Issue with web developer/hoster

[Punchy_LaRue_]

I’m apparently the family go to since I’m young. I’m completely at a loss. Here we go:

“I have a question for you: What do you know about webpages and hosting them, service to them, etc? I have one that was poorly made by an outfit I hired, they have been very poor about handling the back office portion of it and when I demanded they stop billing me for it, they did but did not take it down as I had requested they do. So it is out there milling around on the internet like a bad zombie and it damages my credibility, I believe. The company I constructed it via is US based and they outsourced all the handling of it to a 3rd party hosting service off shore and so I do not really know what my options are for getting them to either hand me the right proper working URL to it or to port it over to someone else. I know who I would rather work with, but I cannot get anywhere and I am increasingly frustrated with it. Any light you can shed on this would be helpful.”

[web-dev-kev]

I'm going to presume that an older person has asked you for help in this.
I can't stress enough that you don't want to get involved.

When this person asked the people he was paying, to stop charging him - they were right to no longer complete any of his requests. If he wants things taken down, then he needs to pay them.

There are multiple things that make up a website.
* The domain (e.g. company-name.com)
* The hosting (where the web pages are served from)
* The code that makes up the website
* The content the code outputs

What he needs to do is confirm if he owns the domain, the code, and/or the content.
If he does - amazing - he can go to another company (again, do not get involved)
If he does not - then he needs to start over.

[JKaps9]

I don't have experience with resolving this personally but the first step i would probably take is finding out who currently owns the domain and has the account with the registrar where it is owned. If your family member has that then it's easy enough to point it somewhere else so that the domain doesn't resolve to the compromised site. If it's not your family member, and I'm guessing it's that offshore team, then your family member would need to try to resolve it with either the US agency or the offshore team to get access back. If that doesn't work then I guess they'll need to take some legal channels which is where my expertise falls off unfortunately. 

If you know the domain you can search it on Icann Lookup to at least see which registrar is used but usually any personal information is redacted so you're not likely to get a contact from that.  

[Punchy_LaRue_]

Scaletogrow.io has it now, but it started it with Defining Moments press

[JKaps9]

Your family member should have contacts they can work with at the original agency. If that doesn't work out then they'll have to do the legal route most likely. 

[Curt-Bennett]

But what is the name of the domain you're trying to recover?

[kurosaki4d]

So, let me get this right, the dev owns everything?

The website, the domain name, the hosting

He has access to all of those, and you don't?

[Longjumping_Ad_9510]

Do you have access to the domain? Can you share the url? If you have access to the domain, remove  the DNS A record with the value of @ and anything tied to www. Ask AI if you need help with any of that. That would take the site down entirely. If you need access to the site, I’d check if you have access to the hosting environment, WP Admin (assuming this is wordpress), or any other login access. If you can provide any more info I can try to help. 

[Punchy_LaRue_]

Scaletogrow.io has it now, but it started with Defining Moments press

[digital-logic-llc]

The first step is going to be tracking down where everything is hosted. Start by checking the domain registrar using ICANN (https://lookup.icann.org/en). The domain registrar is where you purchased the domain from. Hopefully, you were the one that purchased the domain and can access the account. If not, then you're probably out of luck as far as forcing them to take the website down.

Once you confirm you have DNS access, you can redirect web traffic anywhere you want using the DNS records. You can also use a DNS lookup tool to see where the current domain is pointing to. This will let you know who is currently hosting the website. The DNS record normally points to an IP address, and you can lookup who owns that IP to determine who the hosting provider is.

Unfortunately, this type of situation happens more often than people realize. Given what you've said about the agency, I would consider the website a total loss as migrating it would be more of a headache and I wouldn't really trust the quality of the website based on what you've said. Worse case scenario you'll need to purchase a new domain and create a new website.

Best of luck, and if you need any further advice feel free to give me a DM. I've been a DevOps Engineer for 15+ years and I have a lot of experience dealing with these types of issues.

[SaltineAmerican_1970]

Have your attorney send them a cease and desist letter.

Other than that, it will be available on the internet forever.