Well, it’s been weeks since we first alerted Network Solutions about the hundreds of sites that I found have been hacked which are all hosted at Network Solutions and still, no response. I originally sent notice of the discovery to a contact of mine who happens to work in management for Network Solutions thinking she’d be able to route the email to the appropriate person(s) or department for follow up. However, call it bad timing or whatnot, but, she was not available for another week or so after I sent all of my findings, including evidence and screen capture images to prove to them that they have a huge problem.

Right about the time I was going to call them or try to find an alternate contact for whom I should send the complaint to, I got a response from my contact thanking me for my research and apologizing for the delay. Although I’ve always had nothing but respect for my contact there, I guess she’s too high in the corporate ladder to get involved with this or maybe she didn’t see this as a big issue at all. So, she passed it on to another representative with whom I actually talked to on the phone and explained to her how it was that all of these sites hosted with them had been hacked and were now distributing adult content without their knowledge. Once she had the clear picture, she said she’d be contacting my client to talk about a possible refund for her hosting services and two days later, my client still hasn’t been contacted by Network Solutions nor received any kind of apology or refund from them… a possible refund for her hosting service? Wow! My client has spent thousands of Dollars on SEO services and has lost her entire online presence as a result of Network Solution’s negligence and all they are suggesting they are willing to offer is a refund for her hosting services? Think bigger – lawsuit? Possibly. What about all of the other business owners and online marketers that have been afected as well? Group Lawsuit?

Needless to say, my client will be transferring hosting companies as soon as I can get it done for her. For now, I’m quite disappointed in how slow Network Solutions has been at getting back to either my client or I, and how unimportant this issue seems to be to them. If I worked at Network Solutions and someone showed and proved to me that hundredths of my clients had been infected or hacked in some way, I think I’d pay a little bit more attention and deal with this issue in a more aggressive manner instead of just sweeping it under the rug – that’s how my client and I feel this is being handled. Maybe they are hoping that we’ll simply just “go away”.

Updated – 11/13/08 – See Network Solutions Response