SiteLock Shady Tactics to Win Sales!

Came across this gem today... yet another host partnering with SiteLock where they "magically" find a new issue and whilst not providing any information.. proceed to trying to get the sale...

Original post: http://sitelock.pissedconsumer.com/lock-down-your-site-over-non-malware-20160524853432.html

So netfirms partnered up with sitelock...the next thing I know all my sites are suspended do to (known malicious file; matched malware: SiteLock-PHP-INJECTOR-1-eky.UNOFFICIAL).

Basically if you run Wordpress or zengallery your up a creek. It maked 112 files. So to fix it you can of course pay them - if you don't your websites are disabled to protect you of course. Found out they could turn the website on for 24hrs and will charge $300 to do a one time website clean for me.

I recommend you find a host provided that does not use SiteLock.I wasted a entire day dealing with it and I am a developer by trade.

SiteLock & EIG & UnitedWeb

Been reading a lot on SiteLock and the shitty experiences people have been having so I started doing some digging.

Found some interesting data that I wasn't able to find anywhere else...

- SiteLock is owned and Operated by United Web: http://www.unitedweb.com/ << known information

- The CEO of United Web is: Tomas Gorny

Mr Gorny has a long history with hosting. He was the co-founder of iPower, formerly iPowerWeb, Inc). He sold iPower to EIG sometime in 2007. He seems to be an advisor to EIG. He was also a Director at EIG. From what we can see, he's still a Director on the board. << well this is interesting..

- The CEO of Endurance International Group (EIG) is: Hari Ravichandran

Mr Ravichandran also has a very long history with hosting, and an incredible story at that. From nothing to something in the past 20 years, kudos to him! But it seems through a relationship forged over time Mr Gorny and Ravichandran have found a way to screw us over when it comes to security for our websites. << Let's learn more

Here is an interesting snippet of information pulled form the EIG 2015 FY / Q1 filings:

Ninth, in our S‐1 and in subsequent public filings we have clearly stated the nature and extent of related party transactions. As disclosed in our SEC filings, my family owns Tregaron Holdings, and its related companies, Diya, Glowtouch Technologies, and Touchweb. In addition to providing services to other companies, these businesses provide some of our brands with subscriber support and engineering assistance. In FY2014, Endurance had $10.4 million in expenses related to purchasing services from these companies. These relationships started over a decade ago when Endurance was still a fledgling company. As shown by the disclosures in our public filings, the economic value of this relationship has been decreasing as a percentage of Endurance revenues as we have built our own support and engineering capabilities. We have also disclosed a second related party relationship between Endurance and Innovative Business Services (IBS). Endurance offers Sitelock, a security product for SMBs developed by IBS, across its brands under a revenue share arrangement. One of our board members, Tomas Gorny and I are shareholders in IBS. Revenue share payments to IBS related to Sitelock totaled $5.4 million in FY14. The revenue share between Endurance and IBS for Sitelock has been set at 55%/45% in favor of Endurance. 

 In case you missed it, SiteLock, which is owned by UnitedWeb, is also owned by Innovative Business Service (IBS) (eek.. where does UnitedWeb fit in?) which through a relationship with EIG has monopolized the website security space within hosts. Did you notice how both Hari and Tomas are both shareholders in IBS, whom which EIG has the relationship with? Is it any surprise they are employing shady tactics to trick us into buying their services?

This report is from 2015 talking to 2014, so let's see what we can find for 2015...

What do we have here.. the 2015 Annual report: http://ir.endurance.com/secfiling.cfm?filingID=1193125-16-485478&CIK=1237746













Here we see an adjustment in their financials for 2013 and 2014, but beyond that you can see that EIG paid IBS (SiteLock's Parent Company) an estimated $6,300,000 million for what they call their multi-layered third-party security applications. Described here:

The Company also has agreements with Innovative Business Services, LLC, (“IBS”), which provides multi-layered third-party security applications that are sold by the Company. IBS is indirectly majority owned by the Company’s chief executive officer and a director of the Company, each of whom are also stockholders of the Company. During the year ended December 31, 2014, the Company’s principal agreement with this entity was amended which resulted in the accounting treatment of expenses being recorded against revenue.

During 2013 the Company expanded the services provided by IBS under the agreements across all of its entities. The Company inadvertently excluded the expenses related to the expanded relationship with IBS from related party disclosures for 2013 and 2014. For the year ended December 31, 2013, the Company previously reported cost of services related to the IBS services of $3.0 million, which is revised to $3.9 million in providing prior period comparative amounts in the footnote to the consolidated financial statements for the year ended December 31, 2015.

So what this shows us is that SiteLock is essentially owned by EIG, specifically their CEO, indirectly. So the companies have a vested interest to push whatever product will make their bosses the most money!!

Here is another mind f*****... SiteLock just partnered with GoDaddy too... so this means that GoDaddy will be paying SiteLock some sum (they are now public so we should get some good intel on this in the coming months) which will go into Hari's pocket as well... you little bugger..

Stay tuned...

SiteLock Shady Tactics via HostGator

I was screwed over by SiteLock one too many times not to help promote and share these experiences.. please be aware. SiteLock is a company built on sales, not security. Their sales teams use shitty tactics to trick us into buying their product in turn screwing us over. Here is another story of such a case shared on: http://sitelock.pissedconsumer.com/beware-of-this-company-and-of-any-hosting-company-it-partners-with-20160619868340.html

I’ve been running a profitable online business for over ten years and have used Hostgator to host most of my many websites. A few weeks ago, Hostgator sent around an email announcing its partnership with a website security firm called Sitelock. Within about a week of that email, I got an email from Sitelock telling me that one of my sites had some malicious code on it that should be removed. They were very persistent and followed up with a phone call. I called them back (my first mistake) and here’s what happened…
Their rep explained to me that the malicious code would have to be removed or Google would probably block access to my page before long. So they enrolled me in a $49/month site protection program called “True Shield” that was supposed to keep my sites permanently safe from hacking. And I have been hacked before, so I know it’s no fun and can cost a lot in lost business. They promised this site would be cleaned up within hours. Besides, they were endorsed by the web hosting company I trusted (note the use of the past tense), so I was happy.
The very next morning, as I went to another of my sites to get a photo I needed, I found myself staring at a dark screen that said “Website Security” in big letters and was asking me to click a big red button. Then I checked out a number of my other commercial websites and to my horror they were all blocked in a similar way. “Strange,” I thought. “Maybe Sitelock is doing some clean up work.” So I called them…
The next rep I talked to told me that all these sites had been hacked and said I would have to enroll in an even higher level of service to get this taken care of, at $99 per month. AND... I would have to pay that much per month PER SITE! She was really pushy so I told her I’d get back to her. The next step was to find out more about Sitelock and I found a very large number of online reviews roundly condemning it as a total scam. What really struck me, however, was something else:
• Several reviewers describing exactly what I had just experienced
• The same sequence of events – a minor problem, sell into a low-level package, suddenly a much worse problem, attempt to Upsell
• That Sitelock has partnered with a number of hosting providers and it’s the same story across the board
• That some reviewers claim they can prove that the hacks against their sites actually came from Sitelock itself!
The evidence would suggest that Sitelock may well be exploiting the databases of their business partners (Clearly, Hostgator had shared my data and presumably access to my sites with Sitelock without my explicit permission and, where I live, that’s a criminal offence in itself).
Needless to say, I’m giving Sitelock the boot – its absurd prices, its strong-arm tactics and the more than suspicious sequence of events reported by many of its numerous victims are all reasons to avoid it like the plague.
And, naturally, I’ll be pulling all my sites off Hostgator immediately unless they a) fix the problem – which they so far seem unwilling to do – and b) terminate their association with Sitelock. All of this will be costly and time-consuming, but worth it in the end.
Bottom line: for your own sake, avoid Sitelock altogether and avoid Hostgator until they terminate their association with Sitelock and compensate its victims.

Sitelock - Rude, Demeaning Bullies Looking For A Sale

These are the kind of tactics they used on me and need to be shared... originally shared here: http://sitelock.pissedconsumer.com/rude-demeaning-bullies-looking-for-a-sale-20160616866956.html

I contacted Sitelock as they were associated with the company that hosts our business site. We needed assistance with Malware and already had their basic package.

When I spoke on the phone with a gentleman (calling him that is a joke) from Sitelock, he not only insulted my intelligence, but spoke to down to me and actually LAUGHED (Yes, not kidding!!) when I told him I was already aware of my possible solutions and I was simply looking for pricing.

Just knowing my host site was associated with them was almost enough for me to change hosts entirely. I have never been so disrespected, bullied, talked over and demeaned in the professional world as I have by the man that "assisted" me from Sitelock. I would have asked for a manager, but by the looks of it, they are an unreliable, basement-ran operation with no accountability whatsoever.

I will NEVER use them. I would rather forgo the internet altogether than ever be forced to work with such a deplorable company.

I went with another company that was recommended to me by an IT guy I am friends with, and thus far, they cost less than a 4th of the price and will solve my issue in 6 hours and continue to protect us for the year.

So, suck it, Sitelock.