[csnover]

I received a third-party malware report from Linode once[0]. It’s possible that something has changed in the meantime since this was probably 4–5 years ago, but my own experience in a similar scenario was that Linode acted reasonably and in good faith. This tweet makes it sound like their policy and procedure hasn’t changed.

In my case, Linode opened an “AUP violation” ticket with a copy of the report, the steps they required to close the ticket (essentially: fix it and explain corrective measures), and a time when they would disable the server otherwise (which was something like 24 hours). It sounds like itch.io decided to ignore the AUP violation ticket and their server was disabled after 24 hours, just like the ticket said it would. (Waiting on a support ticket instead of calling also seems like a weird bad choice when your whole site is offline.)

I guess, having some first-hand experience with Linode’s malware handling process, that itch.io were at fault here, but I guess there may be more to the story they haven’t shared or weren’t clear on.

[0] Actually twice; some internet vigilante hooked up a virus scanner to a web crawler and was sending false positive reports directly to the abuse address for the netblock. After the second one I kindly suggested Linode stop accepting these reports, and never heard anything again.

[phendrenad2]

> sounds like itch.io decided to ignore the AUP violation ticket

Did you see the part where they removed the content within 24 hours?

[csnover]

Just removing the content is not sufficient; one must still respond to the ticket with the information that Linode requests in order to keep the server from being disabled. The instructions in the ticket I received were not hard to understand or comply with in this regard and the whole thing was resolved within minutes of my response.

I’m not sure what the point is of interrogating me here; I am just a third party who went through the same thing and thought additional detail about the process would be appreciated. I didn’t have any service interruption, but I followed Linode’s instructions, and this leads me to conclude that the OP probably did not.

[phendrenad2]

Ah I see, you're not defending Linode's heavy-handed process, you're just explaining it more accurately.