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Fly-by-nighters commonly appear in the web hosting industry. Fly-by-nighters are companies operating in the short-run mainly with intentions such as malicious activity or money.
They are companies that appear, gain customers, then suddenly shut down and disappear with the money without any thought about the customers websites, money, or customers.
Protect yourself
-- Contact the company before hand and ask about their history, future intentions, and any other reassuring information. As some companies may simply have a domain change, e.g. eHostingComplete.com changed to www.YourAccount.co.uk, they are not fly-by-nighters, but their domain says they have been in business only months, which is incorrect.
-- Pay monthly to protect yourself from huge losses.
-- Back-up your website often so if they encounter problems or turrn out to be fly-by-nighters then you can quickly host your website a different place.
-- Keep records of all transactions and use secure methods of payment e.g. Verisign, PayPal. Pay attention to the URL area (must be a secure page - must begin with https://)
Ensure Card Security
If your web host collects debit/credit card companies via their own website rather than a third party processor, then ensure they are secured using Secure Socket Layer (SSL), to check this, in the browser, it will say "HTTPS://..." rather than "HTTP://..."
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