[flashmob]

Admin of Guerrilla Mail here.

I've been hosting the site on OVH since 2016. The site hasn't changed much during this time, and I've been quite happy with their services until now.

A little bit about Guerrilla Mail: It its' first and foremost, an anti-spam solution. Nowhere on the website it says that's an "anonymous email" provider. In fact, the email sending feature prominently warned the user that their IP address would be included in the headers of the email sent. (The sending feature was not for anonymous email, but for the rare chance that a user needed to send an email from there or reply. Guerrilla Mail is mostly used for receiving)

The timeline for the suspension went like this:

On October 12th, I received what seemed like a canned message from the OVHCloud Abuse team, saying that my server was (quote) "used for a fraudulent activity" and threatening termination within 48 hours.

There was no further details about the nature of the "fraudulent activity". I've replied to the message asking to give more details.

On October 16, I've received a reply, but still no details about the specific case. They mentioned that, their quote: "the problem here is clearly, that your service is too easy to use for fraudulent and illegal activities. ", further threatening to shut down the service within 7 days "if the situation does not improve". They also suggested a list of measures that the site should take.

I've replied informing that most of measures that they suggested were already taken, plus some other measures including an anti-abuse policy that has worked well over the years.

On October 19, I received a reply, this time hinting that I should pay them for an additional service, their quote "Maybe you see an option in using a service which lets you customize the Whois-Record, so your contact details can be mentioned for abuse instead of ours.".

I've started to deeply consider such a service, but before I would take it up, I wanted to get more info about the alleged law enforcement requests they receive, that are never forwarded, so I've asked them for more information about these once again.

On November 2nd, I received a reply, but still no details about the specific case, or the rate of such requests, questions that I've asked previously were ignored. Again, they were offering the additional service, their quote "change of infra to have your own abuse contact in registry info".

At this stage I was ready to buy whatever they were offering. I've replied to the email with only two sentences "Is there someone I can speak with directly on your team? Let's do a 30 minute call and reach an understanding."

On November 4th, I received a reply notifying that the server has been suspended.

Btw, if there's anyone at OVH that wants to look at the issue, it is WTLXFRCVSG.85a1

[n348n]

your server seems reachable through a ping. If I understand well the situation it seems that they suggest you to acquiert your own IP address to have your own @abuse contact. I think a lot of guys report your ip to @abuse (managed by OVH, not you) about spam that why OVH react.

However in that type of case, OVH swap your boot to a rescue mode : https://docs.ovh.com/gb/en/dedicated/ovh-rescue/

You should be able to swap it to a normal boot mode.

[flashmob]

Yes, I was under the impression that this is what they meant. It would have been great to be able to to chat so that I could learn more about how much this would cost, but as outlined above, they decided to end the conversation.

You're right, currently the server is sitting in "rescue mode" and under OVH's instructions, I'm not allowed to swap it back to the normal hard disk boot. That's ok, I can still mount the disks manually via SSH and move everything out. So at least that's some good news - the server hasn't been seized.

The hosting bill has been paid up until December, so I'll will be looking to get a partial refund hopefully.

Anyways, gotta roll with the punches I guess. Thanks for your comment.