Web Hosting Talk : Web Hosting Main Forums : Web Hosting : Hostgator modify my .htaccess

[adulu]

I got email from hostgator.
they modify my htaccess and say:This is a notification to inform you that we were forced to modify your .htaccess file in order to preserve server stability.

deny from 114.24.150.4

what's this IP address.?
Hacker?
search robots?

[rds100]

Probably someone has tried flooding/DoSing your server from this IP. A robot (as in search engine) would not have caused any noticable load, to justify blocking it.

[adulu]

Hostgator seems is pretty good.
they can help customer prevent, avoid bad ip.

[WWS2010]

http://whois.domaintools.com/114.24.150.4

IP Location: Taiwan Taipei Chunghwa Telecom Data Communication Business Group

Probably someone flooding your site. Good pro-active support from hostgator

[LawsHosting]

If this is a shared hosting environment, usually IP's are blocked at firewall level - bit concerning they actually accessed your account without consent.

[TheJoker]

Consent can take time that brings the server to its knees.

[HostLeet]

Originally Posted by LawsHosting

If this is a shared hosting environment, usually IP's are blocked at firewall level - bit concerning they actually accessed your account without consent.

What's so concerning about it? They can do whatever they want on their servers. I would much rather have a provider that would take initiative and prevent something bad from happening, than wait until the server is crashed to do something about it. I give props to HostGator for looking out for their client and everyone else on the server.

[Lanny]

Kudos to HostGator sys admins for being pro active and taking care of this issue, before the client even knew about it. Well dome HostGator!

[Dave - Just199]

I agree that there is nothing wrong with this. They could have simply suspended his account but instead they blocked access to his site by the ip that was causing an issue.

There might not be cause to blacklist that ip from the entire datacenter but a sloppy script combined with excessive requests by a particular IP might cause load issues.

[Patrick]

Originally Posted by LawsHosting

If this is a shared hosting environment, usually IP's are blocked at firewall level - bit concerning they actually accessed your account without consent.

I completely disagree. If a particular IP range is causing a problem with specific sites, it's better to block them at the user level (.htaccess) than at the global level. Random (mostly unknown) search engines are usually the biggest culprit here, some sites handle them better than others. As for accessing an account without consent, the alternatives would be:

1. Suspend their entire account for causing too much of a load and let them sort it out however many hours it takes them to read their email, if they read it at all.

2. Leave everything as is and let the user make the change. After a few days of them not reading your email and dozens of users complaining about the high load on your shared server, end up making the change yourself.

Sometimes you have to take matters into your own hands and any responsible user would understand that.

[SH-Mau]

+1 to Host Gator, they take serious their customers Next time ask them about their actions.

[Mekhu]

Originally Posted by adulu

what's this IP address.? Hacker? search robots?

Open a ticket and ask. I'm sure they'd be more than willing to let you know.

Originally Posted by LawsHosting

If this is a shared hosting environment, usually IP's are blocked at firewall level - bit concerning they actually accessed your account without consent.

I can see where you're coming from on this one but I also think it's pretty awesome HostGator was proactive the way they were. As a client, I'd have NO problem with my hosting company acting in this manner. It's too bad more aren't as on top of things.

[MikeDVB]

Originally Posted by LawsHosting

If this is a shared hosting environment, usually IP's are blocked at firewall level - bit concerning they actually accessed your account without consent.

The only "access" required would be:

echo "deny from 114.24.150.4" >> /home/theaccount/public_html/.htaccess

They wouldn't even have to "log in" to your account or "view" any of your files to make this change, not that it would matter much anyhow. If you really don't want your provider to have access to your account, you shouldn't be hosting in a shared environment.

[fwiw]

That IP looks like a VPN or proxy. Probably just a minor DoS attack.

[dnki]

Could be someone trying to scrape your website, the better hosts make changes proactively.