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I'm curious why Eastern Europe/Russia are the wild west of douchey internet behavior. I mean there are seemingly endless bulletproof hosting providers. Who wake

I'm curious why Eastern Europe/Russia are the wild west of douchey internet behavior. I mean there are seemingly endless bulletproof hosting providers. Who wakes up in the morning with the ultimate goal of being slimy on purpose like that? And why are there so many of them concentrated in Russia/Eastern Europe?

jungturk 7y ago
I'd assume that the ultimate goal that motivates most of them is to make money to improve other parts of their lives. That often boils down to reaping the gains and externalizing the costs, which these hosting solutions seem to do fairly well for their owners (though perhaps not for the operators that get caught up in the eventual stings).
swalls 7y ago
As far as I know, it's at least partially because Russia doesn't extradite citizens and doesn't respond to other countries requesting they investigate.
opportune 7y ago
If you think about it from the host countries’ perspective, stealing money from foreigners or nefariously affecting them doesn’t harm the hosts much but can bring in a lot of money to their economies.
ryanlol 7y ago
>And why are there so many of them concentrated in Russia/Eastern Europe? They aren’t, the vast majority of them are in the Netherlands. Why NL? Cheap and just the traditional destination.
Havoc 7y ago
It's a competitive advantage vs legit hosting companies that can be leveraged for profit. Simple as that. If it pays well someone will do it, slimy or not.
ChuckMcM 7y ago
In talking with a guy that was trying to sell me data center space in a Ukranian data center, his pitch was that that as long as your activities targeted "western" countries you could host activities that more local data centers might disallow in their TOS. He pointed out that they turned off the local DNS function when ever someone was in the building who wasn't a customer. I found that somewhat strange at first and then realized that it was essentially a "bell ringer" protocol for people who might want to wipe their servers in the event of people being there that didn't belong. All in all, a very different way of operating.

jungturk 7y ago

I'd assume that the ultimate goal that motivates most of them is to make money to improve other parts of their lives. That often boils down to reaping the gains and externalizing the costs, which these hosting solutions seem to do fairly well for their owners (though perhaps not for the operators that get caught up in the eventual stings).

swalls 7y ago

As far as I know, it's at least partially because Russia doesn't extradite citizens and doesn't respond to other countries requesting they investigate.

opportune 7y ago

If you think about it from the host countries’ perspective, stealing money from foreigners or nefariously affecting them doesn’t harm the hosts much but can bring in a lot of money to their economies.

ryanlol 7y ago

>And why are there so many of them concentrated in Russia/Eastern Europe? They aren’t, the vast majority of them are in the Netherlands. Why NL? Cheap and just the traditional destination.

Havoc 7y ago

It's a competitive advantage vs legit hosting companies that can be leveraged for profit. Simple as that. If it pays well someone will do it, slimy or not.

ChuckMcM 7y ago

In talking with a guy that was trying to sell me data center space in a Ukranian data center, his pitch was that that as long as your activities targeted "western" countries you could host activities that more local data centers might disallow in their TOS. He pointed out that they turned off the local DNS function when ever someone was in the building who wasn't a customer. I found that somewhat strange at first and then realized that it was essentially a "bell ringer" protocol for people who might want to wipe their servers in the event of people being there that didn't belong. All in all, a very different way of operating.