What is Bulletproof Hosting?

Web hosting is a service that gives websites a place to live on the Internet. To save their files, all websites on the Internet require web hosting.

Everything on the Internet requires a home provided mainly by servers, typically housed in data centres; hence, data centres are essential for web hosting. Customers rent or own servers, which provide Internet access so that users can view the data and websites hosted on the server. Now I believe there is a certain clarity on how web hosting is done. Let us now look into bulletproof hosting and how it is different.

Bulletproof Hosting

Bulletproof hosting is a service offered by some sites or web hosting firms that allows their customers considerable leniency on the content they can upload. However, from time to time, it is being utilised by spammers, cybercriminals and other providers of illegal content such as online gambling, criminal forums or even child pornography.

Many service providers have terms and conditions of service that prohibit the uploading and usage of certain materials in specific ways, or suspension of hosting account will be initiated after a few complaints to minimise the risk of getting their IP subnets to be blocked using IP address filtering. In addition to this, some service providers may also have ethical concerns.

Often a bulletproof host allows them to bypass the laws or terms regulating Internet content and service used in its own country of operation as many of these bulletproof hosting services are based overseas relative to the geographical location of the content provider. Most of these bulletproof belts are in China, other parts of Asia and Russia surrounding countries although this is not always the case.

How is Bulletproof Hosting Done?

Bulletproof hosting is primarily done in countries where laws are less strict, and cybercriminal activities are out of control. In such countries, cybercriminals are no longer worried about the police; they fake the geographical location to escape local law enforcement by using geo-spoofing technology with help of a wide variety of IP addresses.

Bulletproof hosting providers have a decent turnover as many hosting providers choose to shut down, whether forcibly or voluntarily if their alternative would be to compromise client freedom, as this is their main selling point.

Bulletproof hosting providers are a thorn in the side of the web hosting and Internet services communities, as they can be targeted by threat actors and spammers who operate from such a hosting provider. As a result, this community discusses tips on how to avoid being harmed by such providers and comments on which hosting companies should be declared impregnable.