Here is an example, good or bad you decide. A young webmaster setup his first blog and got one of his posts linked from dailystab.com - very soon his shared hosting was terminated by Namecheap due to excessive traffic volume. Namecheap didn't warn him, didn't also give him a chance to move to next higher hosting package so that his site doesn't die out. So you see, sometimes a back link can cause damage too. The question here is, we do not know if a popular site will link to our blog, so popular webhosting companies like Namecheap should consider these rare cases or not? Shouldn't we get a fair chance to move to next higher package?
well the issue here is the hosting provider, not the backlink. Backlinks can be dangerous, but not in that sense.
I agree with vipconsult. The problem is with the hosting provider. None of it are with the backlinks. In fact, the backlink did its job well! However, the webmaster was not prepared for the high amount of traffic.
Yes, you all are right, problem is with the hosting provider. "A backlink can sometimes be dangerous" is an irony of fate. What should have been a boon actually turned into a bad experience for the boy. As I said, a new an young boy who kept faith in Namecheap to be a reputed seller actually got hurt. Namecheap cancelled his account and all hosted data was deleted. How do new & young webmasters rely on reputed names then? The question here is, is this how some of us have to get terribly hurt and then learn a lesson? Though it didn't happen to me, I was a witness to this entire story. To be honest, I never saw such a volume of traffic ever in my life. I mean, I was watching through feedjit live traffic updates - 20k visitors in 5-7 minutes - I was so spellbound. In fact, I took the lesson and after this, whenever I buy webhosting package, I talk to hosting provider that if this happens, they must move me to higher package and my account must not be cancelled.
As far as I know, Google will penalize you more if you linked back to a penalized or a site with a bad record, if it was otherwise, Google knows you may not have total control of who links back to you. That is why it is very important that when you are linking back to other sites, you should really be recommending it to your visitors and it is far important to always check dead links and so on. However in this case, it's a problem with the hosting provider.
What or how much planning does a newcomer do? When you started your first site, were you prepared and did you plan to be ready for 20k visitors in 5 minutes? If you did, you're a true professional who knows what you're doing; it may not be same for everyone. I am talking about a newcomer boy who unknowingly fell into a mishap between a backlink and hosting provider His blog was just over a month old when this happened.
I don't have any experience using Namecheap, and thanks to this post I'll never will. It's common for hosts to block your site for a while with the "bandwidth exceeded" note, but deleting all your information and just getting rid of you for something you have no control over? That's bad business right there. Also another of many lessons on the importance on keeping backups!!