amuck-landowner

ChicagoVPS acquires 123systems

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
The Buffalo hosting mafia never forgets :)  @KuJoe @dave

Raises concerns and questions about the customer data being shared and freely traded in these deals.  Something doesn't make sense with you being unable to unsubscribe/not in there.
 
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MannDude

Just a dude
vpsBoard Founder
Moderator
Report the unsolicited email that you are receiving an unable to unsubscribe from as spam.
 

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Report the unsolicited email that you are receiving an unable to unsubscribe from as spam.
More spam from the CC network.. bahaha....

Definitely not complaint contacting random people like this and no unsubscribe working.
 

DomainBop

Dormant VPSB Pathogen
Report the unsolicited email that you are receiving an unable to unsubscribe from as spam.
The CAN-SPAM act requires that all unsubscribe requests be honored within 10 business days.  I only mention this because I've requested 6 times dating back to last October to be unsubscribed from Fabspammer's CVPS spam and all requests have been ignored (yeah, the latest CVPS spam arrived this morning...forwarded to abuse@cc with a not nice message).

Today's CVPS spam was in violation of the 2 parts of the CAN-SPAM act: no physical street address listed and no opt-out link (or even any mention of how to opt out)

Each separate email in violation of the CAN-SPAM Act is subject to penalties of up to $16,000, so non-compliance can be costly. But following the law isn’t complicated. Here’s a rundown of CAN-SPAM’s main requirements:

  1. Tell recipients where you’re located. Your message must include your valid physical postal address. This can be your current street address, a post office box you’ve registered with the U.S. Postal Service, or a private mailbox you’ve registered with a commercial mail receiving agency established under Postal Service regulations.
  2. Tell recipients how to opt out of receiving future email from you. Your message must include a clear and conspicuous explanation of how the recipient can opt out of getting email from you in the future. Craft the notice in a way that’s easy for an ordinary person to recognize, read, and understand. Creative use of type size, color, and location can improve clarity. Give a return email address or another easy Internet-based way to allow people to communicate their choice to you. You may create a menu to allow a recipient to opt out of certain types of messages, but you must include the option to stop all commercial messages from you. Make sure your spam filter doesn’t block these opt-out requests.
  3. Honor opt-out requests promptly. Any opt-out mechanism you offer must be able to process opt-out requests for at least 30 days after you send your message. You must honor a recipient’s opt-out request within 10 business days. You can’t charge a fee, require the recipient to give you any personally identifying information beyond an email address, or make the recipient take any step other than sending a reply email or visiting a single page on an Internet website as a condition for honoring an opt-out request. Once people have told you they don’t want to receive more messages from you, you can’t sell or transfer their email addresses, even in the form of a mailing list. The only exception is that you may transfer the addresses to a company you’ve hired to help you comply with the CAN-SPAM Act.
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k0nsl

Bad Goy
At least BlueVM's unsubscribe function works (or so it told me):

Thank you, Your email has now been removed from our mailing list.
Better to get out before the shit hits the fan, big time.
 

DomainBop

Dormant VPSB Pathogen
The Buffalo hosting mafia never forgets :)  @KuJoe @dave

Raises concerns and questions about the customer data being shared and freely traded in these deals.  Something doesn't make sense with you being unable to unsubscribe/not in there.
The email address that has been receiving the CVPS spam since last October isn't the email address I used when I had an account at CVPS.  It's the one I used with UGVPS so obviously UGVPS email addresses were being shared with CVPS before the official takeover was announced on January 26.
 

Aldryic C'boas

The Pony
WHT is a great place to report the abuse, as well.  Historically, whenever someone couldn't get a reply from their abuse@, bringing the issue to public light over there spurred Ernie and Biloh to fix things in a hurry.
 

Flapadar

Member
Verified Provider
WHT is a great place to report the abuse, as well.  Historically, whenever someone couldn't get a reply from their abuse@, bringing the issue to public light over there spurred Ernie and Biloh to fix things in a hurry.
Doesn't always work though - I remember when a certain reasonably popular Swiss dedicated/colo provider spammed half of WHT and their reply to the many people who complained was pretty much "suck it, you signed up for emails from us" (despite it not being the case) 
 

Steven F

New Member
Verified Provider
WHT is a great place to report the abuse, as well.  Historically, whenever someone couldn't get a reply from their abuse@, bringing the issue to public light over there spurred Ernie and Biloh to fix things in a hurry.
Bring anything to Ernie's attention and he'll fix it quickly. He isn't just about the public image, he's really a great guy.
 

Aldryic C'boas

The Pony
Bring anything to Ernie's attention and he'll fix it quickly. He isn't just about the public image, he's really a great guy.
Y'know, I've heard a few people say that now.  And it honestly makes me feel sorry for the guy - I have no firsthand experience with the bloke, but my opinion of him was already very badly coloured due to the CC association.
 

Rallias

New Member
Where is my favorite @AnthonySmith? He said I was full of crap on the UGVPS stuff and he jabbed at me about 123Systems too I do believe.

Choke on it.  The whole thing :)

Feels good to be right, and vindication sees it's day in the sun.  Meanwhile friends and deniers allowed paying customers to be slapped around and robbed by CVPS for all this time. Tsk tsk tsk.

Maybe the naysayers will get I am not weaving fiction.

Where's @Rallias at?   Come have a party.

Next domino to fall - BlueVM.  Cough it up.
By contract, not before April 2015, although I think the contract was actually signed in July... it's 2 years from signature.
 

Steven F

New Member
Verified Provider
Y'know, I've heard a few people say that now.  And it honestly makes me feel sorry for the guy - I have no firsthand experience with the bloke, but my opinion of him was already very badly coloured due to the CC association.
The way I see it: a job is a job. He gets paid to work for ColoCrossing and you cannot hold a man doing an honest days work accountable for his employer's shady tactics/practices. Honestly, if you didn't know ColoCrossing owned HudsonValleyHost, you'd 100% think Ernie was the owner. He works that hard. Seriously, it's absurd how much he puts into the company. He really is an amazing guy who is doing his best, and then some.
 

Aldryic C'boas

The Pony
Job's a Job, sure... but it's still someone's choice on whether to swallow their ethics and work for a known corrupt company.  Of course, you can't discount the chance that he's kept his head down and is unaware of all the.. unsavoury acts CC gets involved with.  But I can't find enough altruism within me to consider that plausible.
 

Steven F

New Member
Verified Provider
Job's a Job, sure... but it's still someone's choice on whether to swallow their ethics and work for a known corrupt company.  Of course, you can't discount the chance that he's kept his head down and is unaware of all the.. unsavoury acts CC gets involved with.  But I can't find enough altruism within me to consider that plausible.
I guess I see it differently. In today's job market, as long as he's trying his best to be honest and not fall into the shady tactics, what's the problem? He also is very separate from a lot of the CC stuff.
 

Aldryic C'boas

The Pony
I guess I see it differently.
That's a pretty good summary of it, honestly.  We just have different subjective outlooks on the whole thing.  Probably the best way to wrap it up is with - you know Ernie, and can give a better judgement of his character.  My knowledge is limited to him being a part of CC;  and once you consider all the other names associated with that brand, my suspicion is fairly justified :p
 

Steven F

New Member
Verified Provider
That's a pretty good summary of it, honestly.  We just have different subjective outlooks on the whole thing.  Probably the best way to wrap it up is with - you know Ernie, and can give a better judgement of his character.  My knowledge is limited to him being a part of CC;  and once you consider all the other names associated with that brand, my suspicion is fairly justified :p
Oh, completely justified. Haha, it's kind of scary how they just keep giving new reasons every time it starts to quiet down.
 

drmike

100% Tier-1 Gogent
Job's a Job, sure... but it's still someone's choice on whether to swallow their ethics and work for a known corrupt company.  Of course, you can't discount the chance that he's kept his head down and is unaware of all the.. unsavoury acts CC gets involved with.  But I can't find enough altruism within me to consider that plausible.
A job is a job, fine.  But who logically and ethically continues showing up and doing the dog show when the company is running all sorts of scams? (spam, malicious customer base, mass IP soilage, various downstream scams, various ownership scams)  I doubt Ernie is just an employee :)  Expect a hybrid role as he brings a lot more to the table than the tiny wanna be kids "companies".  He has his own team of Indians for support that other CC companies use... cough.

Let's remember and give no wiggle room here: Velocity Servers / ColoCrossing fashioned a stealth "don't ask and don't tell" deal with Hudson Valley Host to acquire HVH.  The true ownership (CC) was hidden and even lied about on numerous occassions where: 1. Ernie / HVH was directly asked such   2. Where CC was directly stated in public to be the owner of HVH.

That circus / scam / lie went on from (don't have date info here in front of me) February 2013 (roughly when deal happened) until early 2014 when CC / HVH were drawn and quartered on WebHostingTalk and forced into public confession - after they refused to properly deal with a customer and issue a refund - which opened Pandora box nice and wide.   So the whole deal was hidden for a year or better the did so while lying. (how many times are CC/CVPS owned companies going to get slammed and brought to horror for ripping customers off and refusing to refund their money?)

If we look at ChicagoVPS and assume the fiction that CC and CVPS are unrelated the pattern becomes really hard to ignore and overlook said logical connection:

UGVPS  - Fab claimed he bought UGVPS in early 2014


Down for Maintenance (Err 3)
Earlier this year, New Wave NetConnect LLC has acquired UGVPS and its assets.
In order to provide a streamlined experience, UGVPS clients are being merged with
ChicagoVPS, a New Wave NetConnect brand effective May 10, 2014. Customers can now
log in to the client area at https://billing.chicagovps.net/

Fact is, Fabozzi acquired UGVPS in February 2013.  So, Fabozzi lied here by a year or more.  More on that later.

Then you have this 123Systems fiction.  Fabozzi paid to have fresh servers Xen slabbed back in November 2013.  If Fabozzi is doing the outsourcing and paying, I'd consider that owning 123Systems. December 2013 is when we saw the first 123Systems offer on LEB that was CC-network-only locations.

So December 2013 (to be nice) until July 2014 = 7 months from when he acquired until when he confessed.

This leaves BlueVM as the sole known baby project over there.  They too were a paid to slab Xen horror combination of multiple over packed dedicated servers into tiny Xen chunks with retarded number of containers per slab.  They too were November/December 2013 outsource gig.  So.... The clock is running and actually might be a deal strung longer ago than that (i.e. June - September 2013).

And yes, there are other patterns with acquisitions - like the AzzaVPS deal with CVPS where the prior owner outted the deal much after the fact - months later.

And you have the INFAMOUS LET/LEB ownership con job where CC was beaten about and probed for more than a year and they lied and denied any involvement and were subsequently busted lying by BuySellAds (February 2013~) then entirely outted when LET was hacked and everyone was given full access permissions (May 2013?)...

Same identical approach to deals.  Same methods of lying.  Same outcomes.  Hell same office...  but they aren't ahhh related, just coincidence.  I have some oceanfront property in Montana to sell you and it includes the Brooklyn bridge.  Really, $7 a month, don't go complaining if you aren't happy - NO REFUNDS.
 
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Kris

New Member
That's a pretty good summary of it, honestly.  We just have different subjective outlooks on the whole thing.  Probably the best way to wrap it up is with - you know Ernie, and can give a better judgement of his character.  My knowledge is limited to him being a part of CC;  and once you consider all the other names associated with that brand, my suspicion is fairly justified :p



Everyone keeps saying 'acquired', 'works for them' - He was strong armed into staying on as staff due to his LTO contracts. He's the "owner" while CC gets the payments. That's clear.

He was the owner at one point. I did his SEO, he grew rather quickly, but made the mistake of signing LTO offers at 2x the cost of real NYC servers (Atlantic Metro, then ReliableSite) - Before this, he got talked into LimeStone. He doesn't pick DCs well. 

In March 2013, he offered me the entire company outright, free. He was having anxiety issues because of the CC debt. 8 or so contracts and couldn't make payments, CC gave him a deadline date. 

I didn't want it, as it came with the contracts, and idiot techs. After blaming network issues on two hypervisors on the kernel for two weeks I called them out after I was told "dust in the switch" on LET. Biloh appeared on LET if you remember (causing SysAdmin to come to light) 

He's working off his contract / making some money for his family. I always told him he was good on Sales, and that's where CC has kept him since.

Play detective on the other companies, but jesus - let's put HVH to bed. I was the one who spelled it all out, back in 2013. As soon as it came out / they were forced to admit it, that put me at ease.  B)

Ernie's a nice guy, good on sales, and a family guy at heart. He did own HVH until he was ~3k in debt to them, then we all know what happened. 
 
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