Some cloud/VPS/bare-metal server companies are good at handling abuse complaints

It has been my experience that most companies which provide virtual private servers (VPS), bare-metal servers, web hosting, or other cloud services are incompetent at handling abuse complaints. Some of those companies never even respond to an email to their published abuse email address. Others send an automated reply telling you to use their web browser URL to report the abuse (fuck that). And a few are outright antagonistic towards abuse reports (see my articles about aventice.com and ovh.net for examples).

So I was pleasantly surprised when an abuse report to HostGator.com resulted in this reply:

We have identified the culprit account and a cleaning has been initiated. The shell used for this specific attack has already been removed. Please notify us of any further issues identified on our network.

Cordially, 

[name redacted]
Security Administrator 
HostGator.com LLC 
http://support.hostgator.com

That type of response is exceedingly rare. If the rest of the HostGator organization is that competent I would highly recommend the company to anyone needing computer hosting. Almost as rare is a generic “we have investigated your report and taken appropriate action” response. Amazon Web Services (AWS) is typical of that type of response.

Far more common is no response whatsoever. Or no “abuse@” email address. Or an “abuse@” email address that is invalid (i.e., messages to it bounce). Or, most annoying of all, is a response that tells me to use their web (i.e., HTTP browser) interface to submit my report.

P.S., As I was writing this article I received another exceedingly rare competent reply to an abuse report from UberGlobal cloud hosting:

Hi Kurtis,

Sorry for the delay in responding

Thank you for emailing in. We have found a compromised WordPress account which was being used to launch outbound attacks. This account has now been disabled and will be cleaned to prevent further issues.

If you detect any other attacks, please let me know.

Perhaps there is hope for the Internet.