Joannas Diary: a TGirl Blog : Warning, May Contain Nuts

Bah... As some of you are already aware my webhost Fasthosts decided to change all their users passwords last week, then tell you they'd done it after the event.

They would then send out a new master password via Royal Mail which would let us log in and change our passwords to something more useful.

This meant that I could not ftp into the Angels or this site, and that the database that ran the Angels forum was down plus several other DB-driven sites that I run. The ftp problem meant I couldnt even post a blog or upload a page to tell people what was going on. Hence I was inundated with emails over the weekend asking what had happened to the Angels...

We finally received the letter this morning so now I am going through and changing my passwords and reestablishing access to all my sites.

From the sounds of it this has been a major cockup on the part of Fasthosts, and as soon as I get a clear few days I will be migrating all my sites elsewhere.... I've seen a few possible alternatives.

11 Comments:

At December 04, 2007 11:59 AM, Karol Cross said…

Hi Jo
Those lovely helpful chaps have changed my ftp password too, so could you reset it when you have a mo?
Thanks!
Karol x

ps.
sorry haven't email or full web access at mo, so only way I can access site is via ftp!
At December 04, 2007 1:04 PM, Joanna said…

Hi karol.. I can't reset it as I have no idea what it was.. or what it has been changed to. Fasthosts wont let it be reset to whatever it was before too.

Send me a text with a new password and I'll change it to that.
At December 04, 2007 1:20 PM, Valerie S said…

Lucky you :-\ I'm using hostmonster.com for puuteri and so far it's been super and dirt cheap, seemed to get the best bang for buck ratio when I was reviewing.
At December 04, 2007 11:59 PM, Jessica Shannon said…

Ask Siobhan if she'll host them, erin would be more reliable than fasthosts!
At December 05, 2007 6:22 PM, Becky said…

Did you not get the original email from Fasthosts a few weeks ago that said they'd been hacked and a lot of FTP password data had been grabbed, and to immediately change your FTP password as a precaution?

I changed mine as soon as I got that email, which meant I wasn't affected by the password reset. I lost connectivity for a while, but it all came back to normal.

Fasthosts apparently only reset the accounts of people who'd not changed their FTP password since the compromise was announced. Apparently they discovered that those accounts were being compromised by hackers, and took immediate action to prevent further damage.

Of course, it's still shit that FH basically gave out FTP passwords to hackers in the first place. :)
At December 05, 2007 7:23 PM, Joanna said…

I got an email from fasthosts that said they recommended you change - not that if you hadnt changed in 6 weeks time they would protect your site from being taken down by hackers by taking it down for you.

Apparently a lot of people who did change their passwords also got locked out, so it's not that simple to thow the blame back on the users.
At December 05, 2007 7:25 PM, Joanna said…

this is worth a read
At December 05, 2007 8:20 PM, Siobhan Curran said…

In what is (maybe) an unrelated coincidence, but nevertheless of interest ... I have a dedicated server with Fasthosts. Erin is currently more reliable than it.

(None of my passwords have been reset BTW)
At December 09, 2007 3:23 PM, Rachel said…

Sorry to hear of all the pain these events have caused. I too received a new password but as I only use the UK Reg service I had no issues with websites.

But it's not only Fasthosts who give their customers sleepless nights. I've been having a few issues with dedicated server services - paying 4-5 times the price per month to gain improvements over virtual server reseller accounts has proved much less satisfactory than I'd anticipated.

That aside Jo, you might want to look at Titan Hosts. They are primarily Microsoft and although I didn't try their services their reputation is excellent. I certainly found them very helpful when I was considering a streaming server.

Good luck, anyway.
At December 12, 2007 1:50 PM, Lucinda said…

Easily.co.uk are great and they are based in Southwark. Try http:www.torquevw.com check the speed.
At December 13, 2007 7:07 AM, Joanna said…

I used to be with Easily. They were OK, but nothing special.

Have bought a reseller account with Heart Internet, will be eventually switching over domains and hosting, so this site will disappear for a short while soonish