Blue Chi’s

I’ve been renting a dedicated server at 1and1 for a little bit less than a year, and through this period, I only had two bad incidents in the past, but none of them was enough for me to switch providers, however, two days ago I got an email from 1and1 saying that they received a spam complaint, less than ten minutes after the first email, I received a second one saying that they are receiving a *massive* number of complaints and for that reason they are locking up my account until I email them back with the measures I took to stop the spam.

Both of these emails were automated messages, nothing in them had any details about the complaint, I instantly called them, waited for 15 minutse on the custom support line until someone talked to me, and I was told that the ‘abuse department’ can only be reached by email, the technical support dept cannot do anything for me, and all I have to do is wait. I emailed the abuse dept back and I got no response for a whole day, I called again, and they told me to just wait cause they can’t do anything, I emailed the complaints dept telling them about the mess (again, the complaints dept can only be reached by email, no phone line), my email to the complaint department was sent 24 hours ago and I haven’t received anything from them yet. Today at around 3pm UK time my account was unlocked, I got no explanation email from the abuse dept or the complaints dept.  I didn’t even get a notification saying that my account is not unlocked.

I do not send any emails using the 1and1 servers, and I use a 3rd party service to send my website’s monthly newsletter. The alleged complaint does not make sense.

I was frustrated for more than 24 hours with no response for 1and1, our members were frustrated, and the contractual obligations with our advertisers were at risk, I was obviously losing traffic and money. 1and1 had not justifications for shutting me down, and they did not even bother to even email me back with an exaplanation.

Unfortunately, the losses we sustained do not justify taking legal action, but these people lost my trust and respect. I have already purchased a hosting package at Media Temple and will be moving all my websites to the new service ASAP.

If you are thinking of getting a host for your website make sure you stay away from 1and1.

I started a new blog recently that focuses on IT Law and it’s called myITLawyer. The subject of this blog is not mainstream (IT Law) and I am actually still not sure about the level of detail which I should go for, I will be posting on weekly basis about the topics I go through during my course , these will be international in nature (I am studying European, American, and Japanese IP), but I will also be posting about Omani IT law as well.

If anybody has any comments or suggestions please feel free to comment!

(PS. Check out my new article at the Times of Oman).

I’m surprised that nobody posted anything about this yet. HM’s opening speech of the Council of Oman has been posted on YouTube and it addresses several issues including the corruption of government officials.  The speech is subtitled in English. You can check it out below:

Part 1

Part 2

I bumped into some of the websites of Omani student societies in the UK and guess what, they are all super excited about the national day celebration. This is THE biggest Omani event in the UK, but if you’ve ever been to one, you would know that it is usually just (arguably) a little bit better that a school musical production made in Bidbid. I’ve taken part in these shows when I was doing my bachelors and Oh. My. God. They. Are. So. Tacky.

Unfortunately, I don’t know any of the Omani people in these societies, so I am not going to the big celebration in Manchester this year (November 21st if anybody is intersted).

You can learn more about this event from the MBC website, oops, I mean the Manchester Omani Society website at this link.

I’m not sure if this ever happens to anybody else, but recently I’ve been fogetting whether we are in the year 2008 or 2009, and at times I can’t remember whether I was born in 1983, 1984, or even 1985. I don’t mix up between days or months because my scheduled is tied to them, but I have no association with units of time that go beyond 30 days. I’m starting to lose it!

This is a reminder for all of those interested in .OM domain names, the deadline for submitting feedback to the TRA’s public consutlation paper on .OM domain name framework is November 8th (Next Saturday). So if you have any opinion on how domain names in Oman are regulated then please take a moment to read this and send your feedback.

You can download the proposed framework from here (Warning PDF link).