shadowx

Spotify, Spotify, the free music streaming service with optional paid services for better features. Free use enables you to listen to each individual track a limited number of times but does allow you access to millions of tracks with only a few adverts. The paid services start at £5/month and offer unlimited access to all the music advert free. Additional services for more money allow you to save music to an offline playlist and use the mobile version.

Initially I was a free member, back when it was invite only in the UK, eventually the "limited re-plays of an individual track" got annoying so i purchased Spotify Premium for £5/month via paypal. The service was good, used it extensively at work for hours on end and at home. As a service it is very good, the music quality is excellent, the range of music is extensive, every genre and decade from classical to heavy metal. The client is smooth and as of recently there is a Limux client in Beta which is fairly stable on Ubuntu. Recently however Spotify sold their soul to Facebook. Now you cannot register for spotify at all. You can simply sign in using facebook, hence Spotify is controlled by facebook. The reasons are obvious, by default Spotify spams your wall with posts like "look you guys! Im listening to spotify lololol " it is opt-out and not obvious in that if you leave it enabled you cannot, EVER disable it, even if you click the disable button it will reset when you close and re-open the spotify client. Nice. But that way Spotify get free advertising at the cost of making you look like an idiot. Facebook of course get additional registrations since you need Facebook to use Spotify. Smooth.

Until recently however, since I registered long ago when Facebook was merely a rotting mould in the corner of the internet my account was email based and not linked to Facebook. Then my paypal, and indeed email addresses, were compromised, presumable due to a password crack at one of the websites I use, I believe most likely Trion Worlds, so thanks for that one guys (unconfirmed of course), so my Paypal was thankfully disabled when the scamming noobs changed the address, however that meant my Spotify subscription was cancelled mid-transaction and thus caused a chargeback, essentially giving me £5, Spotify werent too keen on this as I would soon find out. After trying to sign in I got error messages that hinted to a wrong user/password, so I signed in on the Spotify site only to be greeted with a message saying my account was disabled. I was not logged in however, my account had literally been deleted. Nice.

I contacted Spotify support who told me that due to the chargeback they had deleted my account and would not re-activate it. Usually I would be pissed off but re-register, however since I despise facebook (I have it but have 9 friends, half of which are relatives with whom I stay in contact with via facebook) and since I was FORCED to use facebook and had no choice in the matter I refused to re-join. I explained this to support who essentially shrugged their shoulders, so I took to twitter and tweeted to the CEO of Spotify directly explaining why I disliked the facebook tie in and the situation in hand. He too didn't care.

In the end I have created a fake facebook profile with an email address I do not monitor. I will never add any friends and hide the profile so Spotify will receive no benefit from their little tie-in. The moral of the story is that I despise any forced tie in, so KS take note, I already disapprove of the facebook login! Forcing a customer to do something they do not like purely for your own profit is a risky business and makes people like me dislike the business immensely. Unfortunately the service they office is unique here it seems. But hopefully a decent competitor will show up and I will jump ship!

Ever since this place became KS opaque has let everything FAIL.

On top of the forums dying my site is now slow to load, cpanel is slow to load. The forums, are slow to load. The Xisto server status page, is slow to load.

Answers, NOW.

If I were a client paying with real money I would produce a formal complaint and seek a competitor to move ALL of my services to, this is UNSUSTAINABLE.

You are surely aware now that some members, myself included, have "defected" to AstroLoco. Im not going to advertise them here because they dont need it, however. I feel I will shortly move my services to their hosting and maintain only my domain name with xisto until AL support domains via credits. That means I will fully cease all activity on this forum and perhaps request that all my content be removed or defaced purely so that KS doest benefit from searches that link to MY content. I've been treated like crap with the "services" offered here.

SORT IT OUT, NOW. No more BS, give me answers.

Why cant xisto support THEIR OWN server status pages? Why is opaque cant code a simple home page effectively? Why is it that until recentlyy computing host couldnt even put together a features page that linked correctly. LAUGHABLE.

Xisto is NOT a viable option for PAYING clients, and any paying clients reading this should look elsewhere. I have recommended xisto network sites to clients and friends in the past but I will NEVER do so again.

I have an upcoming project which needs to be effective and professional and it will NOT be hosted here.

Is the whole of xisto on holiday?

I registered a domain and basic plan nearly 48 hours ago and it is still pending... This should be damn fast, less than 24 hours, a matter of a few hours assuming it happens during business hours.

Why is it taking so long?

I raised a ticket on the issue, it really shouldnt take this long for a professional company.

I have had this before and at the time it seems my site may have actually been infected with something, this time my site is secure and my custom error handling is taking care of the problems.

My access logs have a lot of requests for PHP scripts in the directory "mysite.com/iqici/sbtih" originating from different IPs on different subnets, suggesting they could be from a botnet perhaps or some other geographically dispersed network.

Is this a well known thing?

Like I said, my site is not at risk but it does show a number of clients requesting the same or similar files, so either they are command files for a botnet or they are part of a well known root kit or other exploit that clients are blindly trying to find by hitting every domain out there for those specific files.

Any insight?

Also had a hit for a wordpress upload URL so there must be an exploit out there for that too considering I dont use WP