HELP - SUSPENDED - "account sending unsolicited/spam email messages or spamvertised"!

[vplaw]

Please Help! - we got complaints from several clients that when they went to our site, they saw an embarrassing notice that said "ACCOUNT SUSPENDED".

Username: vplaw
Domain: BeverlyHillsLawPartners.com

When logging in to the account portal, I saw a notice saying:

"Your suspension reason is as follows: account sending unsolicited/spam email messages or spamvertised"

This did not make any sense because we have not used x10hosting's email service at all, we do not have any registered email addresses with them, and all of our emailing is done using Google apps through our separate domain provider, and we certainly do not send out any spam. In addition, we have never used our x10.mx domain, only our own .com domain purchased from a separate domain provider, but hosted on x10hosting.

I appealed the decision indicating the above, certain that a mistake had been made and that we would be up and running in no time. We were shocked to receive the following response:

"Unfortunately after a careful consideration the information submitted with your appeal does not adequately justify the removal of the suspension. I can indeed confirm that the account was attempting to send nearly 20,000 emails in a single day - the problem was that at the time of suspension, we could not confirm this was the result of a hack exploit, only that the account's Wordpress install is extremely out of date (by about 8 months). Without confirmed evidence that this was a hack/exploit, the suspension must stand, as account security is the user's responsibility... suspension will remain permanently.

At this time, data backups are not available as detailed in sections 6 and 8 of the x10Hosting Terms of Service."

We have not used Wordpress in months, and all wordpress files were moved to an inaccessible backup folder on the FTP. Our website was purely HTML since we stopped using Wordpress.

It was an absolute shock that a hosting provider would shut down our entire site permanently without any warning and our of nowhere without notice or an opportunity to appeal. We have trusted and relied on x10 Hosting's service for a long time, especially for backups of our site.

PLEASE HELP

We have relied on x10hosting for Backups, we have our entire site saved and backed up there, never expecting something like this to happen to us by our own hosting provider.

At the very minimum, I need temporary access to the FTP in order to download our site and move the site to another hosting account.

This is URGENT, devastating to our company, and is absolutely time sensitive because our clients rely on our website on a daily basis.


PLEASE HELP!! Thank you.

 

[essellar]

Re: HELP - SUSPENDED - "account sending unsolicited/spam email messages or spamvertis

I'm not involved in any way in the decision-making process, but I can tell you this much: saving your backups on your web account is also a violation of the terms of service. And there is the larger (and much more baffling) question of why a business would run any critical applications on Free Hosting, which is pretty much at the whim of the provider and does not involve any binding contract (you might have noticed the lack of consideration on your part, particularly if you claim legal expertise). I can tell you, though, that access to accounts suspended for ToS violations is never granted (it would make x10Hosting complicit in illegal activity), so if your appeal is unsuccessful, your data are gone absent local backups.

 

[Livewire]

Re: HELP - SUSPENDED - "account sending unsolicited/spam email messages or spamvertis

As a further addition to the above, I can confirm from looking at the account again that both domains added to the account do indeed still have active WordPress files on them. Whether or not they were still in use, they are not in a backup folder on FTP - they are active and accessible in public_html. That said, as indicated in the dispute, there was no evidence suggesting this was a hack or exploit, only that the account had sent or attempted to send 19,545 emails within a 24 hour period.

The only reason I had actually mentioned the Wordpress install in the dispute is that 8 months without major updates is something no webmaster should ever allow their site to undergo, even if the "core" files are removed - in the case of one of the Wordpress installs, it is actually fully intact, although not displayed as you have an index.html page in there instead. The problem is that it is still there, which means it needs to be kept up-to-date as it can still be accessed or used if someone were to even guess at the filenames (index.php vs index.html is an extremely easy guess to make, to the point that some bots exist specifically to probe for hidden webpages like this).

Unfortunately as was stated, we can't lift the suspension, and as per sections 6 and 8 from the Terms of Service, we can't restore access to the account or provide backups due to the suspension being in place. We always recommend that the customer keep their own backups, and personally I wouldn't run a commercial site on a free hosting provider, if only because while our service is fairly stable, it is free hosting - there are no guarantees as to stability or reliability, which is pretty much required for a business. With the suspension being permanent and unable to be lifted however, I am closing the ticket, as the issue has been answered as thoroughly as possible.