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DigitialOcean is a hotbed for hosting spam/abusive domains, spam/abusive email hosting (used to host temp emails for creating fake accounts on other platforms)

DigitialOcean is a hotbed for hosting spam/abusive domains, spam/abusive email hosting (used to host temp emails for creating fake accounts on other platforms), and hosting abusive VPNs/proxies. The good thing is, this is very easy to detect when things are hosted on DO. The bad news is, companies are harsh on DigitalOcean and will have some level of false positives.

bombcar 3y ago
Sometimes I think the bargain-basement hosts like DO exist simply so we have an easy group to block/avoid. Some innocents get caught in that crossfire, however.
- graemep 3y ago
  So things like personal sites and blogs should be hosted on expensive hosts? Not reasonable.
  - ghaff 3y ago
    Reasonable or not, the company you keep is treated as a thing. As far as I can tell, Google Blogger is still a pretty reasonable site for a blog and some static pages. And it’s free. Of course you may not like that option for various other reasons.
    - dylan604 3y ago
      Yes, guilt by association is a thing. I was hit in the crossfire with it as well a long time ago.
  - kjs3 3y ago
    False equivalence. There are many free/low price options for 'personal sites and blogs' that aren't sleazy hosting companies if cost is your key differentiator. Now, if it's "I will only accept an option where I can paint my bikeshed the exact color I want, with any brush I choose to use", then yeah, you've painted yourself into a bit of a corner options-wise and may end up as collateral damage. TANSTAAFL.
    - bombcar 3y ago
      The reality is many people don't know the "reputation" of DO, see it as a cheap hosting site with good tutorials, and start using it. They then get caught in the crossfire, but the correct complaint would be to DO not to the people who are taking the relatively reasonable and easy way out of "ban this part of the Internet, it sucks."
      - kjs3 3y ago
        Sure, but the OP made out like the only options for personal stuff were cheap, shitty hosting providers, or expensive ones. And that's not true. We can't make people do research, but don't equate "lack of due diligence" with "lack of options".
annoyingnoob 3y ago
I block DO IPs from SMTP because of spam/phishing.
dlbucci 3y ago
Is this DO specific? Aren't there other hosting providers with competitive rates, or is there something about DO that makes it especially good for this sort of thing?
- TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
  There are many, many US and UK hosting providers with the same price: $5/month VPS with 1 GB ram, 1 virtual CPU, and 1 TB bandwidth
- ronnier 3y ago
  No it's not DO specific. It's just that DO is popular for whatever reason.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    There's probably some HOW-TO that was created that went through the process using DO, so now everyone else using it now also uses DO.
  - kobalsky 3y ago
    > for whatever reason it's very, very, very simple to use. some people can't even navigate AWS or GCP, not to mention that the pricing is unclear as it can be. for people learning by practice it's a nightmare.
    - transcriptase 3y ago
      The fact that there's an entire consulting industry around helping people figure out very basic pricing for very basic tasks on AWS should be a wake-up call that their documentation and calculators are awful. Then again I'm sure there's no incentive to improve it, since if for whatever reason you were laid off from AWS... you could have a lucrative consulting gig the next day helping people with the blindingly obvious consumer pain points you refused to resolve.
      - 3y ago
superkuh 3y ago
The funny thing is that amazon's cloud has way more abuse going on but no one can justify blocking all of amazon the same way.
patja 3y ago
I have a postfix server I've hosted on DO for over 15 years. It is only on the UCEPROTECT block lists that block all of DO, everything else is clean. I use it mostly for receive-only and use Amazon SES to send anything where deliverability to customers is important. What's a solid low cost ($5/month) VPS provider that is below the radar for this kind of broad brush blocking based on guilt by association? Thinking of making a move, but I kind of hate to give up the 15 years of good reputation on my IP address and starting over.
- nwilkens 3y ago
  Over here at https://mnx.io https://mnx.io we fit that description, and we do our best to keep our IP space clean.

bombcar 3y ago

Sometimes I think the bargain-basement hosts like DO exist simply so we have an easy group to block/avoid. Some innocents get caught in that crossfire, however.

graemep 3y ago
So things like personal sites and blogs should be hosted on expensive hosts? Not reasonable.
- ghaff 3y ago
  Reasonable or not, the company you keep is treated as a thing. As far as I can tell, Google Blogger is still a pretty reasonable site for a blog and some static pages. And it’s free. Of course you may not like that option for various other reasons.
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Yes, guilt by association is a thing. I was hit in the crossfire with it as well a long time ago.
- kjs3 3y ago
  False equivalence. There are many free/low price options for 'personal sites and blogs' that aren't sleazy hosting companies if cost is your key differentiator. Now, if it's "I will only accept an option where I can paint my bikeshed the exact color I want, with any brush I choose to use", then yeah, you've painted yourself into a bit of a corner options-wise and may end up as collateral damage. TANSTAAFL.
  - bombcar 3y ago
    The reality is many people don't know the "reputation" of DO, see it as a cheap hosting site with good tutorials, and start using it. They then get caught in the crossfire, but the correct complaint would be to DO not to the people who are taking the relatively reasonable and easy way out of "ban this part of the Internet, it sucks."
    - kjs3 3y ago
      Sure, but the OP made out like the only options for personal stuff were cheap, shitty hosting providers, or expensive ones. And that's not true. We can't make people do research, but don't equate "lack of due diligence" with "lack of options".

annoyingnoob 3y ago

I block DO IPs from SMTP because of spam/phishing.

dlbucci 3y ago

Is this DO specific? Aren't there other hosting providers with competitive rates, or is there something about DO that makes it especially good for this sort of thing?

TedDoesntTalk 3y ago
There are many, many US and UK hosting providers with the same price: $5/month VPS with 1 GB ram, 1 virtual CPU, and 1 TB bandwidth
ronnier 3y ago
No it's not DO specific. It's just that DO is popular for whatever reason.
- dylan604 3y ago
  There's probably some HOW-TO that was created that went through the process using DO, so now everyone else using it now also uses DO.
- kobalsky 3y ago
  > for whatever reason it's very, very, very simple to use. some people can't even navigate AWS or GCP, not to mention that the pricing is unclear as it can be. for people learning by practice it's a nightmare.
  - transcriptase 3y ago
    The fact that there's an entire consulting industry around helping people figure out very basic pricing for very basic tasks on AWS should be a wake-up call that their documentation and calculators are awful. Then again I'm sure there's no incentive to improve it, since if for whatever reason you were laid off from AWS... you could have a lucrative consulting gig the next day helping people with the blindingly obvious consumer pain points you refused to resolve.
    - 3y ago

superkuh 3y ago

The funny thing is that amazon's cloud has way more abuse going on but no one can justify blocking all of amazon the same way.

patja 3y ago

I have a postfix server I've hosted on DO for over 15 years. It is only on the UCEPROTECT block lists that block all of DO, everything else is clean. I use it mostly for receive-only and use Amazon SES to send anything where deliverability to customers is important. What's a solid low cost ($5/month) VPS provider that is below the radar for this kind of broad brush blocking based on guilt by association? Thinking of making a move, but I kind of hate to give up the 15 years of good reputation on my IP address and starting over.

nwilkens 3y ago
Over here at https://mnx.io https://mnx.io we fit that description, and we do our best to keep our IP space clean.