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Police-baiting website Fitwatch returns

Back and fitter than ever - not that it ever really went away

The British website briefly removed from the sight of some web surfers by the Met Police's e-crime unit is back in full effect.

Of course Fitwatch never really disappeared; the site's hosting provider JustHost suspended the account after a stroppy email from the Met, but hardly had the plug been pulled than the site sprouted up in hundreds of other places, from Facebook to dozens of blogs and other sites.

Emily from Fitwatch told The Register: "JustHost have not relented and we have moved to another host, and the proxy servers are located outside of the UK."

So depending on how you get internet you might already be able to see the site - depending on whether your ISP has updated its DNS records. If not you can use a proxy server to view it, or look at one of the hundreds of mirror sites.

JustHost sent us a frankly baffling statement of legalese this morning claiming it could not divulge customer information without a subpoena or court order.

But the sometime hosting provider did say: "However, when we become aware of improper activity by one of our customers using a hosted site, which would be a violation of our Terms of Service (TOS) governing the web sites, we take such situations seriously, we investigate promptly, and we take appropriate action."

The Met said yesterday: "We were concerned this website was giving information about destroying evidence. We drew this to the attention of the internet infrastructure provider and they suspended the site."

Fitwatch's site includes a new post thanking the Met Police for all the publicity.

The post said the email asking for the site to be closed "came from DI Paul Hoare, from the Police Central e-crime Unit, the authorisation to close was given much closer to home, by acting Detective Inspector Will Hodgeson".

The post continued: "However, through totally underestimating the power of social media this pathetic attempt has failed miserably. Within minutes of networking what had happened, people were re-publishing the post anywhere and everywhere.

"There are now over 100 sites carrying the original post – we haven’t managed to count them all." ®

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