Meduza has reported that, according to a former employee, DDoS-Guard has a history of working with customers who operate on the
darknet. The employee has said this is because they can charge higher rates to such customers, who have a much smaller range of choices of Internet service providers willing to work with them, and who often especially need website security services. and the
imageboard 8kun, formerly known as 8chan, which is the online home of the American
far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. The company said they ended services for both Hamas and 8chan after learning about the content on the sites from news sources. DDoS-Guard is suspected of hosting multiple Internet scammers responsible for stealing banking data, and one of the world's largest online stores for illegal drugs operates using infrastructure associated with DDoS-Guard. an American
neo-Nazi,
white supremacist, and
Holocaust denial website and message board. In December 2022, the
European Commission added DDoS-Guard to its "Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List" based on input from copyright holders, which alleged that they were facilitating piracy. Piracy websites that have used the service include
Nyaa Torrents and
MangaDex.
Verified Verified is a platform which
Meduza has described as "one of the Internet's oldest and most notorious Russian-language forums for
credit-card scammers".
Meduza reported that beginning in the spring of 2013, Ukrainian national security and cyberpolice began investigating DDoS-Guard for allegedly servicing this platform, and has said this investigation likely led DDoS-Guard to reincarnate itself as a Russian company in 2014. DDoS-Guard has said they have no knowledge of such an investigation.
Wired noted that Parler's choice to use a Russian company for DDoS protection "could expose its users to Russian surveillance if the site someday does relaunch in full with DDoS-Guard" because of the Russian government's projects to isolate the country's internet. On 5 September 2022, DDoS-Guard dropped them as a client, writing that they had followed a policy of "
net neutrality" for years; "however, there are things that are unacceptable for us under any circumstances". They wrote that after receiving multiple complaints, they "analyzed the content of the site" and decided to end service.
FitGirl Repacks DDoS-Guard provides services for the popular
video game piracy website
FitGirl Repacks. In 2021, FitGirl Repacks had a dispute with its
domain name registrar PublicDomainRegistry (and moved to a different registrar) after
The Spamhaus Project named the site on a block list. As a result, Sci-Hub switched from
Cloudflare to DDoS-Guard for DDoS protection. Sci-Hub founder
Alexandra Elbakyan says that DDoS-Guard initially contacted her, and that the company volunteered that it works with
piracy sites including
Rutracker.org. Some experts identify Sci-Hub's use of DDoS-Guard as a security risk given its involvement with the Russian state and that it could monitor Sci-Hub's traffic. Elbakyan says she pays DDoS-Guard about US$1,000 per month (one sixth of Sci-Hub's operating budget), all for DDoS protection; an expert found this amount credible. == Projects ==