Elliott C. Back: Technology FTW!

Is Clubhostcity.com Spammer’s Paradise?

Posted in My Blog, Spam by Elliott Back on August 28th, 2006.

I sent an email to Layeredtech, because DNS claimed that they owned the IP which operated Accelzone, a splog ripping off my content, but then I got the following email from Club Host City, who claim they actually operate the site:

We have received your complaint regarding copyright issues with Accelzone.com forwarded to us via the 3rd party that you erroneously contacted, Layered Technologies, who incidentally has absolutely nothing to do with Accelzone.com whatsoever and is **NOT** the hosting provider for that domain.

Did you ever think about looking at the WHOIS information on the domain instead of trying to do an IP lookup?

We share the same data center as Layered Technologies and our IP addresses come out of the same IP pool as them in the Saavis data center, Dallas, TX but we have no affiliation with that company other than the common location.

For future reference, the hosting provider is the domain shown on the DNS servers and also listed as the contact
address in the DNS record header.

If you just took a look at the header record of the DNS or the DNS servers listed in the WHOIS, you would already know who the hosting provider was.

The hosting provider for Accelzone.com is Cybertoad Networks located on the web at www.cybertoad.net which is a reseller under our company, Clubhost City.

We would have been happy to handle your complaint! However, we have absolutely no tolerance for dead light bulbs like yourself so we are instead going to ban you from our entire network and all web sites that we control (more than 3 million) and instruct the reseller to give the customer Accelzone.com a free upgrade to the next account plan at our expense.

Next time you should be more careful!
–
Abuse / Policy Enforcement
Clubhost City

Here’s what DNS says for accelzone.com:

Domain Name: ACCELZONE.COM

Registrant:
accelzone
accelz *******@gmail.com)
4th street
NY
,90210
US
Tel. +76.12121455

Creation Date: 10-Nov-2005
Expiration Date: 10-Nov-2006

Domain servers in listed order:
ns2.clubhostcity.com
ns.clubhostcity.com

That doesn’t tell me anything substantive, so I looked up the IP address (72.36.230.170) and then WHOISed it:

OrgName: Layered Technologies, Inc.
OrgID: LAYER-3
Address: 18816 Preston Road
Address: Suite #100
City: Dallas
StateProv: TX
PostalCode: 75252
Country: US

ReferralServer: rwhois.layeredtech.com:4321

NetRange: 72.36.128.0 - 72.36.255.255
CIDR: 72.36.128.0/17
NetName: LAYERED-TECH-
NetHandle: NET-72-36-128-0-1
Parent: NET-72-0-0-0-0
NetType: Direct Allocation
NameServer: NS1.LAYEREDTECH.COM
NameServer: NS2.LAYEREDTECH.COM
Comment: Please send all abuse complaints to
Comment: *****@layeredtech.com
Comment: Please send all network queries to ***@layeredtech.com
RegDate: 2005-02-22
Updated: 2005-09-07

Since everything pointed to the site being hosted by Layeredtech, I don’t think I was wrong in initially emailing, and cannot believe the response I got from Clubhostcity. I replied to them:

The WHOIS information does not actually list clubhostcity as being anything but the nameserver, which is not an indicator of hosting status or not. I use dreamhost as a nameserver for many of my domains, while they’re hosted elsewhere on a dedicated server. Instead, I looked up the IP address to determine who was hosting accelzone, and it returned that the IP came from within Layered Tech’s address space. Naturally, I contacted their abuse department first, who insisted that I file a DMCA complaint. I’m not sure how I could have determined that you were actually the host.

Since I seem to have erroneously sent them that email, I’ll file it instead with you. Please expect to receive a DMCA notice by email shortly.

It seems that the infringing page is now down, but at what cost? Here’s a screenshot:

clubhostcity.jpg

This is perhaps worse than dealing with yesterday’s incident with Robert Scoble, because the relationship between him and I involved correction and communication across a larger mistake. Here we have no mistake on my part (as far as I can tell) and incredible arrogance on the part of the host. Sorry Clubhostcity; in your email you confess that you’re going to give a spammer and splogger a bonus for evading the legal system. That means bloggers won’t like you.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 28th, 2006 at 10:17 pm and is tagged with saavis, ip lookup, light bulbs, splog, record header, club host, entire network, dns record, dns servers, header record, whois, host city, copyright issues, free upgrade, abuse policy, contact address, 90210, registrant, hosting provider, dallas tx. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

Viewing 11 Comments

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    "Please expect to receive a DMCA notice by email shortly."

    Do you actually have a reasonably legal DMCA notice, and is sending it via email sufficient? I'd imagine you have to send it via certified mail or somesuch, no?
    • ^
    • v
    Hm, I hadn't run across this particular problem before. I've dealt with LayeredTech and was very impressed, but I hadn't heard of this happening. I'll have to keep my eyes open about this and do a follow up on it soon.

    Hope tha tall is well!

    PS: Feel free to write me if I can help.
    • ^
    • v
    This entire news article and all related comments is fraudulent and bogus!

    1. None of the email messages that Elliot Back claimed to have recieved above are real and we did not send any such email messages.

    2. Immediately upon receiving a forwarded message from Elliot claiming copyright violations for one of our customer sites, we suspended that customer's account and opened up a formal investigation which led ultimately to the termination of that customer's hosting account.

    3. Clubhost City is the #1 top premier company against spam and is probably the only hosting company on the planet that can legitimately claim to be spam free and piracy free and all member accounts are very closely monitored.

    Elliot Back, your attack on our company is not only fraudulent but is also unwarranted as we already cancelled the customer in question upon receipt of your very first email message and you already got what you wanted. Our company has a zero tolerance policy on matters of piracy and copyright infringement issues.

    Your creating bogus email messages in an effort to taint our reputation as some sort of attack on us or blackmail attempt serves you absolutely no purpose whatsoever other than to bring possible legal action against you for unlawful and wrongful slander.

    YOU WILL REMOVE YOUR NEWS POSTS IMMEDIATELY!

    Editor's note: The IP address of this comment matches the absurd emails I was sent from Clubhostcity. Read into it what you will.
    • ^
    • v
    this is not the first time that such insanity has spawned from this host. On a regular basis the owner blames hackers, and time travellers for whatever woes his site is currently suffering.
    the worst part is that sometimes people actually get sucked in, and believe his special blend of herbs and BS.
    take for instance, this poor soul:
    http://www.gidforums.com/t-2222.html
    he got sucked in, there was no hacker running around the forums, and servers, it was just the admin, toad, having himself some fun.
    additionally.
    what is funny, is that the email you post reflects the wording, and attitude he regularly flaunts, right down to the "we will ban you from our 3 million sites" line.
    • ^
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    layeredtech is actually everyone's internet. everyone's internet is well known to let harassers, trolls ans spammers violate the networks...

    they are one of the worst as far as enforcement goes.

    boycott them.
    • ^
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    Hey,

    Have a look at my blog post on my (past) situation with cybertoad,net/clubhostcity.com!

    http://anotherpage.net/?p=23
    • ^
    • v
    I will back you the full way Elliot, apparently this guy 'toad' owns half of the internet, to me he's nothing but a joke.
    • ^
    • v
    I have had terrible experience with ClubHostCity. They have STOLEN my domains. I "own" http://thevistageeks.com and http://viennaforums.net

    I have contacted ClubHostCity more than 10 times... They don't even replay to your e-mails anymore. Also the post from Clubhost City has the same tone of previous messages I received while I was disputing my paypal's payments to them. I wrote to the BBB and I'm willing to get my sites back no matter what... By the way, I'm so happy they have vanished... check out http://clubhostcity.com
    • ^
    • v
    I paid for hositing with AmzWeb and even though I'm paid up until April 2008, hosting has completely vanished without any sort of explanation or apology or refund. It's been gone since at least September.
    • ^
    • v
    layeredtech needs to enforce terms of service

    “Originally posted by Sarge
    For those who would like to harass this guy... here is your information.
    Mailing Address:
    ROTH ARMY WORLD HEADQUARTERS
    P.O. BOX 3131
    HARKER HEIGHTS, TEXAS 76548

    Make all post to Christopher Stucky

    I thank you for your generosity in the past, and in your continuing support!
    Rock On Nation Of Roth!
    Sarge
    ”


    Unfortunately we had to ban someone that beats up cars today
    As a pillar of free speech and whatnot we hate to do this but 0leVonBizzarro/Blondie was making online and telephone threats and needs some psychiatric help that we don't have the time or inclination to indulge him with.

    He's a well known mentalist that has been trying to cause trouble at various websites for the past few years as well as as having federal conviction.

    As ever here we try out best to never edit or ban people but we also have a moral duty of care to protect the people that post here.

    His real name is Edward Przydzial and is a classic example of the old adage that by the time you reach your 40s you get the face you deserve.

    Here is an extract from a newspaper from when he used to live in Detroit.
    Quote:
    Detroit News, April 25, 1988
    Did fan step over edge from fantasy to fraud?

    Fantasy figures with nightmare faces leapt and writhed on stage behind a tall young man who stood below, throwing paper scraps into the smoky air above the audience.

    On each piece was drawn a pair of lips, a Detroit telephone number and the name Ed Przydzial. The thin youth, in the last of his teen-age years, was slavishly devoted to the rock-and-roll band Kiss, which was performing on the stage behind him in Cobo Hall.

    He was soliciting amateur photographs of the group. That was early 1983.
    Today, Przydzial, 24, sits in the federal prison at Milan under grand jury indictment for multiple counts of fraud and interstate transportation of property obtained by fraud. The indictment describes a scheme that is virtually the first of its kind, at least in scope, for a little-known industry that operates largely on trust and good faith.

    Edward Bernard Przydzial -- pronounced Prisdale -- is accused of posing as an editor of rock industry publications to trick professional photographers and photo stock houses in the United States and England into sending him original pictures of rock bands and musicians.

    Investigators said they seized nearly 2,400 photos from Przydzial as evidence for the indictment. Later seizures raised the total to about 6,000, but investigators have not yet determined which of those are amateur snapshots -- such as those taken by fans in the audience at that 1983 concert -- and which are marketable, professional photos.

    An industry standard sets the replacement value of the commercial photos at $1,500 each. By that measure, which Przydzial's lawyer intends to challenge in court, the seized photos are worth $3.6 mullion -- and perhaps millions more.

    Federal authorities say it was Przydzial's intent to sell the photos as his own work. They do not, however, know if he ever did so.
    They charge that he used aliases while running the scheme, among them the name "Mark Dallas."

    One of those he is accused of victimizing, a New York photographer who tried to do business with him under the Dallas alias, offers another possible motive.
    While the charges are serious and the photo industry is intent on seeing them prosecuted to conclusion, "I feel sorry for this person named Mark Dallas," says Raeanne Rubenstein, owner of Telephoto, a New York photo stock house. Her complaint started the federal investigation that ended in Przydzial's indictment.

    "Obviously his fan dom took him over the edge."

    ***

    Przydzial's family refuses to talk about him, other than to say he grew up in the Brightmoor area on the west side of Detroit, attended a Catholic grade school and Redford High School, and worked sometimes as a free-lance photographer. Federal officials familiar with the case say they have been unable to determine if he was ever gainfully employed.
    Przydzial's Attorney refuses to allow her client to be interviewed.
    But other people have had contact with him.
    "I just think he was a fan and I just think he was obsessed," says Ginay Cartmell, forrmer associate art director for the rock magazine Creem, which moved from its Metro Detroit offices to Los Angeles early last year. Cartmell remembers Przydzial in the early '80s, when he regularly called the magazine asking for photos of Kiss.

    The Quartet, then at the peak of its popularity, performed wearing Kabuki-like face paint and affecting the roles of a reptilian demon, an androgynous lover, a space ace, and a cat. Their act was a loud, high-tech replay of the French Grand Guignoll full of such shock theatrics as fire-breathing and spitting streams of fake blood. They held a deep attraction for teen-agers.
    At the time Cartmell dealt with Przydzial -- during which she says he used as many as four different aliases in trying to obtain pictures of Kiss -- he was about 16.
    "My answer to him was that we bought one-time use of photos and we didn't keep any files," Cartmell says. "A lot of people are under the impression that magazines have huge files of different groups. But unless you have staff photographers, which Creem did not, you do not own the photos outright.
    "I think he was real aggravated because we wouldn't give him photos."

    The frustration led to threats against the magazine, says Dave DiMartino, former managing editor.
    "At Creem, we referred to him as The Kiss Guy," DiMartino says of Przydzial. "As far as we knew, he was the world's biggest Kiss fan and wanted to amass as much materials about them as possible." During one telephone conversation, which DiMartino recorded, a caller who DiMartino identifies as Przydzial said:
    "We're gonna be harassing you people like you never dreamed. You already know that I know more people that you thought I knew, because you've contacted a lot of my deals, my business deals, and screwed them up for me... You talked to people that we work with, that we were trying to work, you know, business deals out with, such as photographers."

    DiMartino says that the call was one of dozens that ended only after Creem editors complained to the police, who warned Przydzial to stop.
    After that, DiMartino did not hear much about Przydzial until the federal fraud charges against him were announced last month.
    Following up on the complaint from Rubenstein, in New York, the FBI interviewed numerous photographers and photo agency employees who said they had been victimized by a young man in Detroit.
    In several cases, investigators said, photographs were sent to a Mark Dallas, who represented himself on the telephone as an editor or researcher for Creem.

    "He contacted us by telephone," says Jesse Morales, a salesman for Globe Photo in New York, which is named as one of the victims in the Przydzial indictment. "The first contact was made on Feb. 19, 1987. He asked for (photos of) The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Kiss, everybody and anybody. He would give me specific names and I would send him a selection on each name.
    "All communications were through the phone. A woman would always answer the phone 'Creem Magazine,' and 'Let me connect you with Mark Dallas,' making it seem it was the actual magazine. The secretary used the name Lisa."
    By necessity, Moales says, photo stock houses such as Globe Photo operate on trust. Client magazines ask for pictures on a given topic or subject. A selection is sent to them with the understanding that they will be returned undamaged within a set amount of time. And if the client decides to publish one of the photos from the selection, a fee is paid to use it once.
    Rights to print a specific photograph might be sold dozens of times to many different publications. For that reason, Morales says, the industry has set a standard $1,500 value for commercial-quality pictures that are lost or stolen.

    Morales says he sent some 500 photos to Mark Dallas and has not seen them since.
    By the time FBI agents had interviewed Morales and numerous others with similar experiences, served search warrants on a Detroit address used by Przydzial, and confiscated phone records and other documents which they say prove that he and Mark Dallas are one and the same person, they went looking for their suspect to make an arrest.
    They found him several weeks ago. He was a prisoner in Wayne County Jail.

    ***

    Last Dec. 18, police said, a Sterling Heights couple reported that their 20-year-old daughter Elizabeth -- nicknamed Lisa -- and her infant daughter had disappeared that day with Lisa's estranged husband, Ed Przydzial.
    Three days later, police forced open the back door of a house in Harper Woods that Przydzial shared with his grandmother, Adoline Hartley. They found Lisa standing in a bedroom with Hartley, who was holding the child, Brittany.
    When they entered an adjacent [line blurred by a fax error] aged wraith -- shirtless, barefoot, tall and very thin, arms hanging limp at his sides. Blood seeped from cuts on each wrist. Black hair fell straight from his head to the midline of his back.
    For a moment, Ed Przydzial faced the police, the palms of his hands turned forward to display his wounds. Then he walked to his bed, picked up the blade he had dropped there and lay on his back.
    He threatened more damage, but was persuaded against it. He was taken to a hospital and later to jail, accused of kidnapping his wife and daughter.
    Before the officers left the house, [line blurred by a fax error] room. His bed sheets were splashed scarlet. The walls were covered by posters of the rock group Kiss.

    As the officers worked, the fantasy faces on the walls stared down and waggled their tongues from painted faces.

    He has also in the past threatened other people that provide free rock music websites such as www.dlrarmy.com and www.metalsludge.com.

    All in all he seems to have some 'issues'. Sometimes it's tough being an ugly talentless duckling I guess.

    He registered with the email address was cardudeontheweb@hotmail.com and his is IP 24.126.87.77.

    Cheers!

    Registrant:
    David Lee Roth Army INC
    405 Jason Drive
    Harker Heights, Texas 76548
    United States

    Registered through: GoDaddy.com, Inc. (http://www.godaddy.com)
    Domain Name: DLRARMY.COM
    Created on: 22-Jan-99
    Expires on: 22-Jan-08
    Last Updated on: 22-Jan-06

    Administrative Contact:
    Stucky, Christopher webmaster@dlrarmy.com
    David Lee Roth Army INC
    405 Jason Drive
    Harker Heights, Texas 76548
    United States
    2546980087 Fax --

    Technical Contact:
    Stucky, Christopher webmaster@dlrarmy.com
    David Lee Roth Army INC
    405 Jason Drive
    Harker Heights, Texas 76548
    United States
    2546980087 Fax --

    Domain servers in listed order:
    NS1.PXNETWORK.COM
    ALPHA.PXNETWORK.COM
    dlrarmy.com

    72.21.39.2
    Record Type: IP Address

    OrgName: Layered Technologies, Inc.
    OrgID: LAYER-3
    Address:
    Address: 1647 Witt Road Suite#201
    City: Frisco
    StateProv: TX
    PostalCode: 75034
    Country: US

    ReferralServer: rwhois://rwhois.layeredtech.com:4321

    NetRange: 72.21.32.0 - 72.21.63.255
    CIDR: 72.21.32.0/19
    NetName: LAYERED-TECH
    NetHandle: NET-72-21-32-0-1
    Parent: NET-72-0-0-0-0
    NetType: Direct Allocation
    NameServer: NS1.LAYEREDTECH.COM
    NameServer: NS2.LAYEREDTECH.COM
    Comment:
    RegDate: 2004-12-08
    Updated: 2006-04-13

    OrgAbuseHandle: LAT-ARIN
    OrgAbuseName: LT Abuse Team
    OrgAbusePhone: +1-972-398-7998
    OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@layeredtech.com

    OrgNOCHandle: LIT-ARIN
    OrgNOCName: LT IP-Network Team
    OrgNOCPhone: +1-972-398-7998
    OrgNOCEmail: ipnet@layeredtech.com

    OrgTechHandle: LNT3-ARIN
    OrgTechName: LT NOC Team
    OrgTechPhone: +1-972-398-7998
    OrgTechEmail: ipnet@layeredtech.com

    [Post #129]
    Cum guzzler
    • ^
    • v
    hmmm... interesting.
 

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