# Stay away from Damien and his company SupremeBytes. (my review)



## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

You can see proofs that we will refer to throughout this thread in the moke.zip file that is linked here -

https://www.dropbox.com/s/sl0r0wbxnf099kh/moke.zip?dl=0

 

 

*Introduction*

Well I rented a /21 of ip addresses from Damian around 5/13/2014 because he had a great price and I didn't have to go through the ARIN process to get them. We had just moved out of colocrossing and needed to source some ips quickly that were of similar price so we could stay in business.

Everything was good for the _most_ part up until Dec, 2014. If you look at the file myinvoices.png in the zip you will see we paid our for the /21 every month. Keep in mind we were billed 30 days in advance.

Our ips were revocated with 21 days notice, we did not have time to get a new range and moke/damien did not care.

*Revocation Notice*

It was my fault for not getting a signed contract with Damian/moke but I trusted him since everyone over in #vpsboard irc seemed real friendly with him and I know he had been in business with SupremeBytes for a while. On Dec 9th 2014 he sent us an email that said our ip addresses would be revocated due to the large number of spam and abuse reports from our ranges. You can see the email correspondance in the files revocation.png revocation2.png revocation3.png and revocation4.png.

In the past we had opened tickets asking him to set the abuse address to our abuse channel so we could receive abuse and spam complaints and take care of them without him having to be bothered. He said it wasn't possible. We suspended every user that he sent us a report about, and cleared the ips with spamcop (who was sending him the reports.).

In his revocation notice on Dec 9th he said we needed to return the addresses by the end of the month. I asked him if I could get the ips until Jan 15th because of the upcoming holidays and that it was going to be near impossible to source more ips before that deadline. He never responded.

So now we have 21 days to get a new address range for our entire customer base with christmas and new year holidays approaching.

*We get with ARIN for ip addresses.*

We pretty much immediately got with arin for ip addresses but you know they take a few business days to respond to each thing. They eventually asked us to please contact our ISP and ask them to reassign the range to us so they can count it towards our justification for an initial allocation. I opened a ticket with Supremebytes on 12-16-2014 that you can see in the file mokerefuse01.jpg. Damien responded pretty quickly and asked me to provide my ARIN ticket number and org-id. That same day I responded to him via email with our ticket number and org id and you can see this in mokerefuse02.jpg. A week passed so I contacted im via IRC when I saw him login, he then refused to update ARIN over irc private messages. You can see this in mokerefuse03.jpg. At first he ignored me completely but eventually responded so I private messaged him which you can see in logwheremokeignoresme.txt

We have now wasted a week because of mokes/damien's decision to not update arin.

*He sends our datacenter a revocation notice early on 12-16-2014*

The same day we opened the ticket for him to update arin, he sent our datacenter a letter asking them to stop routing our range. You can see this in the folder ipsrevokedearly and file damianremoverecordrequest.png Our datacenter processed this on 12/29/2014 so our range was revoked two days earlier than we told our customers BUT if it was up to Damien our range would have been revoked as soon as he sent that letter in. Just check the wording 

*I was furious and called him out publicly in IRC to get our ips back on.*

On 12/29 I got on IRC and called out Moke/Damien on revocating our addresses early. You can see this in mokepublicircwhenheterminatedmyips.png in the ipsrevokedearly folder. When our datacenter asked for another LOA to get the ips turned back on he instructed us to forge a document. He instructed us to put a different date on the initial LOA that they sent us months ago and send to our datacenter with the correct date.

*We finally have our ARIN ips and they are routed.*

Our customers were down for a month because of this fiasco. We finally got our arin ips allocated and routed at the datacenter today. We decided to go with ARIN so we couldn't be treated like this again. Damien really had no reason to revocate our ip addresses. Maybe he needed them for himself or another larger customer was needing them and wanted to pay more. We don't really know, but what we do know is that Damien didn't value our business. We once tried to rent a dedicated server from him a few months after getting the ip addresses and he NEVER responded to our ticket. We would have done almost anything to keep this address space until we were able to get ARIN ips.

*Conclusion*

You can form your own opinion about Damien and SupremeBytes through this thread, but ours is to *please stay away and do not do business with this company.*


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## sundaymouse (Jan 30, 2015)

I am, as always, interested in the quantity scale of abuse complaints you get every month, on your customers. *If* you have a customer base that produces large amount of spam listings every month, then I am not really sure who is in the right.

Again, just "if", since a rough quantity scale has not been provided in OP.


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## Francisco (Jan 30, 2015)

sundaymouse said:


> I am, as always, interested in the quantity scale of abuse complaints you get every month, on your customers. *If* you have a customer base that produces large amount of spam listings every month, then I am not really sure who is in the right.
> 
> Again, just "if", since a rough quantity scale has not been provided in OP.


What do you expect when your business requirements are that you get a /21 for ~$150/month?

He has some very supportive/understanding customers to stick it out for *a month* while you work with ARIN.

Francisco


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

sundaymouse said:


> I am, as always, interested in the quantity scale of abuse complaints you get every month, on your customers. *If* you have a customer base that produces large amount of spam listings every month, then I am not really sure who is in the right.
> 
> Again, just "if", since a rough quantity scale has not been provided in OP.


It was in the files. 8.1% of the users had a poor reputation on senderbase. We were willing to work on this number and get it down to an acceptable in his eyes number.


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

Francisco said:


> What do you expect when your business requirements are that you get a /21 for ~$150/month?
> 
> 
> He has some very supportive/understanding customers to stick it out for *a month* while you work with ARIN.
> ...


Well funny thing is since we are with ARIN now we get it for $83.30/mo so I don't really know what you are basing that on. He offered that price. I didn't ask for it.

He didn't stick out anything for a month? He stuck it out for 21 days that I had ALREADY paid for.


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## drmike (Jan 30, 2015)

Man this is rough.  How many complaints were inbound and how many IPs soiled?

Spam is always the client's responsibility to clean.  Failure to do so gets you dropped.  Now not being able to route those complaints to you is just bad, no way to clean things up on manual pass through route. PITA.

IP leasing requires a detailed contract so everyone is covered.  Doing a deal without such is just a terrible idea for both parties, and for the legit customers.  Point proven and understood.

That said, there have been other recent complaints about SupremeBytes' uneven support response times.


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## drmike (Jan 30, 2015)

coreyman said:


> Well funny thing is since we are with ARIN now we get it for $83.30/mo so I don't really know what you are basing that on. He offered that price. I didn't ask for it.
> 
> He didn't stick out anything for a month? He stuck it out for 21 days that I had ALREADY paid for.


ARIN issued costs are different than aftermarket rental/leasing/purchase of IPs.

As far as leaving you stuck without the IPs, that surely wasn't cool.  Things like this are in best interest of both parties to work together, be it painfully.

Downtime of a month is just bonkers if I read that right....


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## Francisco (Jan 30, 2015)

coreyman said:


> Well funny thing is since we are with ARIN now we get it for $83.30/mo so I don't really know what you are basing that on. He offered that price. I didn't ask for it.
> 
> He didn't stick out anything for a month? He stuck it out for 21 days that I had ALREADY paid for.


ARIN's always the cheapest option, especially if their new pricing gets approved.

I agree, he shouldn't have robbed you of the time you pre-paid though.

Francisco


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

drmike said:


> Man this is rough.  How many complaints were inbound and how many IPs soiled?
> 
> Spam is always the client's responsibility to clean.  Failure to do so gets you dropped.  Now not being able to route those complaints to you is just bad, no way to clean things up on manual pass through route. PITA.
> 
> ...


As stated up there(you probably replied before seeing it). 8.1% of the users had a poor reputation on senderbase. We were willing to work on this number and get it down to an acceptable in his eyes number.

I agree SPAM is the responsibility of the client, but abuse complaints were poorly routed to us. A lot of the time after it went to damien and then he opened a ticket with us the user had already abused and left the network.

I agree I should have had a contract. It was stupid of me to not have had one.

Yes we were down for a month while we waited on ARIN's back and fourth.


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

Francisco said:


> ARIN's always the cheapest option, especially if their new pricing gets approved.
> 
> 
> I agree, he shouldn't have robbed you of the time you pre-paid though.
> ...


Well he didn't rob us, after I called him out on it (since he did send the notice on the 16th). It would have been good of him to let us pay even DOUBLE what we were paying just to keep them for another month(and we would have) so our customers didn't have this downtime.


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## Francisco (Jan 30, 2015)

coreyman said:


> Well he didn't rob us, after I called him out on it (since he did send the notice on the 16th). It would have been good of him to let us pay even DOUBLE what we were paying just to keep them for another month(and we would have) so our customers didn't have this downtime.


I fully agree, maybe even if he insisted that you blocked outbound mail ports just to be safe.

Honestly, I wouldn't doubt he found someone offering more cash for the subnet since $150/month on a /21 is pretty damn insane pricing.

Francisco


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

Francisco said:


> I fully agree, maybe even if he insisted that you blocked outbound mail ports just to be safe.
> 
> 
> Honestly, I wouldn't doubt he found someone offering more cash for the subnet since $150/month on a /21 is pretty damn insane pricing.
> ...


That was exactly my thoughts, but like I said - we would have paid more, done pretty much whatever he wanted.... just to keep those until we could get through the ARIN process.

We actually purchased a /22 for that same price before ARIN approved us (half the ips) - but the datacenter is running into some issues with the routing so we were able to get our ARIN ips online before that range so it was kind-of pointless.


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## KuJoe (Jan 30, 2015)

Not SWIPing the IPs to you was a dick move also. Regardless of the situation, if somebody has a /21 the first step to take after filling out the LOA is getting them SWIPed. It's not like it costs anything or takes more time than filling out the LOA.


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

KuJoe said:


> Not SWIPing the IPs to you was a dick move also. Regardless of the situation, if somebody has a /21 the first step to take after filling out the LOA is getting them SWIPed. It's not like it costs anything or takes more time than filling out the LOA.


I believe it is a requirement of ARIN as well if you assign over a /28 to someone that you have to SWIP it.


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## MannDude (Jan 30, 2015)

(Moved thread to Reviews forum)


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## rupe (Jan 30, 2015)

coreyman said:


> He didn't stick out anything for a month? He stuck it out for 21 days that I had ALREADY paid for.


I think Francisco was referring to your customer's sticking it out for a month (or 21 days). Will you, at the least, be crediting them those 21 days?


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

rupe said:


> I think Francisco was referring to your customer's sticking it out for a month (or 21 days). Will you, at the least, be crediting them those 21 days?


Ahh yes Ive credited accounts per basis upon request


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## ChrisK (Jan 30, 2015)

I had actually purchased a /21 from moke which happened to be the neighbouring range of yours and let me say your range was trashed more than some of CC's!! every report you could imagine, previous spamhaus, malware db's etc. Your side of the /21 whether intentional or not screwed up his entire /19 (of which I was in)

Your entire /21 at one point was listed on spamhaus!

And the /21 I was assigned from moke was never used,  it was only blocked because of abuse on the other /21 (i guess the entire /19 was blocked at a lot of places due to collateral damage?)

a

I don't think its unreasonable at all to revoke the IPs, from what I saw there was a lot of spam emitting from the ranges.


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

ChrisK said:


> I had actually purchased a /21 from moke which happened to be the neighbouring range of yours and let me say the range was trashed more than CC!! every report you could imagine, previous spamhaus, malware db's etc. Your side of the /21 whether intentional or not screwed up his entire /20 (of which I was in)
> 
> Your entire /21 at one point was listed on spamhaus!
> 
> ...


My /21 had nothing to do with his or yours, if he or you had spam reports and malware dbs etc on the other block then that was on him. Senderbase showed around 100 ips with poor reputation. If a customer opened a ticket that an ip was on a blocklist then it was instantly removed.

My entire /21 was not EVER listed in spamhaus as I was actually in contact with them at one point and asked how to receive abuse reports directly. I was told damien needed to SWIP... of which he never did. Spamhaus had my contact information as well as Damien. Damien never sent me a spamhaus report. What was the 'neighboring' range you speak of?

Also if he would have swipped something, then none of this would be an issue 

Also also - maybe he should have sent me reports when they came in? I can't control the issue two months after the report comes in as the damage is already done.

None of your announced ranges are neighbors of that range we had... http://bgp.he.net/AS40440#_prefixes

I never said it was unreasonable to revoke the ranges. He could revoke them for whatever he wanted... what was unreasonable was that he didn't give us enough time to source ips elsewhere and gave us the middle finger.


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## ChrisK (Jan 30, 2015)

coreyman said:


> My /21 had nothing to do with his or yours, if he or you had spam reports and malware dbs etc on the other block then that was on him. Senderbase showed around 100 ips with poor reputation. If a customer opened a ticket that an ip was on a blocklist then it was instantly removed.
> 
> My entire /21 was not EVER listed in spamhaus as I was actually in contact with them at one point and asked how to receive abuse reports directly. I was told damien needed to SWIP... of which he never did. Spamhaus had my contact information as well as Damien. Damien never sent me a spamhaus report. What was the 'neighboring' range you speak of?
> 
> ...


Damien refunded my order and I halted the announcement, they were beyond screwed.

Before I even knew about you and this thread I told Damien that there looks to be some bad people on the other part of his /19.

If you google your IP range and then spamhaus theres even people on google groups talking about spam emitting from your /21

Senderbase should only be used as a reference nothing more, sometimes it can be far form the truth.

His entire /19 is most likely blocked at the big email providers etc as collateral damage.

A SWIP wouldn't do anything but hide the abuse from Damien, do you have any system in place to prevent spamming off your service?


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

ChrisK said:


> Damien refunded my order and I halted the announcement, they were beyond screwed.
> 
> Before I even knew about you and this thread I told Damien that there looks to be some bad people on the other part of his /19.
> 
> ...


I see the google groups thing you act like he (*the one person)* said it was a huge issue - he had an issue with a couple of ips 11, 13, 107, 108, 109, 110, 115, 119 through 130 in 167.89.1.X

I'm certain as soon as I received a complaint that this was termianted.

Yes - we have nodewatch installed with an SMTP limit on vps customers. Dedicated customers however we will wait on an abuse complaint and terminate services completely if there is a recurring abuse issue.

For anyone that wants to know here is the google groups conversation he is referencing... THE ONLY THING ON GOOGLE ABOUT THE RANGE... https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/news.admin.net-abuse.email/Hx4fkIfrcsw

Sounds like you are in bed with Damien honestly.

Edit: Swipping wouldn't have 'HID' abuse from Damien.. it would have allowed me to actually do something about it since he sent reports so damn late!  

Hell - instead of swipping he could have even set up an email forwarder to my abuse addresses.....but he didn't.


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## DamienSB (Jan 30, 2015)

[SIZE=10.5pt]The network range was SWIPPED to you, however removed when we revoked your address space for sending too much spam. We wouldn't receive responses from our notices until 5-9 days later. We wouldn't forward every notice as we would receive in the thousands of notices every week over your IP range. We forwarded samples of every batch of notices that would flood in. We also placed phone calls to your contact number we have on file when bounce notifications were received for failing your spam checks on your mail server (common for not white listing our abuse email address). We made every effort to notify you of abuse - however that was never the issue. The volume of spam originating from the network block was unacceptable. You continued to sell services to known spammers and allowed them to use the address ranges. This is not one incident - it was many over the course of several months. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt] [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]At the beginning of the term the entire /21 was listed and we requested it be removed. Spamhaus doesn't keep a log record and we don't maintain abuse emails after 30 days.[/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt] [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]This was a consistent issue for the entire duration of your stay with us. It was beginning to damage our adjacent network block's reputation. [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt] [/SIZE]

[SIZE=10.5pt]We have a zero tolerance for spam and abuse in our network and with our IP addresses. [/SIZE]


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## coreyman (Jan 30, 2015)

Ok now this is getting hilarious... I'm now the slow responder. I didn't really ever respond to your notices, and when I did... you didn't acknowledge so I didn't bother. I took it up with spamcop (the only reports you ever sent me).

You never called me - this is even more hilarious. I didn't sell to known spammers, please elaborate if you wish! All of your accusations are baseless given your reputation to be slow as hell at everything. Seems like you have a zero tolerance and zero effort policy .

Also you say that my entire /21 was listed at the beginning with spamhaus.. but you failed to notify us? Sounds like you thought it was the previous tenant's issue. Why was it listed at spamhaus? Sounds like a major issue that needs to be taken care of.... very odd of you to keep it quiet.

Edit: OOPS the above paragraph is invalid as we did know about it... see our posts down below.


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## DamienSB (Jan 30, 2015)




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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

So a FEW DAYS after my range was assigned to me... ( I hadn't even finished assigning them to customers yet....) I was listed as a snowshoe range?


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## DamienSB (Jan 31, 2015)

https://www.dropbox.com/s/mw0e6673z9rcmtb/Fwd%20SBL224864%20167.160.88.021.msg?dl=0

I have a email from you explaining that you suspended the customer and that you requested information from spamhaus. What do you mean you didn't know about it?

The dropbox is an outlook msg file.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

DamienSB said:


> https://www.dropbox.com/s/mw0e6673z9rcmtb/Fwd%20SBL224864%20167.160.88.021.msg?dl=0
> 
> I have a email from you explaining that you suspended the customer and that you requested information from spamhaus. What do you mean you didn't know about it?
> 
> The dropbox is an outlook msg file.


I can't open the msg file, but I'll take your word for it. Looks like I may have known about this???? What does this have to do with my range being revoked though, since this was the only spamhaus issue at the beginning


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## DamienSB (Jan 31, 2015)

For everyone who cant open .msg 

http://imgur.com/a/9DtDx


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

DamienSB said:


> For everyone who cant open .msg
> 
> http://imgur.com/a/9DtDx


Ok thank you now I remember. Spamhaus thought that everything on that range was a single customer sending spam.... we set them straight and suspended every customer that had an issue after we got the list from Spamhaus. This is just proof that we took action on abuse, now what was that you were saying?

Also if this range was swipped to me why would spamhaus tell us the space needed to be swipped so we could get the complaints? Why would arin tell us we needed it to be swipped on 12-16-2014

More importantly why would you knowingly refuse to update arin about us renting the addresses?


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## trewq (Jan 31, 2015)

This whole discussion is the most unprofessional thing I've seen in ages. Damien was well within his rights to revoke the IPs as they were his, no matter the reasoning.


While it was a bit of a dick move to not give enough time for a changeover, a business without a fallback supplier needs to rethink their practices.


Glad everything has worked out now Corey and it doesn't take too long to recover.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

trewq said:


> This whole discussion is the most unprofessional thing I've seen in ages. Damien was well within his rights to revoke the IPs as they were his, no matter the reasoning.
> 
> 
> While it was a bit of a dick move to not give enough time for a changeover a business without and fallback supplier needs to rethink their practices.
> ...


Yes he was well within his rights to revoke the ips, that is not why I'm telling people to stay away. I agree.

Hold on while I go buy another cabinet with another company, fill it with servers, and get ips assigned just to have it sit dormant... I don't think there is a company in existence that does this just to have a 'fallback'. I should have had a contract, but he shouldn't have been a dick as well.

DamienSB thanks the post above where he is called a dick for his actions..... so you acknowledge that you were being a dick?


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## DamienSB (Jan 31, 2015)

you went from saying we failed to notify you to "we cleaned it up" when there's a clear pattern of abuse from all over the range.

We did make phone call attempts, however there was no answer on your side.

We prune back notices to avoid our notification inbox from growing too large.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

DamienSB said:


> you went from saying we failed to notify you to "we cleaned it up" when there's a clear pattern of abuse from all over the range.
> 
> We did make phone call attempts, however there was no answer on your side.
> 
> We prune back notices to avoid our notification inbox from growing too large.


 Guess what - when you make sales, abuse goes up... _especially_ in the vps business. We were growing like crazy and making sales thanks to you providing this range for a great price!

We had abuse - abuse was dealt with, you revocated us with abuse as the reason. That has been determined. Pasting abuse notices is just irrelevant. What the warning here from us is - is that you were being a dick and not giving us enough time to leave. That is all.


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## DamienSB (Jan 31, 2015)

I've never seen as many abuse reports from any of our customers than what I saw from you. Growth in the VPS market does not directly equate to that level of abuse notices. I could explain 10 or even 100. But not a few thousand every week for months.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

You always go back to this 'thousand' number..... If it was from the same address - it was probably because you took 2 months to send us the notice. With our SMTP limits in place, and only 2048 ip addresses please explain how we could have 'Thousands' of complaints (of which we never received). We did in fact receive a few notices every other week or whenever you decided to send them that were dealt with. We ran advertisements weekly - this is expected. You say you pruned notices, but you seem to have notices from when we were first a customer.

I never once received a friendly email stating - "Hey, we have an abnormal number of complaints and are thinking about terminating your addresses, is there anything you can do to stop it?".... because you know I would have told you to SWIP to us which you didn't want to do for some reason.

We had a limit of 200 concurrent SMTP connections in nodewatch, I felt this was a good number. I feel that if we REALLY had a few thousand complaints every week we would have been terminated the first 2 months..... am I wrong?


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## DamienSB (Jan 31, 2015)

We tried to give you the benefit of the doubt.

I wish you the best of luck with your new providers.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

DamienSB said:


> We tried to give you the benefit of the doubt.
> 
> I wish you the best of luck with your new providers.


Very nice way to avoid everything I asked. Thank you for your participation in this thread. We've never had a problem with corexchange/zayo. I don't expect to have any problems with ARIN either.


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## DomainBop (Jan 31, 2015)

trewq said:


> While it was a bit of a dick move to not give enough time for a changeover,


Based on this thread, BitAccel's customers weren't notified until December 29th that the IPs were being revoked on the 31st.  That's 20 days after BitAccel was notified by Damien the IPs were being revoked.

http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1444016&highlight=bitaccel


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

DomainBop said:


> Based on this thread, BitAccel's customers weren't notified until December 29th that the IPs were being revoked on the 31st.  That's 20 days after BitAccel was notified the IPs were being revoked.
> 
> http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showthread.php?t=1444016&highlight=bitaccel


Yes that is correct - we thought we would be able to obtain addresses from another source before all hell broke loose  We made a mistake there. We were actually in contact with @KuJoe had signed contracts and EVERYTHING  then unexpectedly ARIN denied his request for more addresses . @KuJoe can shed some light on this. I hope he doesn't mind that I made this public. KuJoe was very helpful and we even ordered a vps from him to get our site online during our downtime so we could send notices.


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## KuJoe (Jan 31, 2015)

coreyman said:


> We were actually in contact with @KuJoe had signed contracts and EVERYTHING  then unexpectedly ARIN denied his request for more addresses . @KuJoe can shed some light on this. I hope he doesn't mind that I made this public. KuJoe was very helpful and we even ordered a vps from him to get our site online during our downtime so we could send notices.


This is correct. ARIN denied our request for additional IPs because "There's no policy to allow us to approve an additional allocation because you have a need for more IP addresses than you have free.".


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

KuJoe said:


> This is correct. ARIN denied our request for additional IPs because "There's no policy to allow us to approve an additional allocation because you have a need for more IP addresses than you have free.".


That's a crazy thing for ARIN to say as well since they are giving these large corporations /10's on a whim.... There is no way that they provide the level of detail that I had to provide for my /21


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## serverian (Jan 31, 2015)

Well, we rent IPs from Damien as well. We pay annually and we have just renewed them for another year.

The IPs were not SWIP'ed to our org for a few months and they were in use. We used to get occasional abuse reports from Damien and they were handled timely. I guess we have received total 4 or 5 abuse reports in the first 6 months that the IPs were not SWIP'ed. The reports were forwarded to us in a timely manner, i.e: 48 hours. This was a manual process so I understand the delay.

I know renumbering is a pain in the ass but it can be handled well in a 3 weeks time. Renting IPs comes with the risk of them getting revoked for whatever reason so one should always have a backup plan.

I suggest monitoring the IP ranges against black lists and act accordingly without waiting for the actual report to arrive. This is a good and affordable one: http://www.freeblacklistmonitor.com/

Also, paying someone to code a SMTP connection monitor per VPS or IP is not a bad idea to avoid getting blacklisted. This can be easily done via iptables.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

serverian said:


> Well, we rent IPs from Damien as well. We pay annually and we have just renewed them for another year.
> 
> The IPs were not SWIP'ed to our org for a few months and they were in use. We used to get occasional abuse reports from Damien and they were handled timely. I guess we have received total 4 or 5 abuse reports in the first 6 months that the IPs were not SWIP'ed. The reports were forwarded to us in a timely manner, i.e: 48 hours. This was a manual process so I understand the delay.
> 
> ...


I mean that's what nodewatch does... monitors smtp connections per vps.... we had it operational... we got nodewatch notices.

Renting ips does come with the risk of them getting revoked, but we thought we trusted him.

You using these ips for backupsy? Hope these ips aren't getting very many complaints with backup customers.....

Do any large companies actually monitor ip addresses for email blacklists? Poor email address reputation was only at 8%... not a very large percent. Should we have been worried?

On a side note.... we didn't get enough time to renumber out of his addresses. 3 weeks time would have been enough if ARIN would have approved our request in time agreed, but they didn't. They are slow as hell because they want to know every single detail about your customers and business now since they have very little space left.


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## serverian (Jan 31, 2015)

coreyman said:


> I mean that's what nodewatch does... monitors smtp connections per vps.... we had it operational... we got nodewatch notices.
> 
> Renting ips does come with the risk of them getting revoked, but we thought we trusted him.
> 
> ...


No. Nodewatch monitors concurrent connection count. A smart spammer can always send low volume per second to avoid it easily. I'm talking about 1 min, 5 mins, 15 mins, etc sent email count.

Winity and VPSDime. Although, we colocate a few servers for Backupsy with SupremeBytes in LA, as well.

I'm not sure who monitors their IPs against blacklists but it sure helps us to act faster on abuse cases.


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## KuJoe (Jan 31, 2015)

serverian said:


> I know renumbering is a pain in the ass but it can be handled well in a 3 weeks time. Renting IPs comes with the risk of them getting revoked for whatever reason so one should always have a backup plan.


3 weeks is plenty of time if the IPs are SWIPed to you. If not, then you're essentially going to ARIN saying: "I need thousands of IPs but I cannot prove that I'm using them." When we first got our initial /22 from ARIN they wouldn't even talk to us until the IPs we were using were SWIP'ed to us. We'd ask them a question in the ticket and their reply was always along the lines of "get your current IPs SWIP'ed before asking us any other questions".


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## Aldryic C'boas (Jan 31, 2015)

coreyman said:


> Guess what - when you make sales, abuse goes up... _especially_ in the vps business. We were growing like crazy and making sales thanks to you providing this range for a great price!
> 
> We had abuse - abuse was dealt with, you revocated us with abuse as the reason. That has been determined. Pasting abuse notices is just irrelevant. What the warning here from us is - is that you were being a dick and not giving us enough time to leave. That is all.


Sigh.. I really wanted to stay out of this one, but I just can't ignore that first line.

In a word - bullshit.  That one screenshot was more Spamhaus reports on you within a couple months than we've had in a *decade*.  Our SJ->LV move was a massive expansion.  Ditto with the addition of the NJ and LU locations.  Total actual spammers we had on our network for 2013-2014?  Less than half a dozen, and all of them dealt with immediately and harshly.

To correct your opening line - _"When you *will sell to anyone to*__ make sales, abuse goes up"_.  Concern yourself more with the quality of your service rather than the quantity of your signups, and you won't have such a ridiculous spam issue.


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## HalfEatenPie (Jan 31, 2015)

So I was one of the people who was affected by this.

My dedi with Corey (a storage atom server) basically fell off the face of the earth for a month.  Luckily for me it wasn't something that was too critical.

Anyways, just for the record, Corey was pretty good in maintaining communication once he realized he wasn't going to be able to hit his original goal (seamless IP transition).  What @Aldryic C'boas says is correct as well (I'm pretty sure that's how CC got shit on to begin with).  

With the ending statement, I'm pretty excited to finally get my service back up and running.  I did get credit for the time it was down so it's not a big issue for me at all.


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## vpsadm (Jan 31, 2015)

I have been lurking on vpsBoard since it was created, reading the forums. I just created an account. This is my first post.

I was a customer of Corey's who was affected by the outage. It sucked. There are many good points on both sides that can be discussed and debated. 

What I do not understand is the complete lack of compassion from Damien and SupremeBytes regarding how their actions would affect Corey's customers. (I assume that the number is well over 1,000, based on the IP address pool size.) 

Based on what I read above, Damien acted with clear intent to inflict as much pain as possible on Corey's customers, as a deliberate and calculated action to hurt Corey and Corey's business. As a VPS provider himself, he must have known that he was hurting many ordinary people by revoking the IP addresses on short notice. He twisted the knife in those ordinary people when he ignored Corey's pleas for cooperation and help in the light of the situation that he had created.

_*Damien is one cold dude. I will NEVER buy anything from him or SupremeBytes. *_Based on such little regard he had for the effect of his actions on Corey's customers, I doubt he cares.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> Sigh.. I really wanted to stay out of this one, but I just can't ignore that first line.
> 
> In a word - bullshit.  That one screenshot was more Spamhaus reports on you within a couple months than we've had in a *decade*.  Our SJ->LV move was a massive expansion.  Ditto with the addition of the NJ and LU locations.  Total actual spammers we had on our network for 2013-2014?  Less than half a dozen, and all of them dealt with immediately and harshly.
> 
> To correct your opening line - _"When you *will sell to anyone to*__ make sales, abuse goes up"_.  Concern yourself more with the quality of your service rather than the quantity of your signups, and you won't have such a ridiculous spam issue.


Aldyric we all know how strict the signups are over at BuyVM ( I've been a customer before) . In a nutshell we never wanted it to be that way here. So yes -

"When you will sell to anyone to make sales, abuse goes up."

Let's take digitalocean and amazon for instance - they aren't as strict with signups as you, so essentially 'They sell to anyone to make sales.', I'm sure they have to deal with abuse as well.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

serverian said:


> No. Nodewatch monitors concurrent connection count. A smart spammer can always send low volume per second to avoid it easily. I'm talking about 1 min, 5 mins, 15 mins, etc sent email count.
> 
> Winity and VPSDime. Although, we colocate a few servers for Backupsy with SupremeBytes in LA, as well.
> 
> I'm not sure who monitors their IPs against blacklists but it sure helps us to act faster on abuse cases.


1min, 5min, 15min sent email count could be something I could look into doing to prevent email spam. Thanks for bringing this to light. What are some acceptable numbers that you allow on your services?


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## Aldryic C'boas (Jan 31, 2015)

Actually, I do use Amazon, and I know they won't take "ASDF ASDF" of "123 Fake St" as an account that can place orders.  Can't say for DO, their business model doesn't suit my needs.


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## coreyman (Jan 31, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> Actually, I do use Amazon, and I know they won't take "ASDF ASDF" of "123 Fake St" as an account that can place orders.  Can't say for DO, their business model doesn't suit my needs.


Right, but you are assuming we do - which we do not.


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## blergh (Feb 1, 2015)

Couldn't this have been resolved in private? It's a "your word against my word" issue.


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## aggressivenetworks (Feb 1, 2015)

coreyman said:


> 1min, 5min, 15min sent email count could be something I could look into doing to prevent email spam. Thanks for bringing this to light. What are some acceptable numbers that you allow on your services?


iptables -A FORWARD -o venet0 -p tcp -s $IP --dport 25 -m limit --limit 10/min -m state --state NEW -j ACCEPT

iptables -A FORWARD -o venet0 -p tcp -s $IP --dport 25 -m state --state NEW -j LOG --log-prefix SMTP-DROP:

iptables -A FORWARD -o venet0 -p tcp -s $IP --dport 25 -m state --state NEW -j DROP

 $ip = ip of the vps

Just run it after the creation of a vps and set it to what ever you feel is acceptable. Plus having nodewatch with 200 concurrent smtp connections is also asking for trouble thats my opinion though.


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## coreyman (Feb 2, 2015)

blergh said:


> Couldn't this have been resolved in private? It's a "your word against my word" issue.


No this couldn't be resolved - that's the part where he was unwilling to work with us. So we wanted everyone to know what he did to avoid doing business with him. It's not really a "your word against my word" since I've provided proof.


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## William (Feb 3, 2015)

Contracts guys, Contracts.... I'neveR sign anything below 5 years contract time and 12 (customer side) or 18 (my side) cancellation notice.

IT'S IMPORTANT TO HAVE SOME THING LIKE THIS.


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## gordonrp (Feb 3, 2015)

No opinion here other than always get a long term contract if you want a long term service. Lesson learned hopefully.


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## vpsadm (Feb 3, 2015)

blergh said:


> Couldn't this have been resolved in private? It's a "your word against my word" issue.


Sure, but from my point of view, it appears that Damien/SupremeBytes refused to resolve it with Corey/BitAccel in public or in private. Instead, Damien cut off the IP addresses on short notice without warning, and with deliberate and malevolent intent to do harm. 

As a customer of BitAccel, my VPS became unreachable when Damien cut off the IP addresses. Had Damien tried to work something out with Corey (in private or otherwise), he could have easily reached an understanding with Corey to allow time for BitAccel to put new IP addresses in place. I cannot speak for Corey, but I bet that Corey might have accepted the most unreasonable and onerous terms from Damien in order to maintain ongoing operations for BitAccel customers. 

Clearly Damien has no feelings for the impact of his actions on countless innocent bystanders, the many BitAccel customers who lost service due to his unwillingness to resolve the issue in private by extending services for a reasonable time. I note that BitAccel obtained its own IP addresses less than one month after Damien so rudely cut them off. 

*The best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. **If I were a SupremeBytes customer, I would be justifiably concerned that Damien might cut off my services on short notice without any consideration to the affect it has on my customers and my business. *


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## Aldryic C'boas (Feb 3, 2015)

vpsadm said:


> Clearly Damien has no feelings for the impact of his actions on countless innocent bystanders,


That's assuming we've heard both sides of the story.. truthfully.  I've been in Damien's shoes - resellers that don't care who they sell to as long as a buck is made, massive amounts of spam, etc.  At the end of the day, it's not his job to worry about the clients of clients of clients of clients.  His job is to worry about *his* company, and to avoid CC-style SBLs that would affect *his* clients.  He shouldn't have to 'work something out' with someone that's blasting such a ridiculous amount of spam, especially if warnings were already issued.

I'm more curious as to how many clients up and walked out.  Not because of the IP issue, but before that: when they suddenly found they couldn't send their legitimate emails due to sharing a net range with spam blasters.


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## coreyman (Feb 3, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> That's assuming we've heard both sides of the story.. truthfully.  I've been in Damien's shoes - resellers that don't care who they sell to as long as a buck is made, massive amounts of spam, etc.  At the end of the day, it's not his job to worry about the clients of clients of clients of clients.  His job is to worry about *his* company, and to avoid CC-style SBLs that would affect *his* clients.  He shouldn't have to 'work something out' with someone that's blasting such a ridiculous amount of spam, especially if warnings were already issued.
> 
> I'm more curious as to how many clients up and walked out.  Not because of the IP issue, but before that: when they suddenly found they couldn't send their legitimate emails due to sharing a net range with spam blasters.


Well that was never the case as we always cleaned up ips if they got 'dirty' due to a few customers or something. There were no warnings... just a revocation notice.


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## DomainBop (Feb 3, 2015)

> *If I were a SupremeBytes customer, I would be justifiably concerned that Damien might cut off my services on short notice without any consideration to the affect it has on my customers and my business. *


Long ago (sometime around 2300 B.C) , someone invented this thing called a signed contract which can help reduce the risk of problems like BitAccel experienced occurring.


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## Aldryic C'boas (Feb 3, 2015)

I would've considered having that much spam a warning, to be honest.  Maybe he could've given more notice, but it really sounds like you could've done a _LOT_ more to keep his IP space cleaner.  There is fault on both sides... but you probably should've just bit the bullet and cursed him out via email or something to work out your rage.  Pretty much the only thing this thread has done is make folks with IP space to rent say "Haha, nope, not renting to this guy, he's just gonna get my network trashy".


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## coreyman (Feb 3, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> I would've considered having that much spam a warning, to be honest.  Maybe he could've given more notice, but it really sounds like you could've done a _LOT_ more to keep his IP space cleaner.  There is fault on both sides... but you probably should've just bit the bullet and cursed him out via email or something to work out your rage.  Pretty much the only thing this thread has done is make folks with IP space to rent say "Haha, nope, not renting to this guy, he's just gonna get my network trashy".


Nope - the exact opposite. I've had several private messages from people here wanting to rent me IP space


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## coreyman (Feb 4, 2015)

Not to add Supremebytes is already announcing and using this space in the Quadranet facility. If it were so 'bad' I don't think they would assign them to new customers


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## vpsadm (Feb 4, 2015)

Aldryic C said:


> That's assuming we've heard both sides of the story.. truthfully.  I've been in Damien's shoes - resellers that don't care who they sell to as long as a buck is made, massive amounts of spam, etc.  At the end of the day, it's not his job to worry about the clients of clients of clients of clients.  His job is to worry about *his* company, and to avoid CC-style SBLs that would affect *his* clients.  He shouldn't have to 'work something out' with someone that's blasting such a ridiculous amount of spam, especially if warnings were already issued.
> 
> I'm more curious as to how many clients up and walked out.  Not because of the IP issue, but before that: when they suddenly found they couldn't send their legitimate emails due to sharing a net range with spam blasters.


You raise several good points.

I am not using my BitAccel VPS for email, so I would not have noticed any blacklisting if it had occurred. 

Whatever happened with the IP address blacklisting problems (or any other similar issue), the proper approach would have been for Damien to provide escalating warnings to Corey, explaining the problems, the expected corrections, and the consequences if the problems were not corrected. It would be improper for Damien to deallocate the IP addresses on short notice without warning. 

As an end customer, I am not privy to the communications that went on between Damien and Corey. Corey asserts that Damien did not give any warning before announcing the deallocation of the IP addresses. Damien has not denied it. That does not prove that Corey is right, but it lends credence to Corey's telling of the events (along with the other supporting information provided by Corey in this thread). 

Did Corey mess up by not having a signed contract and possibly failing to manage spammers? Absolutely.

Is Damien culpable for deallocating the IP addresses on ridiculously short notice, callously disregarding the impact that it had on innocent bystanders like me? Absolutely. 

The difference? Corey made mistakes. Damien acted with deliberate intent and malevolence.


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## Awmusic12635 (Feb 4, 2015)

vpsadm said:


> Did Corey mess up by not having a signed contract and possibly failing to manage spammers? Absolutely.
> Is Damien culpable for deallocating the IP addresses on ridiculously short notice, callously disregarding the impact that it had on innocent bystanders like me? Absolutely.
> 
> The difference? Corey made mistakes. Damien acted with deliberate intent and malevolence.


Damien is responsible for his IPs, Corey is responsible for his customers. Corey's customers are not Damien's problem. Had Corey signed a contract a large amount of this "problem" would have never happened. A proper contract would have a notification period of IPs being revoked, abuse processes etc.


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## coreyman (Feb 5, 2015)

Awmusic12635 said:


> Damien is responsible for his IPs, Corey is responsible for his customers. Corey's customers are not Damien's problem. Had Corey signed a contract a large amount of this "problem" would have never happened. A proper contract would have a notification period of IPs being revoked, abuse processes etc.


My customers are not Damiens problem but I am a singular customer using the entire range - and therefore I am his problem. None of this means Damien shouldn't have any type of moral responsibility. Contracts are good - I hope if nothing else comes of this everyone is reminded to always get a contract.


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## coreyman (Feb 5, 2015)

Well this is funny - http://167.160.90.5/unsub.php..

seems like there are some people using this range now with a mailing list.

The page says

"Please enter your email address and click unsubscribe to be removed from our email list. Please allow up to 48 hours for your request to be processed."


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## rds100 (Feb 5, 2015)

Isn't this what people are calling "beating a dead horse"? What is done is done already, move on with your life.


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## AnthonySmith (Feb 5, 2015)

tl;dr there are conflicting opinions that will never reach a common ground, both sides were at fault for not getting any sort of agreement in place, personally I feel that a "if this continues your space will be revoked" warning should have been sent long ago however as there was no agreement it is what it is.


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