According to reports by The Register, the robbery occurred over the weekend and Gabriel's website seems to be hosted by UK web host Rednet "that appears to be a defunct brand of a UK company called Opal Telecom, which in turn is a wholly owned subsidiary of Carphone Warehouse."

Although the site doesn't offer any details surrounding what exactly happened and when affected websites will return to their normal states, this message has been left for visitors to Gabriel's website: "We'll Be Back Soon - apologies for the lack of service. Real World, Peter Gabriel and WOMAD web services are currently off-line. Our servers were stolen from our ISP's data centre on Sunday night - Monday morning. We are working on restoring normal service as soon as possible."

A visit to PeterGabriel.com shows the website looks and functions like his regular website would, with many of the tabs like News and Biography offering up-to-date information about the musician. However certain features like his Videos are unavailable.

Although robberies are not a common occurrence within the web hosting industry, there have been at least two high-profile web hosting-related robberies in the last year.

In October 2007, a Chicago-based facility belonging to web host C I Host was broken into by at least two masked intruders that proceeded to assault an employee with a taser and then take off with at least 20 data servers.

Then in December 2007, a Verizon Business data center located near King's Cross station in London, England was broken into when three to five men posing as policemen gained access to the facility, tied up staff and stole computing equipment.