Uncovering the Rose Hosting Spam Network on Quora

Welcome back to Dirty, Slimy, Shady Secrets of the Web Hosting Review (Under) World - Episode 3! Read Episode 1 | Episode 2

Today's post features Rose Hosting. Who I refuse to link to because their whole business model seems to involve comment spamming this blog and other sources of information. What started with a simple spam comment sent me down a rabbit hole I wasn't prepared for and shed light on a fairly large spam operation that spanned multiple sites, but my primary focus became Quora with a secondary focus on the web hosting review sites also being manipulated.

Visualization of Rose Hosting Quora Spam Network. An interactive version is available at the end of the article.

The Beginning

It started with a simple spam comment.

fakereview1

The poster tries to compliment the post and then drops in a RoseHosting mention and praises it.

But wait, there's an IP address! Looks like they made a mistake this time.

oscarstanley-arin-ip

So Miami Cloud Hosting is who owns the IP space that this comment came from. Let's see what comes up when I ping rosehosting.com

rosehosting-ip-ping

If you go to that IP, rosehosting.com shows up. So it's correct. Also if you look at their DNS:

rosehosting-dns

So we're 12 IPs away on that A record. Let's check out that IP that actually responded on ARIN.

rosehosting-arin-ip

Bingo. Same Miami Cloud Hosting.

So fakeish looking name, an email with zero google search results and coming from the same IP space on a the cloud hosting provider that hosts RoseHosting. Pretty damning, but unsurprising to see some astroturfing, many of the bigger players just rely on affiliates to do it for them and look the other way.

But I'm not one to accept shitty behavior in this business and just look the other way.

Digging Deeper

Let's see how many more I can dig up. I recognize the Rose Hosting name and know they've spammed me in the past.

jean-debushy-comment mike-hidemyass-comment pablo-comment

mateo-comment

 

The pattern seems to be emails with nothing associated with them on google. There is a protected twitter account with the same username as Pablo, but that's about it.

Mike uses HideMyAss, a VPN service designed to hide identities. VPNs/anonymity have a lot of value, they also happen to be abused by spammers a lot. This pattern looks nefarious.

Jean's comment follows the original Oscar comment's template: compliment, rose host spam, compliment.

They all added in HTML with the rel="nofollow" because they probably realized Google can easily see comment spam and cracked down on it. Putting a nofollow link is supposed to preserve your SEO value by not associating it as a spam link (because it's telling Google not to follow it). Why are these supposed customers adding SEO tactics to their comments and trying to hide their identities?

The Boss Man

I also got this email from Bob, who I assume is the owner based on what's listed publicly and the interviews he's done on at least one other review site which I don't trust a bit, and won't link to either.

But it's all class, I want to get listed and pay a lot.

generous-affiliate-program-rosehosting

So at best they are a 'subtle' please promote me for money kind of web hosting company (which almost every host will do). At worst, they are comment spamming and potentially astroturfing/sockpuppeting web host.

Searching For More

I searched WebHostingTalk, the largest web hosting forum that has run forever and has over 9 million posts.

rosehosting-wht

Just about everyone is talked about here. They have a company account that constantly posts ads. But how is it that in 14 years there are only 2 reviews and most of the threads are asking 'who?' Yet somehow, my blog is getting hordes of accounts recommending them. Another red flag.

Did they learn their lesson on WHT when an account got questioned about sounding like a shill? So the largest forum with 9,000,000 posts has basically nothing about them.

I kept searching and stumbled upon this gem on Twitter

twitter-brandonhimpfen-rosehosting-comment-spam

twitter-brandonhimpfen-rosehosting-discussion

I sense a pattern. Those crazy customers of ours who link to git and tomcat installation tutorials. Carl had a bit of a spamming spree according to Google.

Let's keep digging.

Sockpuppets and Patterns

jeandebushy-reddit-comments

Looks like I found Jean Debushy!

jean-debushy-serchen-review

And again.

jean-debushy-itzgeek-comment-spam

And again. Deep linking their ubuntu VPS on an ubuntu tutorial too, nice SEO tactic.

jean-debushy-quora

It's not a good spam campaign without hitting Quora!

So this name exists solely to promote RoseHosting and it all seemed to happen in October 2015. That's suspicious to say the least.

At this point it became clear that the sockpuppeting is more organized than I originally thought.

Organized Sockpuppets

I started to search the other names I had been spammed from and easily found more bad behavior.

oscar-stanley-disqus

oscar-stanley-discovercloud

Oscar is alive and well it seems on Disqus. and DiscoverCloud.

The Smoking Gun

Quora was the gold mine for uncovering this spam network. Once I found a couple accounts on Quora, I could go through their history and see who upvoted their posts. It would be practical if you were running a spam network to have many accounts upvoting one another to give yourself more visibility. More upvotes, more traffic, easier for me to track it all down.

I discovered 51 accounts connected to RoseHosting and mapped out how they connected to one another. I took those same names and searched for their re-use across other sites. 10 showed up on Serchen, 3 on HostReview, 6 on DiscoverCloud, 6 on HostAdvice, 3 on TrustPilot, 1 on Reviews.co.uk - all industry review sites being manipulated by these same spam accounts. I also discovered 11 more accounts connected to various review sites and comment spam.

Rose Hosting Quora Spam Network

This graph charts the connections (upvotes) of RoseHosting associated Quora accounts. If you hover over a name it links to the Quora details and any other related content spamming like review sites.

Aftermath

I tried for months to reach out to Quora and have never heard a word from them. I did notice when I last checked (March 28, 2017) that at least some of the accounts have been banned. Maybe someone actually read my email and just didn't have the time to respond.

I have reached out to the web hosting review sites and will update as I hear back from them. The only company that did respond and acknowledged the issue was HostAdvice (not to be confused with HostingAdvice which steals Review Signal content to mislead its visitors).

Sources

Full Data Table Available on Google Docs

 

Bonus

Thanks RoseHosting for having the decency to make sure you spammed this article as well. I am guessing your spammers don't understand irony. Or possibly the English language.

A new comment on the post "Uncovering the Rose Hosting Spam Network on Quora" is waiting for your approval
https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2017/03/31/uncovering-the-rose-hosting-spam-network-on-quora/

Author: Merritt George (IP: 75.86.176.9, cpe-75-86-176-9.wi.res.rr.com)
Email: merritt.george@gmail.com
URL:
Comment:
That's a great article! There sure are interesting parts of web hosting that people don't know about.

So hey I wanted to know if you do reviews on new sites? I was looking around and noticed that my current webhost, <a href="https://www.rosehosting.com/" rel="nofollow">Rose Hosting</a> wasn't listed and that's a shame! In a sea of companies with no scruples, they've stood out to me as a solid company that doesn't resort to shady tactics, delivers quality support, and has great uptime.

Would love to see a benchmark!

 

Bonus: Fake Review Screenshots

carl-williams-serchen-review

 

donald-wilson-discovercloud

 

akila-hostadvice

wesley-hermans-host-advice

emre-hakan-review-discovercloud

pete-williams-serchen

gary-coleman-hostreview

jean-debushy-hostreview

 

dirk-vlaar-serchen

 

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Kevin Ohashi is the geek-in-charge at Review Signal. He is passionate about making data meaningful for consumers. Kevin is based in Washington, DC.





7 thoughts on “Uncovering the Rose Hosting Spam Network on Quora

    1. avatarKevin Ohashi Post author

      I’ve been busy working on 2017 WordPress benchmarks, hopefully a bunch of new content coming soon though. I’ve got some ideas in the works 🙂 Anything in particular interest you or would you like to see being written about?

      Reply
  1. avatarDave

    Oh OK cool, the 2017 benchmarks will be appreciated, Thanks!

    Not sure about other content. I haven’t looked at enough of your prior posts to see what was covered. I could ask about CDN’s or is that outside the scope of the site?

    Reply
  2. avatarBob James

    Kevin, you’ve got a great site but let’s not fool ourselves here. You are clearly incentivized by most, if not all of the listings you have on your site; if you’re being compensated by ANYONE listed on your site, then you are already bias. Furthermore, from the looks of it, it doesn’t sound like you have some “super scientific method” for ranking sites. Based on what you published on your website, you are mainly using other peoples comments to rank sites. Doesn’t sound like you’re really giving them your own “honest” review.

    Yes, people may say that you have great research ability (e.g. TC article), but don’t think you are some “web hosting messiah” that will bring honesty and truth to the industry; your JUST AN AFFILIATE carving out a niche and that’s really okay, but if you want to be honest, try being honest with your website and yourself about your end goal.

    Reply
    1. avatarKevin Ohashi Post author

      Let’s see, fake name, fake email, using an anonymous proxy to hide who they are only to try to trash my integrity. I’ll indulge because why not, but it says a lot when someone isn’t willing to put their name behind their words. But I’m here, standing behind all my work publicly and I’ll defend its integrity.

      Compensation could be biased but the design of Review Signal is intended to prevent it. You are trying to attack it by saying it’s just using comments to rank them. You are also saying I am biased. My personal opinion is kept as far away as possible from the rankings. So which is it? I openly have affiliate links with most, but not all companies. You’ll see Amazon and Azure which have decent ratings and no affiliate programs. It has no impact on the rankings because I let the data speak for itself.

      As far as the science, well, actually I wrote a master’s thesis about using Twitter data to predict real world outcomes. Long story short, it works, quite accurately. https://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/search/publication/1626974 here’s some science for you. Want some more science? https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2015/08/19/liquidweb-nps-scores-vs-liquidweb-review-signal-rating/ Our system tracks accurately to internal metrics too. I had a former employee of A Small Orange mark on the graphs here: https://reviewsignal.com/blog/2016/01/19/the-rise-and-fall-of-a-small-orange/ where key events happened. Those comments, when you collect enough, are meaningful and you can stick your head in the sand and pretend I’m not doing ‘honest’ reviews, but you’re only deluding yourself.

      I’m here to bring honest web hosting reviews and I’m happy to make money doing it. None of that’s hidden, even my revenue is disclosed in long interviews where I talk about this stuff https://www.indiehackers.com/businesses/reviewsignal

      No actual evidence will change your mind because you obviously researched me enough to want to try to attack me. But to anyone else who might read it, it’s a pretty low effort troll attempt.

      Reply
  3. avatarSam P

    Hmmm…. I’m a customer with R/H. Saw many positive reviews, and decided to give them a go for a managed VPS service. Looks like I might have been duped by some of these! You learn as you go…

    Well, I had some downtime on my RoseHosting service earlier today – my server was fine (and has had zero downtime so far…), but the entire RoseHosting network went down twice today for a few minutes each time – their homepage was inaccessible both times too! Speaking to the support team about these events gave me no confidence at all either, and that was a red flag that started me looking.

    Overall, the RoseHosting experience has been ok, but I certainly was not impressed with first impressions – when I signed up they tried to offer me a server using E5630 cpu’s… I mean, come on! Considering they advertised DDR4 servers on their site, I demanded a migration. The cherry on top was, when I confronted them about this, they had the guts to tell me that running benchmarks was against the terms of service… not even close to an apology!

    Finding a good web host has been such a difficult task… and without being able to trust reviews, it’s near impossible. My previous host was Inmotion Hosting, and their overloaded shared servers (we were paying for their top premium cloud hosting option) and incompetent support team hardly deserve the good ratings that I was seeing at the time…

    All I can really say is – at least I found one review website today that values integrity!! So thanks for the post, and the deep investigation.

    Reply

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