Simply, Sally

My host is on the fast track to being fired / reported to the BBB.

In November, I had a bunch of hackers trying to break into my copy of eFiction. I managed to get the archive updated, patched, and remodified so it works fairly decently.

Now, I have some spammer using my domain’s catch all e-mail address for his spam campaign. He’s put it as the return address for his current campaign, so all returned e-mails are going to MY account.

I found out because my e-mail was slow and I needed to send a quick note to Bender. Thinking something was up, I opened up my browser and noticed my site was acting buggy. I went to my Webmail and BOOM. 7000 returned e-mails.

Thinking it was the hackers exploiting my site again, I deleted all contact forms. Nope, didn’t touch it. Put them back up. I managed to slow it down my installing some e-mail blockers and filters on my Webmail, but I still easily end up deleting 1000 e-mails a day.

So behold – well over 10,000 returned e-mails in 48 hours. ( I lost count after 10,000) My bandwidth is being eaten alive (I’m up to a whole gig) and it’s only the 9th of December. I’ve removed all downloads and extras to help protect my bandwidth, as well as further compressing my images to make them smaller.

On the 7th, I wrote a very panicked e-mail post to the Netbunch support forums begging for help in stemming this flood. Nothing. I send in a support ticket the next morning – nothing.

I repost a less panicked version of my post and bump my old one as well as submitting a new ticket with more information. I finally get a response: I get yelled at for spamming. My first support ticket is deleted, my first post is locked, my second post is deleted. It’s been 2 days since I heard from anyone and the e-mails keep coming.

I’m going to wait until tomorrow morning before I post a followup to my support ticket and inform them that I still need help. Then, if nothing else happens I’m submitting a complaint to the BBB regarding this shit. As soon as tax returns come back, Mom and Jass are talking very seriously about moving the site to a new host.

Sure, it’s a cliche, but I have to wonder when I became flypaper for freaks.

Tags: Dr2.net, eFiction, exploit, hacker, hackers, Mesopia, Netbunch, spam, spammer, Web Design, Webhostplus

This entry was posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005 at 2:37 pm and is filed under Drama, Rants, Web. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.