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Avoid PSK Hosting! PSK Hosting == AlphaRacks (probably)!
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Avoid PSK Hosting! PSK Hosting == AlphaRacks (probably)!

perennateperennate Member, Host Rep
edited June 2019 in Providers

tl;dr PSK Hosting is very likely a continuation of a fraudulent company, AlphaRacks, and should not be trusted.

AlphaRacks is a defunct hosting business that scammed clients by fraudulently hosting VPS instances on servers that AlphaRacks neither owned nor had permission to use. AlphaRacks was also notable for blatant violations of CAN-SPAM, flooding even users who never had a service with them with twenty to thirty e-mails per month.

Recently, a business named "PSK Hosting" sent out the e-mail quoted at the bottom of this post, announcing that they are supposedly migrating clients from AlphaRacks.

PSK Hosting was formed within the last couple weeks, and is NOT a reputable business! In fact, evidence suggests that they are a continuation of the AlphaRacks fraud scheme, run by the same fraudsters:

  • They have the e-mail and password data of all AlphaRacks clients.
  • They copied their articles from their former AlphaRacks website to their new PSK Hosting website.
  • The PSK Hosting website did not exist in 2018, and their nameservers were just switched a couple weeks ago, when the fraudulent use of servers by AlphaRacks was discovered.

(I cleaned up this post in light of evidence that PSK Hosting is run by the same people as AlphaRacks.)

Here is the e-mail sent by PSK Hosting to AlphaRacks clients:

Jun/14/2019

Hello,

We have been attempting to help customers migrate to us with free months of service. We noticed that customers are now struggling to obtain invoices through the Alpharacks website as it is now offline, so we were unable to validate customer pricing, duration of service remaining and some customers do not recall which plan they were on.

PSK Hosting is inviting those who have been impacted by the recent issues at Alpharacks to explore our rescue effort. As one of several providers contacted by Alpharacks, we have agreed to help affected former clients obtain reliable hosting services. We’ve obtained the client list from Alpharacks and have changed our initial affiliate agreement terms with them to better help former Alpharacks customers.

We cannot guarantee that we can fully match the previous rates Alpharacks were providing but we will be competitive. Please contact us if you do not a see a plan on our website that suits your needs.

You may use the same login you had previously used, or https://clients.pskhosting.com/pwreset.php to request a new PSK Hosting login.

Please feel free to email us at mailto:[email protected] if you have any questions. We are here to help as best we can in this rescue effort.

Sincerely Yours,

============
PSK Hosting Staff
High Performance Hosting Solutions
https://www.pskhosting.com/

DISCLAIMER: You are obtaining this email because you were a registered customer of AlphaRacks.com - this refugee program was created in effort to rescue customers. If you would like to unsubscribe from PSK Hosting’s emails, https://clients.pskhosting.com/clientarea.php?action=details#emailpreferences in order to update your account’s email sending preferences or respond to this e-mail.

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Comments

  • joepie91joepie91 Member, Patron Provider

    perennate said: We’ve obtained the client list from Alpharacks and

    Time for the geee-deee-peee-arrr, time for the geeee-deee-peee-aarrrrrr...

  • sanvitsanvit Member

    perennate said: You may use the same login you had previously used

    Lol, just tried logging in and my old AR login worked with them. This means that they have the old AR database?

    Thanked by 2pepa65 rino
  • perennateperennate Member, Host Rep
    edited June 2019

    sanvit said: Lol, just tried logging in and my old AR login worked with them. This means that they have the old AR database?

    AlphaRacks sending out their database including passwords and all to providers is AlphaRacks' fault, but these people taking that database and spamming the users is 100% on PSK Hosting.

    Thanked by 1sanvit
  • perennateperennate Member, Host Rep
    edited June 2019

    Eh, I saw this was stickied, I'd rather it not be since maybe (hopefully) this was a one-time mistake on their part, they haven't yet demonstrated they are quite AlphaRacks level. But, up to y'all.

    Thanked by 1trewq
  • deankdeank Member, Troll

    AR really has no moral dignity at all, doesn't he,

    Thanked by 2ITLabs the_doctor
  • aegaeg Member

    I have a sneaking suspicion that PSK Hosting is AlphaRacks.

  • hzrhzr Member

    Can someone that gets this post headers?

    Thanked by 1mohamed
  • LESLES Member

    Looks like that AR motherfucker sold the DB.
    I have changed my personal details and email.

  • Login, change password, change details, change email address.

    If they just sent out an email, that's one thing, incorporating my account (including password) into their data without my knowledge or consent is another...

  • perennateperennate Member, Host Rep

    hzr said: Can someone that gets this post headers?

    Here you go:

    Received: from a27-198.smtp-out.us-west-2.amazonses.com
     (a27-198.smtp-out.us-west-2.amazonses.com [54.240.27.198])
     (using TLSv1.2 with cipher ECDHE-RSA-AES128-SHA256 (128/128 bits))
     (No client certificate requested)
     by (snip)
     for (snip); Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:14:36 +0000 (UTC)
    DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; q=dns/txt; c=relaxed/simple;
     s=gdwg2y3kokkkj5a55z2ilkup5wp5hhxx; d=amazonses.com; t=1560550475;
     h=Date:To:From:Reply-To:Subject:Message-ID:MIME-Version:Content-Type:Content-Transfer-Encoding:Feedback-ID;
     (snip)
    Date: Fri, 14 Jun 2019 22:14:35 +0000
    To: (snip)
    From: PSK Hosting 
    Reply-To: PSK Hosting 
    Subject: =?utf-8?Q?PSK_Hosting=E2=80=99s_-_Rescue_Effort_for_former_AlphaRacks_Cli?=
     =?utf-8?Q?ents?=
    Message-ID: <0101016b580e86ae-3bb1aa45-d421-4614-bab0-47e3f36349be-000000@us-west-2.amazonses.com>
    X-Mailer: PSK Hosting
    MIME-Version: 1.0
    Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
     boundary="b1_94b4f8f5e90aed849227cb640b3b7fc1"
    Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
    X-SES-Outgoing: 2019.06.14-54.240.27.198
    Feedback-ID: 1.us-west-2./(snip)=:AmazonSES

    I don't think there is much interesting since it is sent via Amazon.

    Thanked by 3pepa65 Fusl the_doctor
  • FoulFoul Member

    We can report it to amazon, and get their ses account disabled.

  • FoulFoul Member

    sanvit said: Lol, just tried logging in and my old AR login worked with them. This means that they have the old AR database?

    Not here. My email from AR isn't in their database at all.

  • ITLabsITLabs Member
    edited June 2019

    @Foul said:

    sanvit said: Lol, just tried logging in and my old AR login worked with them. This means that they have the old AR database?

    Not here. My email from AR isn't in their database at all.

    Perhaps an outdated version of the customer base? I wonder if @VirMach could confirm if the DB was also offered to them by Alpacaracks.

  • FoulFoul Member

    ITLabs said: Perhaps an outdated version of the customer base? I wonder if Virmach could confirm if the DB was also offered to them by Alpacaracks.

    That'd be a interesting twist, But i don't think virmach would have even allowed the affiliate scenario to continue if the DB was offered to them.

  • Given that their test ip is with serverhub, lets tag @rosh and see if they can do an internal investigation with regards to this blatant spam and customer data theft on their network.

  • FoulFoul Member

    teamacc said: Given that their test ip is with serverhub

    Shared is hosted on namecheap infrastructure / VPS is with Shub most likely.

  • sanvitsanvit Member

    At least they sent you an email about the acquisition of your personal information... I haven't got any notification about it :(

  • FoulFoul Member

    sanvit said: At least they sent you an email about the acquisition of your personal information... I haven't got any notification about it

    What service did you have with AR?

  • do you know what PSK mean ini our country?

    PSK = pekerja seks komersial

    haha, LOL it myself.

    Thanked by 2pxhaxor fazar
  • donlidonli Member

    https://www.godaddy.com/whois/results.aspx?domain=pskhosting.com

    Registrant Name: Registration Private
    Registrant Organization: Domains By Proxy, LLC
    Registrant Street: DomainsByProxy.com

    https://domain-status.com/archives/2018-2-14/com/transferred/203

    Transferred .com domains on Wednesday, February 14, 2018

    ...

    pskhosting.com

    https://domain-status.com/www/pskhosting.com

    Timeline of events

    6/3/19: transferred from ns31.domaincontrol.com. and ns32.domaincontrol.com. to ns1.pskhosting.com. and ns2.pskhosting.com.

    Thanked by 1perennate
  • sanvitsanvit Member

    @Foul said:

    sanvit said: At least they sent you an email about the acquisition of your personal information... I haven't got any notification about it

    What service did you have with AR?

    $7 VPS and $0.49 shared hosting

  • ITLabsITLabs Member
    edited June 2019

    @perennate said:
    Eh, I saw this was stickied, I'd rather it not be since maybe (hopefully) this was a one-time mistake on their part, they haven't yet demonstrated they are quite AlphaRacks level. But, up to y'all.

    Sorry @perennate... I understand your hope, but I think this is unacceptable. We have some confirmation of spam and evidence from @sanvit that (part) of the Alpacaracks customer DB has been transferred/sold to PSK without user consent. A relationship that begins this way will surely end in scam. I don't know... would like to see this post sticked and a good-old-SEO done to f**k those bastards... let's wait and see, time will tell.

    Thanked by 1the_doctor
  • FoulFoul Member

    ITLabs said: Sorry

    Only one report of Sanvit saying same account - My two accounts don't exist at all on PSKHosting, and no email at all here.

    Thanked by 1ITLabs
  • sanvitsanvit Member
    edited June 2019

    @ITLabs said:

    @perennate said:
    Eh, I saw this was stickied, I'd rather it not be since maybe (hopefully) this was a one-time mistake on their part, they haven't yet demonstrated they are quite AlphaRacks level. But, up to y'all.

    Sorry @perennate... I understand your hope, but I think this is unacceptable. We have some confirmation of spam and evidence from @sanvit that (part) of the Alpacaracks customer DB has been transferred/sold to PSK. A relationship that begins this way will surely end in scam. I don't know... would like to see this post sticked and a good-old-SEO done to f**k those bastards... let's wait and see, time will tell.

    Yeah, retrieving information without a user's pemission is a criminal act (at least in South Korea), and even if there's no such law, it's still a dick move. And if they got the AR DB, what's up with this 'We noticed that customers are now struggling to obtain invoices through the Alpharacks website as it is now offline, so we were unable to validate customer pricing, duration of service remaining and some customers do not recall which plan they were on.'?

    Thanked by 2ITLabs the_doctor
  • mr0xbmr0xb Member

    I find it quite interesting that PSK Hosting also has my $14.00 account credit from Alpharacks. Their website has also never been more than landing splash pages up until 2019 according to the wayback machine.

  • perennateperennate Member, Host Rep
    edited June 2019

    @ITLabs @sanvit Hm, I guess I thought they were an established provider who might have just made a bad decision about AlphaRacks. But now I see from https://web.archive.org/web/20180806042147/http://pskhosting.com/ that they just recently launched, which makes it much more shady to me. It does seem like PSK Hosting may actually be operated by the same people who (mis)managed AlphaRacks.

    I think maybe some announcement should be made, but if so I think it should have more information about this company and not just the e-mail in the OP that I made. Information like how apparently no one has heard of them until now that they have imported AlphaRacks data. If you sticky this thread then I think it wouldn't be very helpful compared to a post that is clear and succinct about their shadiness.

    Thanked by 3ITLabs vimalware lazyt
  • ITLabsITLabs Member
    edited June 2019

    @Foul said:

    ITLabs said: Sorry

    Only one report of Sanvit saying same account - My two accounts don't exist at all on PSKHosting, and no email at all here.

    Agreed. That's why I mentioned "evidence" and "let's wait and see". Now we have another piece of intel from @mr0xb.

  • FoulFoul Member

    perennate said: may actually be operated by the same people who (mis)managed AlphaRacks.

    It actually is.

    Stupid idiots copied their DEAsoft article that was the same on AR whmcs announcements.

  • sanvitsanvit Member
    edited June 2019

    @ITLabs said:

    @Foul said:

    ITLabs said: Sorry

    Only one report of Sanvit saying same account - My two accounts don't exist at all on PSKHosting, and no email at all here.

    Agreed. That's why I mentioned "evidence" and "let's wait and see". Now we have another piece of intel from @mr0xb.

    They actually kind of said that they imported AR data

    perennate said: You may use the same login you had previously used, or https://clients.pskhosting.com/pwreset.php to request a new PSK Hosting login.

    How else would you be able to login with the same credentials?

  • Came here thinking the same thing. I figure it’s just some of the same “people” behind AR. Trying to relaunch. The fact that they could not manage to get access to their “own” servers means I’d never deal with anything they do ever again.

    While their entire company is down their Twitter account was still pushing out generic marketing bullshit about how important uptime is, get professional VPSes from us... comical.

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