susanf

This afternoon I got the message pasted below, apparently a standard message in the event of spam issues. The reason I'm bothering to post it here is that it might be helpful information for anyone considering signing up to host a Wordpress site on Hawk Host. The critical question is: why didn't Hawk Host move the files to public_html-hacked and reinstate my account as soon as the offending file was discovered? I got an email about the offending file two days ago, so I know it isn't a recent discovery. Because HH didn't act on this (or even reply to me), my site was down for two days. As it happens, my site is not really "live" yet, but if it were, I would be pretty unhappy right now. My feeling is that this level of service is just not acceptable, so I plan to move my site. ____________________________________________ Hello, Your account has been enabled and your old public_html/ has been moved to public_html-hacked/. Please do not move these contents back over as they're compromised and doing so will result in immediate suspension. We found the following malicious file on your account which is where you were sending spam from: -- (url omitted)...PHP.Trojan.Spambot FOUND -- Unfortunately it is difficult to determine the exact intrusion point in this case but malicious users were able to access your account to add/modify files. At this point we suggest either reinstalling your sites/blogs from clean backups you've kept or use Softaculous in cPanel to reinstall the software and then re-configure your new installation to connect to the old database to restore your posts/content. ------------------------------ Brian F. Operations Manager, Hawk Host Ticket Details Ticket ID: ZJN-179-18533 Department: SPAM

Two days ago my account was automatically closed because spambots accessed my site. (It's a Wordpress site.) I immediately responded to the email I received from Hawk Host, and I sent several subsequent messages. Two days later, still no response whatsoever.