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Thread: HostGator & Attracta
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02-07-2012, 10:20 AM #1Newbie
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HostGator & Attracta
A short while back, a new group of cPanel icons appeared in my VPS account with HostGator. There was no prior announcement of what they were, so I was curious.
I clicked one of the SEO icons to see what it did, and was taken to the Attracta site and exhorted to sign up for various things that I didn't want.
That was enough for me. I closed that browser window and decided to never use the new cPanel icons.
Then, the emails began. I never entered any information, so they had to get my email address from HostGator. The messages insult your intelligence by telling you that you signed-up for their service. Typical spam behavior.
They also state that you agree to their terms of service by using their tools. They don't provide a simple way to unsubscribe, but instead require you to log in to an account that you have not created in order to manage your contact information. This was becoming a real "tar baby".
I went into WHM and disabled the entire group of Attracta cPanel icons, and sent my objections to this scammy behavior to HostGator.
I later saw a forum posting from HG apologizing for the implementation and stating that Attracta signups would be opt-in in the future. That touch of wisdom was a bit late.
HostGator has been a pretty decent host so far, but this Attracta fiasco was an example of seriously bad judgement on the part of HG.
Legitimate software does not behave like this stuff does. This is the way scam software works. They should have known better than to do this to their customers.
Brigand
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02-07-2012, 10:32 AM #2Web Hosting Evangelist
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Were you given no warning that new icons would appear? It seems suspicious that they would turn up without Hostgator mentioning it in some way.
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02-07-2012, 11:00 AM #3New Member
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You are getting me worried now, I actually signed up to Attracta and it seemed fine. Didn't get a single e-mail from them.
Also their reviews don't seem THAT bad...
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02-07-2012, 11:11 AM #4Newbie
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02-07-2012, 11:26 AM #5Cloud & Web Hosting Specialist
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[ James Lee - Cloud & Web Hosting Specialist • 10+ Years WHT Veteran]
[ Magento Performance Consultation by Magento Master ]
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02-07-2012, 01:40 PM #6Newbie
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Attracta is being bundled into cPanel as a default service. That could be why you suddenly saw it without notice.
http://www.cpanel.net/2011/10/cpanel...-attracta.html
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02-07-2012, 01:52 PM #7Hello World
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02-07-2012, 01:57 PM #8Newbie
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02-07-2012, 02:09 PM #9Hello World
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02-07-2012, 02:14 PM #10Newbie
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02-07-2012, 02:17 PM #11Newbie
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It was suggested by another HostGator customer that we may have been the test group for the upcoming cPanel implementation. That sounds possible. Hopefully, their implementation will be better conceived as a result of our misfortune.
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02-07-2012, 02:20 PM #12Hello World
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02-07-2012, 02:24 PM #13Newbie
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02-07-2012, 02:26 PM #14Disabled
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That is not true. Its not a default. Its an extra addon and you need to enable it via WHM.
cPanel would never put as a default third party tools. Its optional and the server admin can integrate it to their cPanel services or not.
If the OP had it in their WHM, it means someone activated the option for him and from what I read HostGator did it. I suppose he has a managed VPS where they have access to it.
This is not different to them putting their banner in the 404 error pages of their customers. Honestly I think its intrusive. The VPS client should be asked before enabling extra icons or services in his VPS, not enable them by default.
Nothing that is a third party or extra should be installed without the customers consent over it.
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02-08-2012, 07:01 AM #15Web Hosting Master
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This applies to every account type at HostGator. It includes VPS and Dedicated servers.
We're happy to announce we've recently rolled out Attracta SEO Tools on our VPS and Dedicated hosting solutions.
They are even working with Attracta to let people resell it:
http://forums.hostgator.com/introduc...m-t161729.htmldrew@slicie.com - Vertical Scaling Servers
30 Minute Backups - Pay for what you use
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02-08-2012, 08:18 AM #16Web Hosting Master
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02-08-2012, 11:57 AM #17Newbie
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06-09-2012, 11:39 AM #18New Member
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attracta is deleting my robots.txt settings
I never enrolled in attracta, and was never informed by HG that this system was in place on my shared hosting. I happened to look at my robots.txt files for my different domains and discovered that attracta had preempted them, so that my custom setting were no longer being read! I have not been able to delete the file: it keeps coming back. I have a support ticket in to HG, and will report to this thread if there is anything useful.
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06-09-2012, 01:34 PM #19Web Hosting Master
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Was going to say, this pretty much sounds like hostgator, except usually they're banking off your visitors either to the 404, parking, etc rather than making you a victim of it (which wouldn't be that hard as they already have your information on file and could sell to 'partners' if they wanted).
LOL I wonder how much commission they got so far from the screwup?IonVz - Nginx/FreeBSD/VPS Consulting | VPSNodeBox - Managed Support Representative
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