My hosting company has been charging me alot of money this month for bandwidth overages. Approximately $30 to $70 per day. They have now revealed that these have been (and are being) caused by a DDos attack on the server. So, am I actually liable for these bandwidth costs? Or is this sort of thing their responsibility. I am running a very simple website -- essentially just a book with text-only pages plus images.
Its there duty to be able to protect from basic DDoS attacks, I'm sure the attack wasn't to big so you should not be liable for the bandwidth costs.
I'd be screaming bloody murder at your host for not protecting you and your site from the DDoS attack. Are the attacks showing up as bandwidth usage within your stats program? I'm wondering if your host is just pulling something and/or trying to get rid of you for whatever reason.
There is something a little fishy about the whole thing. The bandwidth they are claiming does not show up anywhere in my reports. When the bandwidth hit the limit I immediately received a ticket from their sales department telling me I would need to upgrade my dedicated hosting plan to cover the extra bandwidth. They only returned to me with a claim of a Ddos attack when I disputed the bandwidth. In their advertising on the front page of their site they claim to protect against Ddos attacks. I am tempted to just have my credit card company reverse all the charges, including the cost of the hosting plan itself, and move my account elsewhere. Fortunately my domain names are all registered elsewhere so they have no leverage there.
may be they are just trying their luck in making you upgrade your hosting plan. Not so ethical as i can see.
well, on a shared host only bandwidth specifically flowing via HTTP to YOUR domain counts in the stats. if someone DDOS´es only the IP, on which your site resides, not your domain, the host cannot determine which customer is being attacked. so if nothing suspicious shows up in your traffic stats, they are bull´s hitting you.
That's not totally correct as most hosting panels will also show traffic for ftp, mail, ssh and the like. I'd be moving. I have a feeling that if you press the issue, they'll just cancel your account. get a backup now at the very least. Also screencaps of the usage that you see, bandwidth and page traffic. If you do dispute the charges, you'll need it for proof of their lack of proof. One thing that comes to mind though is if you;re running a heavy resource site like wordpress. Even with a few plugins, wordpress gets a bit heavy with resource requirements and, if you;re on an overloaded server, that may be looking for someone to get rid of or boot.
Yes my cpanel is also combined. In the bandwidth section it has the bandwidth divided into http, ftp, and various other categories. According to the log I've only used 1% of my monthly bandwidth limit! Yet they claim I reached my limit on the 13th of this month. Having looked around the web this host (I won't mention their name) seems to be gaining a pretty bad reputation. I imagine they sold too many bargain basement hosting plans and are now trying to recoup their losses from existing customers by making these exhaggerated bandwidth claims to the unsuspecting, and then insisting clients upgrade their plan or be suspended. If the bandwidth is disputed they then resort to a "it was a ddos attack" excuse, and continue to demand further payments.
I had this same issue with my previous host. They were continuously closing my website and displaying a 500 error page because they claimed I used too much bandwidth and resources ... In that time, my website only received about 200 visitors a day. Don't tell me a server can't handle 200 visitors a day lol.