Over the past week we have had some complaints that emails were not being delivered in a timely fashion. We definitely know that this is not something that is tolerated and not something that should be happening. It took us a few days, but we were able to pinpoint the problem.
This did not affect users that have their email routed to third party providers in most cases.
The Cause
Unfortunately, we had a script within a compromised account that was using the server to send out mass emails. We were quick to act but unfortunately not before it queued up thousands of emails that in turn, delayed everyone else.
The Solution
We have now taken care of the issue and emails should be coming in promptly again. We have deleted over 350,000 emails that were in the queue trying to be sent as SPAM and clogging up the server.
Preventative Measures
If you are managing your own web site on the server, please make sure that you are running the latest versions of whatever code and scripts you are using. This includes Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and any associated plugins. It is very important to be up to date so that nasty hackers that have nothing better to do can't break in and do bad things.
If you ever start to receive bounced emails that look strange, email us immediately so we can take action. The information that we need is the email headers. Click here to learn how to retrieve this information.
If you think your email is ever hacked, change your password immediately and contact us.
Thank You
We thank everyone who helped us figure out this issue and was good enough to send us more information when we needed it.
We continue to monitor and we will make sure something like this doesn't happen again.
Regards,
Steven and Zak