Almost every hosting provider has to deal with various requests, complains and unreasonable claims on a daily basis. It is commonly believed that a hosting provider can undelegate a domain, block a website or a server or provide client’s information upon any request.
The way such claims are processed highly depends on the jurisdiction in which the company operates, that is, the legal aspects of hosting an infrastructure in that country, and the hosting provider’s corporate policy in terms of handling customers’ requests.
Here’s how it works with us: SIM-Networks operates under the jurisdiction of Germany, our data centers and headquarters are located in Germany, we strictly follow the German laws and function solely in our customers’ interests.
|
An abstract from an interview with Sergey Dolgushev, CEO of SIM-Networks/Netversor:
|
«Format it all»
The most common type of complaint is when a third party requests that we block a website they don’t like. Normally, a complaint like that refers to one of the hosting provider’s clients and goes with a couple of unreasonable requests, say, to block their website, undelegate their domain, communicate the client’s data to the complainant, ‘format’ the server, delete any data from the server, etc.
Hosting providers cannot investigate each and every case like that. The main challenge is that the content that is being complained about has to be analyzed in a very meticulous way to make sure all sides of this situation are taken into account. The number of complaints received every day is tremendous, and we would require a large team of lawyers, software licensing experts, linguists and culture experts who would study the complaints in great details and provide their informed judgement.
For example, competitors of an e-commerce website might go out of their way requesting that a hosting provider ‘turns off’ that website. They would call and send messages introducing themselves as disappointed customers, non-existent supervisory authorities or former employees and asking to block this online store or to disclose their data. Low-cost hosting providers and those working with a large influx of smaller-scale customers typically block a website after a few complaints against their client: they deem it would be too costly for them to investigate the issue along with the police, to figure out the right way to act and to protect the client.
The way we work is completely different.
How SIM-Networks handles similar situations:
1. We forward a complaint to our client while retaining the confidentiality of that client.
2. We recommend that the complainant takes a legal action since a hosting provider is not authorized to investigate whether the content of websites is legal and true.
By sticking to those basic principles, SIM-Networks balances between strict adherence to the regulations and keeping our commitments to the customers.
