[Colin F]

Originally Posted by smestas

Man do I have a story to tell!

One week ago my dedicated server was taken offline. Upon calling in the outage to tech support they tell me my account has been suspended due to a DoS attack on another network. After a week of begging and pleading (over a dozen calls) for access to my DB and files (not yet backed up) I was notified that all my files and DB have been deleted and the system has been re-formated. When I heard this I just about died. My site (a automotive forum) was getting thousands of visitors a day and I had just been negotiating with vendors for advertising and retail business to start reaping some revenue after two years of laboring on the site and financing it.

Has this ever happened to anyone else? Do I have any recourse against the hosting company after I explicitly instructed to them not to damage or remove my DB and files? Is this a common thing to have a dedicated box compromised?

Thanks for letting me vent!

I guess my next step is to find a lawyer and speak to their legal department.

I can't really tell you what rights they have, but it seems to me that formating the whole system (on a dedicated box!) is a much to harsh reaction to a DoS attack.
Simply temporarily unhooking it from the network would have worked as well as far as I know...