is also alleged that high level members of staff directly injected malware into their own servers).  In addition, ports were opened that should have never been and servers that hosted the shared customers became a hackers playground, one that purposely allowed malware and other malicious content to be easily injected.  This malware would then manifest itself onto not just an individual users website, but onto the entire server (because it was the server itself that was the easiest to compromise), which hosted hundreds and sometimes thousands of sites per server (ie; shared hosting).  They then suspended all of the accounts that had the malicious content on them, which was roughly every single shared hosting account at the time.

Then, in September of 2017, eHost.com placed a notice on their web-hosting page stating that they were no longer in business and would begin transitioning clients to other hosting providers.  This was a lie.  They never contacted anyone and to this day still maintain the bulk of their operations as if the notice doesn’t even exist.  Currently, eHost.com has had a live support and customer service team that will answer questions, although, almost all are indian based and through the company Directi Web Technologies (which is also owned by the same company that owns eHost.com).  The members who individuals are directed to speak with offer no resolutions to the issues regarding what is at hand.

In a serious and highly illegal twist, the customer is then advised that they need to remove the injected malware from their account – or face certain suspension.  Even though they don’t have access to server side security that can only be implemented via SSH & WHM (ie; direct server access).  Those same customers are then advised to utilize specific tools, all of which cost money and applications that derive from none other than Directi Web Technologies.  Hmmm…

Fun Fact:  The review site TrustPilot has 89 reviews on eHost.com.  94% of those reviewers rate the service as “Bad” with a 0.7/10 star rating, only 2% say the service is “Excellent”, with 3% saying “Poor”.

Directi Web Technologies, just like eHost.com and almost 100 additional other other online companies are all owned by Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc.   In July of 2015, Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc. stock was valued at more than $20 per share.  Today, the stock is only worth $8.15 per share.  Once the company satrted making vast acquisitions starting in 2014 (totaling in the hundreds of millions of dollars) they have seen their stock drop immensely and have taken beating after beating.

COBRA Says:  It is unclear whether the owner(s), the internal management or shareholders have put enough pressure on someone, an executive or high ranking official, to have them operate and make such dire moves like we’ve witnessed.  Whoever is responsible for this, it was a highly calculated move & a move that put tens of millions of dollars in excess cash back into the company.  Scumbags…

To the unseen eye, doing something like this, on such a large scale, might not make sense & may seem like corporate suicide.  After all, it takes only a few bad reviews and you could lose thousands of new potential clients.  However, due to the vast online holdings that Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc. has, they essentially had nothing to lose & everything to gain.

The largest web hosting scam in history wasn’t done without advanced preparation or foresight.  The intentional implosion resulted in the majority of it’s affected customers finding new shared hosting with essentially the same company that they were leaving.  This is where subsidiary companies that are owned by Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc. come into play.  The roughly 1,000,000 clients that saw their sites injected and were either forced to pay for malware software removal tools or find hosting elsewhere, never even saw what was coming.  The vast majority of customers who would wind up leaving would go to companies like Verio, Bluehost, HostGator, HostClear, PureHost or DomainHost, all of which are owned by EIG.

For those that did or didn’t pay for malware removal or simply refused to find a new host, eHost.com is still billing them – even while they are suspended & even when they haven’t been migrated to a new hosting provider as stated some 5 months ago!  Individuals cannot even get their accounts back online in some cases without paying to utilize malware removal tools.  In hundreds of cases, individuals removed their entire account – all add-on domains, databases, ftp content and they still wouldn’t un-suspend the users account.

List Of EIG Hosting Sites

2slick.com, AccountSupport, A Small Orange, ApolloHosting, AptHost, Arvixe, Berry Information Systems, BigRock, BizLand, BlueDomino, BlueFur, BlueHost, BuyDomains, Cirtex Hosting, Cloud by IX, Constant Contact, Directi, Dollar2Host, Domain.com, DomainHost, Dot5Hosting, Dotster, easyCGI, eHost, EntryHost, Escalate Internet, FastDomain, FatCow, FreeYellow, Glob@t, Homestead, HostCentric, HostClear, Host Excellence, HostGator, HostMonster, HostNine, HostYourSite.com, HostV, HyperMart, IdeaHost, IMOutdoors, Impress.ly, Intuit Websites, iPage, IPOWER/iPowerWeb, IX Web Hosting, JustCloud, JustHost, LogicBoxes, MojoMarketplace, MyDomain, MyResellerHome, NetFirms, Networks Web Hosting, Nexx, PowWeb, PureHost, ReadyHosting, ResellerClub, SEOGears, SEO Hosting, Site5, SiteBuilder.com, Sitelio, Sitey, Southeast Web, Spry, StartLogic SuperGreen Hosting, TypePad, USANetHosting, vDeck, Verio, VirtualAvenue VPSLink, WebHost4Life, WebHosting.info, WebsiteBuilder.com, Webstrike Solutions, Webzai, World Wide Web Hosting, Xeran, YourWebHosting

The Bottom Line:  Stay away from eHost.com.  The company is a scam, stealing money, engaged in fraud practices and purposely injecting malware onto user accounts only to suspend them and then force you to pay for malware removal software.

SCUMBAGGED Tip:  Endurance International Group Holdings, Inc. should be privately investigated (if they aren’t already).  We urge our donors to look into this group extensively in the coming weeks to uncover any and all information that is out there on them.  Something like this isn’t a minor issue when you have more than 1,000,000 individuals affected.