On 12th December sxc.hu was mentioned in the newsletter of a US-based hosting company as a useful resource where you can find free images for your home page. Unfortunately one of their clients reported the newsletter as SPAM on SpamCop.net, and sxc.hu became a so called “spamvertised website”.
SpamCop.net immediately notified our ISP, Elender Online about SPAM-suspicious activity. In response the ISP pulled the plug out of our web server.
We find it outrageous that neither SpamCop.net, nor Elender Online has bothered to verify the background of this false accusation before taking any action.
We have nothing to do with the US-based hosting company, we didn’t e-mail any of our users and no e-mail has gone through our server. (Oh, and here’s the punch line: the newsletter mentioned above wasn’t even spam, but that’s another story…)
sxc.hu will hopefully be back online at the beginning of next week. We are very sorry for all the troubles this downtime may cause, and we are as frustrated with this situation as you are.
Obviously spam prevention methods so far have some serious problems. I’ll be the first to admit that I hate spam, but I’m willing to endure a little more of it if that’s what it takes to keep quality websites from unjustly being shut down. Spam prevention should be undertaken seriously and with great care to protect those innocent people who could be harmed by the various means of shutting down spammers.