Jobs at SiteLock - Good to work there?

You can find a lot of PR articles telling you how awesome a place it is to work at SiteLock, how amazing a tech company they are.. but is it true?

Found this gem talking to the hiring process at SiteLock:

This company is absolutely disgusting.I came to a job interview and it felt like the managers felt threaten by my skills.

This job is based on commission so if you don't sell you will be FIRED! from what I heard the main man Blake walks around harassing people and people have to hear his vacation stories (show off ) I am so glad I got to see how this company runs by. The office location is in a good area but I rather work some where else than to be in a shady company and lie to customers to hit commission. I heard the goal to be meant is around 8000!!

That's ridiculous !!Do not work here from what i experience this place is a scamming joke!!!

Source 

Makes you wonder, someone that doesn't even work there yet.. but has been able to see and experience so much already...

HostGator and SiteLock Screw Over Another Customer

Here is a really good write up by a HostGator customer that was getting scammed by HostGator and Sitelock.

In case it's too long and you didn't read... customer was notified by HostGator of a security issue. In the process they not only notified the customer, but sent his information to SiteLock without his authority. This creates a lead generator for SiteLock..

All to find out that it was all a mistake and the customer was never infected.. YIKES!!!

Write Up: http://www.hermesthemes.com/scam-alert-hostgator-sitelock-malware-extortion/

Snippet from HostGator:

Our Abuse department has received a report regarding malware being hosted on an account under your control. We have disabled site access for your account to prevent further complaints, and have provided a list of the reported content. Note that the below content is not a comprehensive list of malicious content on this account. We strongly recommend that you address the entire account to avoid further issues.

In order to remove the restrictions we’ve placed, you must resolve the security issue and remove what malicious content was listed. If you do not believe you can do so on your own, you may use a reputable third-party security service, such as SiteLock, who can be reached directly at 877-563-2849. Please note that repeated reports of malicious content on your account within 60 days of an initial notice will lead to further action being taken, including permanent suspension after failing to professionally clean the account.

Once you have taken steps to secure your account of the reported content, please reply back to this ticket to request review.

Check out the pricing he was offered:

Be weary of this notice:

When looking at the suggested Emergency 911 Clean-up Service by SiteLock there was a $200 price tag for this service. You pay this fee if you didn’t have SiteLock enabled before the infection. Once infected – pay up the $200. Now that my account is back online I am unable to access that offer from SiteLock, so I can’t provide a screen-shot, sorry.

Real SiteLock Experience - Jennifer Ellis

Check out this gem by Jennifer Ellis..

Full story can be found on her site: http://www.jlellis.net/blog/my-experience-with-sitelock/

I got it as a $14.99 add on per year with my web host.  I have had it for about 8 months now and got my first malware alert today. The notice stated that I had a critical problem.  Very serious! So I looked at the SiteLock dashboard and sure enough, it said the same thing.  I put in a ticket with SiteLock and got a call relatively quickly in response.

This sounds about right, some random notice that makes you submit a ticket.. then..

The result was a sales call in which the woman did everything possible to upsell me on all sorts of services. A $500 fire wall, another x amount for this service, or x amount for that service.  And to clean my site? $199.  

Yup, I know this experience all too well... she shares some more info on how the refund process went.. which is fun!

 

Why Nathan Feels SiteLock is a Shady Company

Check out this great review by Nathan Hammond in which he spends 20 minutes breaking down his entire experience...

Guy is spot on, was on a bluehost shared account... and breaks down the various things he was being told during the entire experience.. check it out!

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.