[Pacific Spirit]

In this thread I like to talk about and to explain what Offshore hosting is for non-professionals.

What is offshore hosting?
Offshore hosting is no ordinary hosting. Who chooses offshore hosting, chooses total privacy. What you do with your hosting package does not interest the host at all. The host doesn't care who you are. As long as you don't host child porn and pay the bill, you can have any kind of website or web service hosted.
[font=Raleway][font=Roboto Slab]ANONYMOUS WEB HOSTING ABROAD
If you want to set up a website or puppies, a regular web host is excellent. Some people don't have puppy websites, they choose a topic that is more controversial. People who keep a crime blog sometimes want to be completely anonymous. Someone who wants to maintain a torrent or usenet website also wants to be anonymous. Anonymous offshore hosting is very suitable for this type of people. It is almost impossible to find out who is behind such a website. Even the party that offers anonymous hosting does not know who their customer is. Even the domain name is bought anonymously and it is not possible to find out who the owner is.
PAYMENT FOR OFFSHORE HOSTING
Anyone can open a hosting account. Go to a company like Versio or Neostrada and you can open an account. They do not ask for your ID proof and the data you enter will not be checked. However, the payment you make can be traced back to you. You use your own bank account, your PayPal account, or another payment method that can be linked to you.
This works very differently for offshore hosting. You can almost always pay via cryptocurrency, in most cases Bitcoin. Monero is an even more anonymous cryptocurrency than Bitcoin, which is very often accepted by companies that offer offshore hosting. Some people know little about cryptocurrency and therefore choose to pay with a PaySafeCard . A PaySafeCard is for sale at almost every AH supermarket and can therefore simply be bought without tracing it back to the buyer.
Payment for anonymous hosting can therefore be completely anonymous. However, almost all offshore hosting providers also accept iDEAL, credit cards, debit cards, PayPal and other regular payment methods. So it just depends on how anonymous you want to be. If you don't even want the anonymous host to know who you are, you can choose to pay via cryptocurrency or a PaySaveCard.
WHAT DO YOU HOST?
In principle, the host does not look at what you do with your hosting account. And, if people or organizations have complaints about your website, the host rarely does anything about it. A small torrent or usenet website and copyright infringement rarely interest an offshore host. But if you set up a website that openly offers drugs, weapons and other prohibited items, chances are the host will take you offline. Also websites that host child pornography are hardly ever tolerated. People who are involved in these matters do not look for regular or offshore hosting. They offer their mess on the dark web , a part of the internet that is not easily accessible.[/font][/font]
[font=Raleway]WHAT DO THE HOSTING PROVIDER?[/font]
A hosting provider will not do anything about the website until there are many complaints about the reported domain name. Until then, the hosting provider will take no further action. Perhaps if the hosting provider gets complaints about RSA (Anti Fraud Command Center), the hosting provider will take action faster and perhaps take the website off the air.

[fChk]

Nice topic!... A couple of notes though.

> The OP focused too much on the end-user perspective(/benefits) than address what Offshore hosting really amounts to, ie how it is even possible to set up a business like that?.. which ultimately explains the perceived benefits for the end-users.

I would say, as per my understanding -and please correct me if I'm wrong, that an offshore hosting takes advantage of the existence of jurisdictions where laws are too lax to set shop there as a hosting company--the rest stems from this very fact; just like the tax-heavens in the finance world.


> My second point is on the privacy issue and, if you follow my posting trend, you would know how that ranks high on my priorities.

The short version is that if ANY interaction involves a transactional transfer of assets (whatever it is: cash, cryptos etc..) , then there ZERO privacy PERIOD.

Granted that there are layers of obfuscations in this case that should discourage the casual snoopers but for those with an incentive to know who you are, they WILL! with an adequate amount of resources, efforts and time.

> Final point, I think we should just stop ourselves into thinking that we do have privacy on the (standard) Web... WE DON'T! and It's deceptive and counter-productive to think otherwise. One should behave on the Internet at large like he does on his home-town's streets except that in his home-town there are no 24/7 trackers following his moves wherever he goes :-)

YES!.. there are ways but that's for another time to discuss.

Otherwise, the OP is fine...

[OldMeister]

Thanks for explaining what is the difference now i learned something new
in my opinion it is not worth to be offshore host. maybe you get a lot more money then default hosting but its risky. if the one who took your service doing something illegal then i guess the fault is on the host.
its too risky and not worth the money. but taking a offshore service do worth it for the customer since if you want to work without being interrupted by the host and you want some privacy you can get it in offshore services. a thing you wont get in a default hosting.
again this is all new to me its the first time i hear about it and that is my opinion from what i read on this thread...

[fChk]

Thanks for explaining what is the difference now i learned something new <3
in my opinion it is not worth to be offshore host. maybe you get a lot more money then default hosting but its risky. if the one who took your service doing something illegal then i guess the fault is on the host.
its too risky and not worth the money. but taking a offshore service do worth it for the customer since if you want to work without being interrupted by the host and you want some privacy you can get it in offshore services. a thing you wont get in a default hosting.
again this is all new to me its the first time i hear about it and that is my opinion from what i read on this thread...

I'm under the impression that you still don't have the full picture of what it means to be an Offshore hosting company. I suggest you to carefully read my post --it's just above yours.

The legality/illegality of something is relative to the location where the act is committed... That's why it's called OFFSHORE... Man's law is an artificial construct, a social construct to be precise, thus not universal.

[OldMeister]

@fChk okay i got it now thanks. i will read more about it on the internet

[tryp4vps]

Great effort and an informative way of presentation

And also good to know the special relationship between offshore hosting and cryptocurrences.

For someone like me, who was not so familiar with offshore hosting, is of particularly useful.

[Sn1F3rt]

Thanks for the detailed and informative thread Jordy. I must say this post enhanced my knowledge a lot. Especially the offshore hosting part was really informative.

Being a TurtleCoin Core Developer myself, let's elaborate on the crypto currency payment portion.

Bitcoin has a public blockchain and therefore the transactions are traceable. You know who's sending you money (of course not identity, but his public Bitcoin address).

On the other hand, crypto currencies like Monero, TurtleCoin have a private blockchain. You do not get to know the address of the person sending you funds. Here in private block chains, we use something called payment ID, which is a 64-character hexadecimal string that can be parsed along with the other transaction input, and that's the only means of identification of the person sending you funds.

Furthermore, projects like Monero and TurtleCoin were forked from Bytecoin, which in turn was forked from CryptoNote. Now what's CryptoNote? It's the original private blockchain made from scratch by their Developers. You can check out the project on GitHub. Hope this was informative!

Regards,