This is a merged topic containing some politically themed discussion related to hosting for non-profits which turned into a discussion about capitalism.
Not even for Data Protection?? You guys must be breaking the Data Protection Act if you never take backups, what about if say somebody deleted incriminating sites and ther police asked you for a backup as evidence?? I will wait for the owner to get back to me… Thanks…
That’s why we couldn’t have accounts deleted early or something like that, just in case like you said.
However, having a backup for data protection didn’t necessarily mean that we must provide it to you. (You said police, right?) So thanks for understanding why you should keep backups by yourself.
BTW I’m not the admin. If you really wanted a backup, you still have to wait for him to see whether it is possible.
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I know they have it, it is just whether they want to be helpful or not and replace my server with a backup for that account… They have to take regular backups by law and also incase anything goes wrong… All these htdocs files look the same on FileZilla it was an honest mistake by me but I am struggling to get them to do anything but reply on here, they won’t even move one folder for me from one directory to another, so i am not optimistic… Time will tell… Who would have thought that one African banana rebublic could cause so much hassle for a non - profit organisation here in the UK… Globalism has a lot to answer for…
Paul
Also Capitalism, as clearly people paying would get an altogether better service than I am getting, which is wrong…
Paul
I believe this is an option in FileZilla, something you could do with a Ctrl + X and Ctrl + V.
Unless you are using mulitiple accounts — But then you will have everything in your own PC.
Our servers are under iFastNet’s control, so if there’s a backup it will be in iFastNet’s hand and we really could do nothing about it. Sorry
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Let’s leave ideologies out of this. You are getting a free service, so don’t expect to be treated like a king.
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I don’t, I expect to be treated the same as those that can afford to pay… We run a non - profit here… Levels of assistance given to people should not depend on ability to pay at all in my view… Of course others (capitalists) have every right to feel differently to me…
Hopefully things will be sorted soon.
Paul
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It’s already been sorted since I posted last.
We don’t have a backup and there is no possible way for us to provide you with a backup.
When you say Data Protection Act, I assume that you mean the USA’s Data Protection Act of 2021. If so, you should read the Data Protection Act, it says nothing about retaining data if you remove it yourself; much less, it says little about data removal in general. Also note that InfinityFree must comply with many European laws because (1) it is a European company and (2) it serves customers in Europe and the EU. The biggest law for this is the General Data Privacy Regulation (GDPR), which gives users the right for data to be removed unless there is Reasonable Need for the data to be kept (such as a police investigation), but it says nothing about you removing your data or us not having a backup. Please read your laws before waving the “law flag”.
Can you point me to which law this would be?
No, it’s not. Maybe if you got a Premium account, support would be able to do more for you since they can access the system (which we at the forum cannot). But we are free support; if you want to pay us for better support, that’s great for you, but this is the support we offer: free; we will never have a paid support system.
We are treating you the way iFastNet support would treat a paying customer in the situation. We are plainly and simply telling you that we don’t have a backup. Additionally, capitalism or not won’t change the depth. type, or friendliness of the support we have/will give you.
Just to reiterate: we don’t have a backup and there is no possible way for us to provide you with a backup.
Again, I am sorry for the inconvenience this causes you, but it’s what happened.
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Hello
I’ve been on the platform for over 3 years, so I think my knowledge of this place is pretty solid.
Free hosting does not store backups.
It says in the terms of service that backups are your responsibility, not our. InfinityFree/iFastNet is not liable for any loss of your files due to failure to provide a backup.
Wacky already covered the legal aspect, so I am not going to, and I agree with him. Although I am not a lawyer, I don’t know of any regulations that force an EU hosting company to take backups.
Also, please remember that you are not paying anything, and that servers actually cost money to maintain. If parts of those servers are dedicated to backups that less then 1% of free users will actually use, those servers are losing large amounts of money.
Even when you are paying for hosting, you should always have you own backup. If data failure, natural disasters, etc occurs to all the hosting providers copies, you are, once again, out of luck.
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Please consider that copying and collecting all the data from an account takes quite some server power to do. And that having to store backups of every account multiplies the amount of storage space we need as we would need to store multiple copies of every account.
The amount of data on free account is huge. There have been times when we needed to migrate storage from old servers to new ones, and that often took days if everything went well, and put so much stress on the servers that most websites were barely usable during this time.
So I hope you can understand that creating weekly backups, let alone daily backups, of all accounts is simply not feasible. Not without multiplying our server capacity 2-3 times at least. Which would cost a lot of money, which, if you remember, you aren’t paying us.
The Data Protection Act is the UK implementation of the GDPR right? If so, I’m going to refer to the GDPR from here on as that’s what I’m more familiar with.
The GDPR tells data controllers what to do, not how to do it. Data controllers have to protect the integrity of personal data they store. The GDPR does not prescribe how to do that, it’s up to the data controller to decide how they ensure this integrity. Maintaining backups is one way to help achieve this, but the law doesn’t dictate that having backups is mandatory.
Also, the GDPR governs personal data only. Website files and database contents are not personal data.
We do make backups of the client area database, and I assume iFastNet does the same for the hosting platform (control panel) database, meaning all your personal information is safe. In this way, we have fulfilled our obligations as a data controller to protect the integrity of the personal information of our users.
You may choose to store personal information in your hosting account. If you do this, then you are the data controller, which means you are responsible for the data stored, including protecting it’s integrity. It’s up to you to decide how to do this. We don’t make backups of your account. If you want backups of your account (which is highly recommended), then you are responsible for creating them, storing them and testing them.
Then we say, “sorry, we don’t have that”. And that’s the end of it, because police can’t demand information from us that we don’t have.
We are required by law to provide the data we have on an account if we get a warrant for it. If we have backups, then law enforcement can demand that we hand them over. But we can only provide what we have, not what we could have had. There is no law that requires us to make backups of accounts.
Sometimes, we get “advance notices” from law enforcement, which basically means “we want to request this data, but we’re still trying to get a warrant, but please make sure the data isn’t deleted yet so you can help us when we get the warrant”. In those cases, we make an export of the account and keep it safe. But that’s on a case by case basis.
I’m sorry, but that’s not how it works. Both InfinityFree and iFastNet are for-profit companies, we do not operate a charity here. Premium hosting is a very different service than free hosting. The resource limits are much lower and much more harshly enforced on free hosting, and so are anti abuse policies. Premium hosting gets one-on-one staff support, free hosting doesn’t, and in general free hosting is in the back of the queue if things go wrong.
Free hosting isn’t free. We have expenses for servers, power, networking, datacenter space, staff salaries and more. It needs to be paid for somehow. Revenue is partially from advertising revenue and partially from premium hosting sales. For free hosting, we work hard to keep costs down as much as possible, both for hosting costs and staff costs, in order to keep things economically sustainable. Part of this is that we don’t make backups, and don’t do one-on-one support.
Giving premium quality service for free would dramatically increase our costs and lower our revenue (because there is no incentive to upgrade), which would cause us to to run out of money and eventually have to close shop. We don’t want that to happen.
If you run a non-profit and want premium level service for free, then please find a premium hosting provider that provides the service you need, and ask them if they are willing to sponsor you. InfinityFree simply doesn’t have the infrastructure to provide premium service, a company that already provides this in a much better position to give you a discount.
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Don’t get me wrong I have no problem with capitalist organisations making money, I just can’t see why they can’t do some good as well while they do it… To expect a legitimate non - profit organisation to pay, well people could deem it greedy in my view… Capitalism is what it is, unfortunately… Especially when the currencies collected are so worthless and can be invented with quantitive easing… Can’t you just manifest some money for me and say I have paid you 
(insert sarcasm disclaimer here)… I am more than happy with free hosting thanks, if the free service was handled better instead of us all being hung out to dry when things go wrong I might consider it in the future…
I have never found them an issue to be fair… I don’t think any of our sites have ever failed your abuse policies… The only problem with your sub domains is that they are despised by social media especially freecluster.eu… I woke up to 56 posts from 4 years ago being removed for cybersecurity on that domain… I can’t even consider paying you when that is happening, even if we could afford it…
The only thing I expect from is that you don’t demand that we do things for you for free, when those are things we don’t do for anyone else.
Find a company that can provide the premium service you want, contact them, and ask them to sponsor you. State clearly who you are, which organization you represent and what this organization does. If you can provide evidence that your organization is registered as charitable organization, that’s a big bonus, because it 1) proves that your organization is actually non-profit and 2) gives the hosting provider tax benefits to sweeten the pot for them.
I can tell you that InfinityFree cannot do this because we don’t have premium hosting infrastructure. Our service is optimized for cookie-cutter free hosting packages, not premium hosting. We are not in a position to offer premium services to anyone right now. This means we can also not provide it to you for free.
But InfinityFree is not the only hosting company in the world. There are companies that can provide the level of service you want, and some of them may be willing to sponsor you. I can’t tell you which, because we just pay for the hosting we need.
In any case, you say that since you’re a non-profit, you deserve hosting and website development for free. I say you don’t. It’s clear that I’m not going to convince you, and you’re not going to convince me. That’s fine, and I think it’s a waste of time for both of us to debate this any further, so I won’t.
Maybe I’m wrong. If so, there should be plenty of companies that follow your reasoning and will give you what you want for free. If that’s the case, that’s my mistake and my loss, and I wish you best of luck with your new hosting provider.
But maybe you’re mistaken. If so, we’re still happy to host your site for you, if you can accept the limitations of our hosting, such as that you’re responsible for website administration and backups.
Use the advice I’ve given you above and reach out to other companies to ask what they can do for you. Or don’t, it’s your call. You know what we can offer you for free. I don’t know what others can offer you. If you want more, you can try to find something else.
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Free hosting doesn’t come with one-on-one staff support. That’s a premium only feature. This is a community forum. I, being the only staff member of InfinityFree, also check the posts in the forum and help where necessary to clarify things, provide additional information, and sometimes use my staff level access to troubleshoot issues that other community members cannot.
But my policy is that I only provide advice. I can tell you how you can move your files, but I will not do so for you. The only exception is cases where the hosting itself is not working as it should, but that’s not the case here.
I try to be very clear that free hosting does not come with one-on-one staff support, or any kind of website development assistance. If you need that, you should not use our free hosting. Or at least not use it without having someone on speed dial who is willing to help you with such questions.
Premium hosting does get one-on-one support, and that’s a benefit of buying premium hosting. If you want premium level service, and are thinking of buying premium hosting, then just get the premium hosting and you’ll get what you want.
iFastNet’s premium hosting can be obtained with a monthly contract and a 7 day money back guarantee, so no need to commit to anything long term if the service isn’t to you liking.
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Well it should do… There should be no difference… Rich and Poor should be treated the same in my view… I won’t be paying you right now, we run a non - profit here…
Thanks,
Paul
I’m gonna say some sharp words.
Being poor / have no free money doesn’t mean that everyone should give you extra care & love and give you everything for free. Thank you!
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From a humanitarian perspective, I completely agree. Rich and poor should be treated the same and have the same rights.
But as a business owner, I can tell you it doesn’t work like that.
Helping website owners manage their website takes time from staff. If we decide to offer such support with free hosting, we’ll need to hire more people in order to answer all the questions. These new colleagues expect to get a salary at the end of the month for the work they do. That’s an expense to the business. The business needs to get that money from somewhere somehow.
And it’s not like you’re paying us for those expenses. You’re not paying us anything at all. Our hosting is completely free. We’re already giving you server space which, if you remember, does cost us money, completely for free. And now you demand we also give you free backups and free website development assistance?
Does this work with other companies you’re dealing with? Do you tell your landlord that rich and poor should be treated the same, so that they should let you live in a big house for free? A fancy restaurant to let you eat there without paying? Did it work for you there?
Non-profit doesn’t mean non-revenue or non-cashflow.
Non-profits, NGOs and charities all have expenses too. Emergency relief organizations don’t demand that everyone will give them cars, planes, fuel, food and medicine for free, and that everyone working for the organization does so as volunteer besides their regular job (the volunteers still need to pay for rent, groceries and so on after all). They pay for many of those things (albeit sometimes discounted), and they have salaried staff doing to most critical jobs. To cover those costs, they have income, most commonly from donations.
Wikipedia is a non-profit. That doesn’t meant they get their hosting for free. They pay for their hosting, and the skilled staff necessary to maintain it. They collect donations to offset those expenses.
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So many people in this capitalist society think like this, unfortunately… I hope they all find peace soon, and Karma takes care of them in the manner they deserve… Me, i try to help those that need it the most when I can, but in a society where billionnaire bankers get billions in bonuses for failure I can see how people would think like this for sure… The rich have a duty to look after the poor in my view but each to their own…
They are all on the fiddle though, they all claim back on expenses every penny they pay, so effectively the taxpayer is paying… If people look at our accounts since we incorporated they will see we claim nothing back, because we spend nothing… Yeh I could probably wazz you a few hundred quid a year for hosting all out sites and claim it back from the British Taxpayer through HMRC, but choose not to… These currencies they come from a dark place look at the wars caused to manifest these central banks everywhere to legitimise it…