Web Hosting Scams – How to Recognize One
Today there are over 200 million websites on the World Wide Web. Every website needs a web hosting provider in order to be connected to the internet and made available to all the internet users. Unfortunately this immense growth of the virtual world has given path to scammers and thieves. Surprisingly there are almost as many web hosting providers are web sites meaning you might be overwhelmed when trying to choose the right provider for you.
It is very important that you train yourself in order to know what to look for when searching for a web hosting provider. You need to be able to read in between the lines as they say in order to recognize a possible scam or fraud.
Be wary when you spot the following:
An offer that says it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that you cannot miss. Once you sign up and you give out your information you might be trapped with them. Either you lose your money or you lose your money; no way out!
A provider offering free domain names. This might catch the attention of any newbie but you have to be careful. They will offer names that will do nothing but ruin your business or won’t generate any business at all.
They are offering you free web space. You always have to read the fine print; you will find out that they will give you from 5 to 10 MB of web space but you have to follow their rules and limitations. So much for free, right?
Lots of them like to offer unlimited bandwidth and yes they catch many customers with that offer. The truth is there is no such thing as unlimited and it’s surprising that they still use it. The providers have limits on their own bandwidth meaning that there is no way for them to offer you unlimited.
Raise your eyebrows and be very careful when you see that there is no e-mail or phone number where to contact the provider. Imagine you sign up and the web site is not working at all, who would you call? Red flag should be raised when this happens, stay away!
Read carefully how the domain registration will be handled. By this we mean that make sure the provider is not registering your domain under their name because if you ever change providers you will lose your domain.
Avoid signing up for a long term contract. Many providers will try to trap you by offering you a discount when you do one of these. The problem is web hosting providers are created and destroyed every single day, how can you be sure that this one will have a long life? Do not commit yourself to a long term contract because most likely it means it is a scam provider or a weak one that won’t last long.
There are many providers that offer a money back guarantee, do not signup with one that doesn’t provide this.
Sometimes it’s hard to detect a scam in time and trust me there are tons of people that become victims each day. Let’s say the worst happened and the web host provider was a scammer that won’t refund you the money that you have invested. What can you do now? Well there is no guarantee that by fighting back you will get your money back however you can help others by preventing them about a specific provider. Visit www.bbb.org and file your complaint.
Today there are over 200 million websites on the World Wide Web. Every website needs a web hosting provider in order to be connected to the internet and made available to all the internet users. Unfortunately this immense growth of the virtual world has given path to scammers and thieves. Surprisingly there are almost as many web hosting providers are web sites meaning you might be overwhelmed when trying to choose the right provider for you.
It is very important that you train yourself in order to know what to look for when searching for a web hosting provider. You need to be able to read in between the lines as they say in order to recognize a possible scam or fraud.
Be wary when you spot the following:
An offer that says it’s a once in a lifetime opportunity that you cannot miss. Once you sign up and you give out your information you might be trapped with them. Either you lose your money or you lose your money; no way out!
A provider offering free domain names. This might catch the attention of any newbie but you have to be careful. They will offer names that will do nothing but ruin your business or won’t generate any business at all.
They are offering you free web space. You always have to read the fine print; you will find out that they will give you from 5 to 10 MB of web space but you have to follow their rules and limitations. So much for free, right?
Lots of them like to offer unlimited bandwidth and yes they catch many customers with that offer. The truth is there is no such thing as unlimited and it’s surprising that they still use it. The providers have limits on their own bandwidth meaning that there is no way for them to offer you unlimited.
Raise your eyebrows and be very careful when you see that there is no e-mail or phone number where to contact the provider. Imagine you sign up and the web site is not working at all, who would you call? Red flag should be raised when this happens, stay away!
Read carefully how the domain registration will be handled. By this we mean that make sure the provider is not registering your domain under their name because if you ever change providers you will lose your domain.
Avoid signing up for a long term contract. Many providers will try to trap you by offering you a discount when you do one of these. The problem is web hosting providers are created and destroyed every single day, how can you be sure that this one will have a long life? Do not commit yourself to a long term contract because most likely it means it is a scam provider or a weak one that won’t last long.
There are many providers that offer a money back guarantee, do not signup with one that doesn’t provide this.
Sometimes it’s hard to detect a scam in time and trust me there are tons of people that become victims each day. Let’s say the worst happened and the web host provider was a scammer that won’t refund you the money that you have invested. What can you do now? Well there is no guarantee that by fighting back you will get your money back however you can help others by preventing them about a specific provider. Visit www.bbb.org and file your complaint.
