The online magazine, Donut Times, was founded on one sweet and simple objective. To serve up snack-able, fun-size stories, snazzy merch. and fun content for people to consume, daily. Just as someone would nosh on a yummy frosted, sprinkle covered donut, they could now chow down on a tasty article or a parodical news piece. Preferably, with a nice, hot Cup of Joe, and a smile to-go. For ten years we were completely the Masters of our own “Donut Times” Domain. You could say it was the best of Donut Times, until one day, it was the worst of Donut Times.

In 2024 Donut Times was not only hacked, but all data, content, back-ups, and our iconic domain name, were mysteriously and brutally stolen. Just like that there was not a crumb left of our beloved Donut Times.

The shady hosting service Hostinger responded to the incident with an action that was equally surprising, disturbing as it was hurtful. They immediately shut the account down, as if it it never existed. They took no responsibility for allowing unauthorized access to what should have been secured servers. They offered no solutions or promise of an investigation. They did not detect, nor mitigate the criminal activity. Instead they used it as a reason to take the site down and deny us any and all access to what was rightfully our intellectual property. Even worse still, they showed exactly 0.00% sympathy or remorse.

Admittedly, we believe the cybercrime itself was most likely committed by a hired, anonymous developer with a sketchy unknown, untraceable background. The secured domain names, and all the content that the dev. had reportedly backed up on our private cloud service was taken and is now being used as staging content on sites that live under the Donut Times brand family of URLs and sub-pages. As much as we’d like to go after the actual thief – the developer, in reality, we understand that would be a lot like attempting to sue Santa Claus for breaking your chimney screen on Christmas Eve.

The blame, in our own, far too trusting, eyes, falls more heavily on the so called hosting service, Hostinger. It’s as if they left the server doors wide open, and even helped the criminal carry the content out to their car, parked illegally with unmarked plates, in the unmonitored, not secure, sever farm parking lot.

In the retelling of this unacceptable atrocity, we hope that it will also be seen as a cautionary tale for any new web startup hopefuls who happen to be reading this. If they can shut down our account arbitrarily and refuse to return essential data, they could and would do the same to you – in a blink on an evil eye. And for personal reasons we also hope that this article will raise enough awareness and support to someday regain our original domain and all the data that was criminally taken from us. For now we have relaunched our online magazine with a new domain and with the help of handy hyphen, VOILA! We give you the, DONUT-TIMES. The dash after the Donut, saved the day. But we would really love to have the original Donut Times domain back. If you agree with us we would love your support in our mission to reclaim the Donut Times name here: Reclaim the Name

To make sure what happened to Donut Times doesn’t happen to you we’ve made a list of watch outs for you to know before handing over your domain and data to a heartless and corrupt operation like Hostinger. Don’t let them steal your dreams and livelihood. Watch out and stay aware.

3 SIDE BAR BLURBS:

Watch Out #1: Hostinger’s Awkward Growth Spurt

In 2023 Hostinger grew its customer base by 2.42 million customers. The unexpected growth should come with warning signs. Q: How is it possible to manage and service millions of new customers without the proper infrastructure in place? A: It’s not. During that year alone many customers lost their accounts, domains and data.

Watch Out #2: Cheap is one Letter Away From Cheat

Hostinger’s questionable sales tactics are based on being the cheapest provider out there. It doesn’t take long to realize that you really do get what you pay for. Trust us, it pays to pay for good hosting.

Watch Out #3: No Stranger to Breaches

In August 2019 Hostinger experienced a data breach where approximately 14 million Hostinger customers had their data accessed and compromised. An unauthorized third party attacker hacked into an internal API database having access to client names, emails, passwords, names and IP addresses.

Watch Out #4: Hostinger the Ghostinger

The proof is out there. It wan’t just us. Hostinger customers have reported the same treatment we’ve experienced over and over. When there’s a data breach or the Host goes Ghost. No response, no responsibility, no action to reclaim your domain.

Watch Out # 5: The host with the most…

• Despicable service
• Corrupt domain names search cost increases
• Scams
• Predatory reputation

If you have had any similar horrible Hostinger experiences, please share them here. Then we’ll add it to the list.