The day was special. Unlike normal days, that day there were about a dozen new sign-ups. It was indeed good news to me, and I suddenly felt – business is indeed getting better!

The competition is tough, margins meager and the technology is advancing day by day. The Hosting business wasn’t as lucrative as I thought it would be.
But I knew very well, that a bit of technicalities did fascinate me! Moreover, this is an industry that has grown phenomenally in the recent years, still leaving room for new players like me.

I gathered the basics of the industry early on, when I decided to become a Webhosting Reseller. The best part of it then was that I had very few accounts, and I did not have to do much to get that steady flow of income. With my move to a dedicated server, it started looking even better. I believed, “once I have a server housing enough accounts, it would be profitable”.

Believe me or not, I hardly think of profits now. These days, It’s just about a dream. A dream to build my empire to a point where I could get fully involved in the world of hosting. I sense – The day is not far, when I would give up my full time job, and become a complete entrepreneur!

A week later, my NOC guys mailed me a complaint, they had found multiple phishing sites in my server. They threatened to disconnect the server, if I failed to act in an hour’s time(yeah it was harsh, especially the one hour deadline). To my ill fate, I did not see the mail in time and never acted upon it.

They disconnected my server, and I came to know about it only after the server suffered a downtime of about 20 minutes. I had no clue as to what had happened, and sought help from the support team of the NOC. After about 5 updates to the NOC ticket in their Abuse department, followed by a 15-min phone call, they put the server back online.

By then, the server had suffered a downtime of more than 45 minutes. This wouldn’t have been a big issue, if my customer base was made up of $2 hosting accounts. But since I had taken the advice of some blogger, who stated that low-end/cheap hosting market doesn’t have much for a budding host, I was kind of scr_wed!

As far as the hosting plans were concerned(at least in the customer’s point of view), I had my basics right. I ended up loosing hard earned money issue-ing credits and refunds. My dream felt like an illusion.

I should have done many things better; after all, it was MY dream. One thing I did later, was to check the account creation dates of all the phishing accounts. Yes, it was on that day, when I had 10 sign-ups. Many of the accounts did not even have valid registered domain-names. If I had bothered to identify the fraud sign-ups, I wouldn’t be mending the foundation of my empire!

Look out for the blog on ways to prevent fraud accounts in the coming week.

About the Author :

Sankar works as a Senior Software Engineer in Bobcares. He joined Bobcares back in April 2006. He loves grooming/mentoring people. During his free time, he listens to music, and enjoys singing..