Vultr Vultr Claims Rights to Sell Your Data & Programs?

MaximilianKohler · Mar 30, 2024

Sounds like a good reason to avoid Vultr no?

EDIT: Saw this in the comments:

A few important things:

- This change wasn't in the latest TOS update if you check the internet archive. It's been there since at least June 2021 from what I can find.
- This was apparently in reference to their forum, not hosting, they just used a single TOS for both.
- They have since removed the section from their TOS since it's no longer actually needed.

I do still agree about the "agree to our new terms or you can't even login to cancel your service" type of setup being scummy though.
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Rossmann's reply:

Good comment, and pinning because I didn't put timestamps in this video to address point #1. I did mention in the video that this change is not new, but people thought it was due to the prompt to accept the new terms only showing up over the past week. I forget the timestamp but it's 100% there. You can use archive.org to see the terms in December, https://web.archive.org/web/20231227045837/https://www.vultr.com/legal/tos/

To address point #2, here is why people did not believe this was for their forum - and I don't blame ANYONE who thought this was for their hosting services within the TOS I linked above.

You have the following at number 6:

SERVICES At the time of initial registration, You will select from the list of available Services the service plan(s) to which You wish to subscribe (each a “Subscription”). All Subscriptions to Services are subject to formal acceptance by Vultr. Your Subscription to the Services will be deemed accepted by Vultr when Vultr delivers a confirmation of the Subscription to You. Vultr reserves the right to refuse to provide You with any Service for any reason. Notwithstanding Our Uptime Guarantee, Vultr also reserves the right to interrupt access to the Services to perform regular and emergency maintenance as needed. You may order additional Services at any time, provided that You agree to pay the then-current fees for such additional Services. All additional services shall be considered "Services" hereunder. All Services provided are subject to availability and to these Terms.

1) "You will select from the list of available Services the service plan(s) to which You wish to subscribe (each a “Subscription”)." It's safe for someone to think when this is under "services" in the TOS that is on the homepage of a host, that this is for the hosting services, not some web forum. Do you pay for a service plan to use a community forum for a company's products?

I can click onto hosting services immediately from here. Call me an idiot(you'd be right!) but I spent 40 seconds trying to find a community forum link and I can't find a thing.

2) When you are on vultr.com/tos, rather than vultr forums, and vultr.com is where you sign up for services, it is safe for a user to believe these are the terms for their hosting services.

then you get this later on

"As between you and us, you own your User Content and you have full responsibility for all User Content you make or submit, including its legality, reliability and appropriateness, while using the Services. You hereby grant to Vultr a non-exclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, fully paid-up, worldwide license (including the right to sublicense through multiple tiers) to use, reproduce, process, adapt, publicly perform, publicly display, modify, prepare derivative works, publish, transmit and distribute each of your User Content, or any portion thereof, in any form, medium or distribution method now known or hereafter existing, known or developed, and otherwise use and commercialize the User Content in any way that Vultr deems appropriate, without any further consent, notice and/or compensation to you or to any third parties, for purposes of providing the Services to you".

I can understand how someone reading this would think this applies to the hosting services you are paying a subscription for, rather than to some obscure community forum I can't even find on their website after clicking through. There isn't a single person who read through this who thought this applied to a community forum rather than their hosting services before the company's response, and there's a reason for that upon redaing the terms.

The company's response makes it sound like the reddit user KNEW this was a TOS for their community forum and chose to post what he did with malicious intent to harm the company using false information. I think that's kind of shitty, particularly given how easy it is to interpret their TOS that way, and more importantly, how other large providers do not have TOS that read like this at all.
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I'm surprised that such a long comment made it past Youtube's new AI. At some point, Youtube implemented an AI moderator that arbitrarily removes comments, even from the owner of the Youtube channel on their own videos. So the more words you include the higher the chances that the AI finds something it doesn't like. I've tested this extensively and largely gave up on Youtube comments because of it.

eva2000 · Mar 31, 2024

Read this on various forums. Vultr has since removed the wording and clarified in their TOS to prevent misunderstandings that they aren't claiming rights to your data.

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