vURL Online surpasses half a million website dissections!

I am pleased to report, the vURL Online service, which went public in 2005, has passed the half a million websites mark. Though certainly nothing to write home about when compared to other online services, I think it's pretty cool.

The bad thing about running these services however, is the attraction of the bad guys. The vURL Online server has been seeing a slew of traffic recently, and though it's only a quarter of the traffic the hpHosts server see's, it's begun to cause a few problems - namely the servers resources becoming overloaded (more specifically, it's been causing the Application Pool to be forcibly shut down, causing the server to go offline).

I've just taken a look at the logs from the vURL Online service, and noticed something interesting - alot of those that are hammering the server, are listed, or related to listings, in the hpHosts blacklist, such as this bunch of jokers, and this lot and this lot - coincidence? I think not.

I'm looking into options for the servers due to their usage, as my current usage is coming exceedingly close to the limit imposed by my ISP, and I can't afford to upgrade to the higher packages. I'll post more on what I decide in due course.

In the meantime, I've become to think that perhaps a sponsor may be required to provide the hosting for the hpHosts and vURL services (the bad thing of course, is that I would require that the sponsor have no influence over hosts in the hpHosts database, and am not too hot on the idea of advertising being plastered all over the sites - something most sponsors usually require if I'm not mistaken?). I've absolutely no idea on how one goes about enquiring about such, so I'd love to hear your thoughts?