Bob B.
Scan Scam
I've been with Winhost over 5 years now and I'm moving my accounts. I got an email from Winhost stating I had a compromised website (which hasn't been changed in over a year) and listed 2 files that were the offending files and suspended my account. In addition they could charge me an hourly fee and work on the site for me. I removed the 2 files and notified Winhost. I received an email stating there were more than the 2 files compromising my site leaving the only alternative of hiring someone on their staff on an open ended hourly contract to scan MY site. I'm moving my 2 sites this week to a new vendor that hopefully has better ethical business practices. Bob Brickley
Response from WinhostFeb 8, 2016
Hi Bob. We can't provide a list of every compromised file when we notify someone of a compromise. We don't compile a detailed and comprehensive list unless we're going in to do a site cleaning. We understand that the process could be perceived as a money making ploy, but we always offer a time/cost estimate, and we never force anyone to use our site cleaning service. It's not even something we used to offer, but we had a lot of requests to do the work, so now we offer it. Properly diagnosing and cleaning out a compromised site is a very time consuming process. It's something that's done manually by a high level administrator. We do not make a profit on site cleaning fees. I'm sorry that you were in this position, but please understand that we are not attempting to capitalize on your misfortune. We're simply offering expert help.