On many hosting provider websites one will often see the advertisement – “Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth”. Many webmasters and unsuspecting consumers will fall victim by being enticed into signing up for these hosting accounts.

Generally, these hosting providers making these claims are involved in consumer scamming.

Once a webmaster or consumer signs up for these packages and start hosting a very busy website, these providers will generally stop the hosting or force the consumer to sign up for a more expensive package or even a dedicated server hosting package with limitations. All these unscrupulous providers will inform the consumer or webmaster that the terms and conditions agreement was breached.

Generally, these type of providers make use of the ‘Reasonable Usage’ clause in their agreements, which is not clearly defined. The webmaster will be informed that the disk space or bandwidth exceeds this clause and therefor the closure of the website or request to move to a new and more expensive hosting package.

Protecting oneself against these scams

If you see the advertisement “Unlimited Disk Space and Bandwidth” be alert! No hosting company in the world can offer this service at a low price!

Read the terms and conditions before signing up. If you find any reference to reasonable use, the unlimited hosting does not apply and you are being lured into a scam.

Contact the hosting provider before signing up and inform them that you will be hosting a large website, which may require terrabytes of bandwidth and diskspace on a daily basis. If they inform you that this is not allowed, walk away. You can also ask them to define reasonable use in writing to clear the disk space and bandwidth limits.