Who hosts the website?

For certain websites outside of Report Harmful Contents remit, we appreciate that locating a reporting route or email address can often prove to be more challenging than we would anticipate. In this scenario, we always try and signpost people to the individual website’s hosting provider. Though we cannot guarantee that this will always be an effective reporting route, we certainly believe it is worth escalating in this way if it can help get unwanted, harmful content removed.

In the simplest terms, a web hosting provider is a company that stores and serves website content and are often businesses that provide the technologies and services needed for the website to be on the internet. It’s important to note that the hosting provider is not required to check the content of the website, nor do they usually have direct access to remove content on the webpage, however, often they have a more direct contact to the website in order to pass on any concerns that we may be unable to.

There are many different websites out there where you find the correct hosting provider for the website you are wishing to make a report on. A few free ones are listed below.

Once you have located your favourite ‘who hosts this’ website, the rest is pretty straightforward. Simply copy and paste the website you are wishing to report into the search bar and the hosting provider for that page should be shown. For example, common hosting providers are sites such as Cloudflare, OVHcloud, GoDaddy or Hetzner. From here you can click on the hosting provider’s website and locate an online contact form or email address (usually in their ‘contact us’ section). Here you can raise your concerns on what you are wishing to report. However, please remember this route of reporting may not always be successful, and we cannot guarantee that you will always get a response from the platform.