Cracked license on BermanHosting

dimcik

Hello, after reading few reviews i wanted to try BermanHosting, they prices are very good. But i have got this problem when trying to install scrapebox, the support mailed me that Bermanhosting are cloning people's machines and emulating licenses essentially distributing cracked copies. So the license that was running on that machine was stolen. To wipe the cracked license you can download and run this tool, then reboot the VPS and then submit the transfer for your license and this will eliminate the problem.

I want to ask, if does it safe for GSA and Captcha Breaker. I don't want to make some mistakes and to lose my licenses. I hope that everything is ok, and if someone facing problems please let me know, so i will change the vps provider. Maybe they also take my private proxies, or doing other things, so please help me guys.

Sven

Why should they close a VPS holding data from a customer? 

dimcik

I don't know really. This is just what i received from Scrapebox support:

I just looked up your license and it seems you are trying to run this on BermanHosting.

Bermanhosting are cloning people's machines and emulating licenses essentially distributing cracked copies, see videos like thishttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rJTM2Gn3Vpg

So the license that was running on that machine was stolen.

To wipe the cracked license you can download and run this tool, then reboot the VPS and then submit the transfer for your license and this will eliminate the problem.

www.scrapebox.com/dl/sbpreptool.exe

Regards,
ScrapeBox & ScrapeJet Support.
http://www.scrapebox.com

So to be sure i have requested for help here, just to be safe.

cherub

Have you made your doubts clear to Berman Hosting's support?

dimcik

Yes sure, but the chat operators are offline, i have submit a ticket and waiting for answer. Does anyone has problems with them? Always if someone using them.

CypherSteel

If that's the case, I would think whether or not I really wanted to do business with them frankly...

Peisithanatos

@dimcik I was a customer in Bermanhosting and, when I received my VPS and installed Scrapebox, I found that it was already registered for me. So, in other words: the previous user forgot to transfer his license to another machine. Two weeks after that, it was successfully transfered. I don´t think Bermanhosting needs to crack licenses, they seem serious so I guess it´s really a client fault.

gooner

But Berman should clean the VPS before giving it to a new client, that's the professional thing to do.

Peisithanatos

Yeah, they should @gooner

dimcik

And i still not receive any reply on my email client. I have big doubts regarding this, and i don't know what to do. Because is time consuming to install again everything end restore all the data. But if they really are doing this things than is better to move all the data on a new VPS till i will buy a good machine to run everything at home.

2Take2

I don't know how the tool works, but if you run it and then restart the VPS, surely it would only be ScrapeBox that you would need to re-install, no?

I've had this problem before with other programs on various different VPS, and normally they just tell you to search for, and delete certain files.

Either way, restarting your VPS wont (or at least, shouldn't) affect any of the installed programs, or cause you to lose any data.

nipester

From what I can see the problem lies with Scrapebox. Their licensing system should expire the license on the Berman Hosting VPS after the license owner moves their license and reactivates it on a different server. The next "plugin" that sweetfunny should work on needs to be a proper licencing system that deactivates license keys from abandoned servers properly. 8-|

gooner

I think SB licenses do expire as long as the owner transfers it to a new machine. Maybe the owner didn't do that for whatever reason.

dimcik

Yes sure this is known, that every time you reinstall your pc you should submit everything again for activation. And previous time i have done this working just great. But this time the license didn't activated, says that already the license is used, so i contact the scrapebox and first they told me to see some other things that worked just fine, and the second reply was this email i have posted here.

gooner

@dimcik - I recommend solisdeovps, price and speed is good and i never waited more than 2 hours for a reply from customer services. Maybe give them a try instead of Berman.

dimcik

Properly yestarday i have paid for Berman, so i will wait for the end of this month, because i don't think they will give me the money back. And from the next month i want to try solidseovps. 

capricious

It is not only bermanhosting. 

I have tried 3 different VPS providers(none of them is bermanhosting) and I found that scrapebox was already registered with the VPS I am using.

Its not that these VPS providers are stealing the licences. The problem is the owners of those scrapebox licences did not re-install scrapebox on any other machine and apply their licence on that machine.

The way scrapebox licencing works is:

If you apply your scrapebox licence on a machine and then format the machine, you do not need to apply your licence again because the licence is valid for that IP. 

The licence gets validated for that IP and not only the machine. This is to prevent the load on licencing system if the user accidently formats his PC or whatever.

So, even if the VPS provider clean the machine before selling it again, the scrapebox licence is still valid for that machine.

So its not VPS provider's fault, its the fault of the licence holder.

Not every VPS comes with a scrapebox licence. But since scrapebox is the most used SEO software, you will find it on most of the machines.

nipester

The owners of scrapebox copies should not really be held responsible for reinstalling their copies right away after leaving Berman. Scrapebox allows a license transfer once every 30 days for free. So if someone leaves Berman on the 1st and plans to install the license on the 20th of the month somewhere else they shouldn't be expected to install it in one place on the 2nd just to deactiveate their license. Why should they dish out $10 to do that? The problem is with the scrapebox licensing system because it does not create a deletable license file that the VPS owner can zap when they're cleaning up their VPS just before quitting Berman.

I quit a VPS this week that had Xrumer and GSA installed on it. What I did was delete all of the license and config files in my Xrumer folders along with the GSA license file. Now, if anyone gets a clone of that VPS then neither GSA nor Xrumer will automagically work because the license key files are not there. Had I had scrapebox on that VPS and the new renters installed a copy of scrapebox with the intention of transferring their own license then they'd be greeted by an already validated scrapebox. Would that have been my fault? No, it's because scrapebox does not create a unique file on that VPS but just bases the license on the unique hardware footprint.

It's not the VPS providers fault, and it's not the fault of the license holder. It's scrapebox's fault.

capricious

That is what I am saying buddy. The fact that people are blaming the VPS provider is false.

As the licence would not be stolen. It would be valid as long as the original licence holder does not validate it on another machine.

Not even scrapebox licence system should be blamed. This reduces the load on their side to validate the licence for a user if he formats his machine or somehow uninstall the scrapebox.

It is the responsibility of the licence holder to take care of his licence.

nipester

It is scrapebox's fault. They could have a license file as part of the license validation but they chose not to. If they had one that then there wouldn't be these problems. All of the other IM apps have a license file, scrapebox evidently doesn't and that's the root of the problem. Server load doesn't factor into this at all. The servers won't get overloaded if someone deletes their license file before emptying out their VPS. A fresh VPS too would not have a license file. This is the core of the problem, the lax licensing system of scrapebox.

Pratik

Had same problem today, not with Berman. Not sure whom to blame but the licensing system could be better. I moved scrapebox to other VPS on SolidSEO and saw that the license was already activated for someone.

So I downloaded the tool OP mentioned which SB support listed and it wiped out their license. Honestly it's not OP's fault as well as we're only allowed to transfer license only once in a month which is kinda way less. Should be at least 2-3 times.

lemonzer

BERMANHOSTING IS REALLY FAST AND POWERFULL a long ago. I buy it on May 2013 i think. after 2-3 months my vps become slow.. i didn't use it anymore..

dimcik

I think because they have a lot of clients, and simply can't offer a good service anymore. For me is the first and the last month for using them!

AndrewKar

same thing with SolidSeoVps... I have installed my SB just to see that it's already activated (not my registration info) and was running SB on someones else licence. That didn't bother me at all as I don't have time to deal with such things, if it works I'm happy. But for some people it can be a problem. Also, virtually you don't need to buy SB, just download it, install on one of those hosts, and have a fully working soft if you are lucky (who knows for how long but I was running for a 2 or 3 months...).

spunko2010

Agreed.. Berman are sh*t now. I prefer SSVps

solidseovps

@AndrewKar The problem is ScrapeBox licensing system, we dont spy at what our customers are running and we do provide a clean fresh vps.. If you run GSA on let say a vps with ip ending 123 and tomorrow it was terminated and another client took same ip, Gsa wont activate, So i dont really say its any provider fault. Its the way scrapebox handle license is the one that need to be addressed here.

youngsmeagol

Just a quick heads up. The SBPreptool.exe will reset all your other licenses. My GSA SER and Captcha Sniper Licenses were both reset after using the tool. I didn't see any mention of this on the web. So be cautious. Really weigh your options carefully when deciding to use the SBpreptool.exe. And the SB team gave me absolutely no heads up.

splawnnitro

@youngsmeagol F**K... I wish I read this earlier!

I just did this today and yes, it erased ALL GSA licenses. What did you do to recover them and yes SER and CB running again?