amuck-landowner

BuyVM ToS Changes

Magiobiwan

Magiobiwan

Insert Witty Statement Here
Verified Provider
Just saw the email.

We have a few announcements to make, hopefully exciting enough to make up for sending you email on a Sunday.  First off, just to cover a few things Francisco has been working on with the Stallion2 panel - for anyone not aware, IPSec is now fully functional on our OpenVZ products.  A 64bit OS is required (more information, and a full setup guide available on Our Wiki), but otherwise is a fairly painless and quick config process.

Stallion2 now also allows full /64 assignments per VM!  Once a subnet is assigned (done via the `IP Addresses->IPv6 Addresses` menu path), you are able to bind IPv6 addresses from your assigned /64 at will.

We're also happy to announce that we've decided to activate an affiliate program!  It's a fairly simple setup - each sale you refer gets you a recurring 15% of the service cost for the life of said service.  Payouts are available after 30 days, and can be requested as either account credit or as a direct payment via our accepted gateways (currently PayPal and Google Checkout).  For 'cash' payouts, however, you must have active service and be in Good Standing.  We will also only send funds to you - please do not request that we send your payout to 'a friend', etc.  Clients can access their Affiliates page by using the `My Referrals` option from the Billing dropdown menu once the new TOS/AUP goes into effect tomorrow morning.

Of course, with these additions also comes some changes to our TOS/AUP.  Most of the changes are minor and can be glossed over (reduced fees on TOS Violation fines, etc), but there are a couple of changes that do need to be stressed:

  • TOR Exit Nodes: TOR exit nodes are no longer permitted on our network for any reason.  Anyone currently running an exit node must have it shut down and removed within 48 hours.  From here forward, running a TOR exit node will be considered a willful violation of the AUP, of the same severity as resource abuse and network attacks.  Middle nodes are unaffected by this policy, and may still be hosted.
  • bitTorrent: bitTorrent no longer requires a 'Non-US IP'.  Clients are welcome to torrent on any IP we assign, but we do ask that you cap your torrents to prevent I/O and network abuse.
  • 'Security'/Pen Testing: Any type of security/pen/DDoS testing is absolutely forbidden.  This includes using tools such as hping and webbench to "test" local or remote servers.  This activity is now treated as blatant disregard for our policies, and malicious use of resources;  the service(s) will be terminated, and a possible ban on the account.
The new TOS/AUP officially go into effect 0600h tomorrow morning (0600h PST, 19Aug2013).  Until then, the new TOS/AUP can be viewed in full at https://my.frantech.ca/tos.new.php and https://my.frantech.ca/aup.new.php .

As always, it's a pleasure being able to provide for your hosting needs!  If you have any questions/concerns about these changes (or anything else you'd like to discuss with us), please feel free to open a support ticket, and I'll be happy to lend an ear.  Thank you for choosing Frantech/BuyVM!


---
Aldryic C'boäs, Frantech Staff
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drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Oh lordy!

Saw this in email 12 hours or so ago.

Maybe Fran or Aldy can comment on Tor exit nodes.  I've thought that BuyVM had a fair number of customers because of Tor support / permission to operate on their network.  What happened and general reason for retreat (yes, I pulled my support of Tor last year -- promotion of Tor, public mirror, exit node).

Nice to see shift officially to better acceptance of bitTorrent.

Overall, a good update :)
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
No doubt @texteditor that Tor is a trouble magnet.  Torrents though have ample issues themselves.   

Nice to see support for both.  Juggling the inbound third party complaints, arggh!
 
Francisco

Francisco

Company Lube
Verified Provider
buffalooed said:
Oh lordy!

Saw this in email 12 hours or so ago.

Maybe Fran or Aldy can comment on Tor exit nodes.  I've thought that BuyVM had a fair number of customers because of Tor support / permission to operate on their network.  What happened and general reason for retreat (yes, I pulled my support of Tor last year -- promotion of Tor, public mirror, exit node).

Nice to see shift officially to better acceptance of bitTorrent.

Overall, a good update :)
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We had a bunch of relays but literally only a couple exit's we've seen.

We chatted with everyone we saw running TOR already and let them know that the policy was going to change a few months ago.

The biggest issue we've had is even though we were SWIPing, users we doing little to cut back on abuse (limiting ports, etc).

Francisco
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Francisco said:
The biggest issue we've had is even though we were SWIPing, users we doing little to cut back on abuse (limiting ports, etc).
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I suspect you will see similar problems with alternative privacy/anonymous distributed networks now that Tor has been soiled with recent issues.

Need to see if anyone here is an avid Tor supporter and has a recipe on how to properly lock down Tor exit nodes.  Has to be a big problem for anyone allowing Tor as well as contributing to reduced hosting options.

Sad to see Tor going like this, but I don't trust it / think it is almost zero enhancement to security/anonymity.
 
peterw

peterw

New Member
buffalooed said:
Sad to see Tor going like this, but I don't trust it / think it is almost zero enhancement to security/anonymity.
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It needs one dickhead to kill a exit node. A lot of people loosing all self control if they think they cannot be hold to account for their actions.
 
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Damian

Damian

New Member
Verified Provider
I'll be honest that I'm surprised that these rules weren't in place already. We've had them in place for years, and I consider you guys to be far more advanced than us ;)

Regarding the affiliate program, is it truly new or has it had a soft release?
 
Damian

Damian

New Member
Verified Provider
Also regarding the affiliate program, might want to add a clause that you'll only pay out on active services. We had a rash of someone signing up for 50+ services, then cancelling them a couple of weeks later and wanting the affiliate payout. No no.
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
I am pretty sure the affiliate program is just a soft/official public style launch.  I swear I saw an affiliate link a few days ago for them.
 
Francisco

Francisco

Company Lube
Verified Provider
Damian said:
I'll be honest that I'm surprised that these rules weren't in place already. We've had them in place for years, and I consider you guys to be far more advanced than us ;)

Regarding the affiliate program, is it truly new or has it had a soft release?
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The policies were in place for a long time, we've just been adjusting them to make more sense.

We had it in place when we first started but it got abused heavily since we had a really short payout window (I think you could claim it within a week or something). What happened is we had people frauding orders to get payments.

We had one guy due something like $600 due to him and his buddies stringing a bunch of fraud together.

Since it's just the WHMCS affiliate system we are doing manual audits on any request for funds. There's a 30 day delay on payments as well.

Francisco
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Nick_A said:
Generous certainly, but I think they've lost their minds! :D
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I think they just don't like money.   Must be too much F/OSS punch ;)

Then again, I head scratch on how you manage price points you do with the performance.

Maybe we are all moderately off kilter.
 
drmike

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Look at my horse, my horse is amazing
Give it a lick, mmm it tastes just like raisins

tugs on his winkie :)

Oh so awful, but strangely funny...

"Shut up woman, get on my horse"
 
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