"Officials at Brinkster, which claims to be a top hosting provider in the US that serves customers in 175 countries, didn't respond to requests for comment."

A top hosting provider with only a /20 IP address allocation? That's a bit like being a world military power with a troop of boy scouts and a canoe.

And how is it that their registration shows them to be in Norfolk, Va, but their ARIN contact phone number is in Arizona?

I smell a rat.

Look up freescale.com. Are they in Austin or Phoenix? There are plenty more examples of that.

when Brinkster offered a fairly good _free_ package, I used to have an account with them. They were pretty useless then, and actually deleted my whole account without warning and ignored any emails I sent to them. I wouldn't be suprised if it was just one person...

Anyway, I then learnt that you get what you pay for, by moving elsewhere :)

All the passwords should have been stored encrypted to start with.

FYI - Brinkster has offices in Phoenix and Virginia Beach. It is a totally legitimate company with many employees in both locations - it is most definitely not a one-person operation. (I live very close to the Brinkster offices in Virginia.)