> Also Linode is a security nightmare

To be fair, Rackspace could also be a security nightmare just waiting to be discovered. For example, as of about a year ago, the way Rackspace generated the initial root passwords for cloud instances was by taking the hostname and appending a bunch of random characters to it. Unfortunately, they put a DES hash in /etc/shadow, so only the first 8 characters mattered, most or all of which were taken up by the predictable hostname. And yes, root logins over ssh were on by default. When this was reported to them, they initially denied it, and only acknowledged and fixed it after much wrangling and, in my opinion, an excessive amount of time.

Given Linode's recent security vulnerabilities, I would stay away from them if I needed security. I'm not sure who to turn to, though, maybe a dedicated box would be innately more secure.