UPDATE: Additional Information On $5,700 Bandwidth Overage Story

My Web hosting account is set up to send me a panicked e-mail if my bandwidth goes over a certain amount per day, but not everyone is that paranoid. Servepath, the company that hosts Mick’s dedicated server, wants him to pay $5,700 in overage fees incurred after his account was compromised and lots and lots of bandwidth stolen.

On April 10th, my dedicated server, hosted with Servepath.com was compromised and began a 400% increase in bandwidth usage from normal. I was in the middle of educational studies for a test date of April 20th, so I was not aware of the intrusion and bandwidth increase. On April 17th, Servepath finally sent me an email warning that I had high utilization, at which time I immediately shut down the network connection to stop the bandwidth being stolen and to investigate. In the 7 days of the 400% increase, a total of 4,500+ GB of data transfer occurred, and is being billed at $5,700 from Servepath.

There is a plan they have that allows 4,00GB per month that costs $1,199 per month, and they are totally unwilling to allow me to pay that amount and be done with the issue. At least that is a more manageable amount to suck up than $5,700

Who is in the right here? Should Mick have been keeping a closer eye on his account security and his traffic while he was preoccupied? Should his host have waited a week before dropping him an e-mail about the excessive bandwidth, or cut off traffic to his server?

This isn’t a precise comparison, but it does remind me a bit of a bank letting transactions go through when you’re overdrawn, then charging $35 overdraft fees for them.

(Photo: Paul Hammond)

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