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11-03-2013, 11:53 PM #1Newbie
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- Mar 2004
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- San Jose, CA
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Hawk Host Support Has Become Pathetic, Very Disappointed
I just have to get this off my chest, and am royally teed off right now. Just beware of my situation as this can easily happen to you, if you are current or future customer.
Been with Hawk for 10+ years and was pretty happy with them up until a few months ago. Rarely had to contact Support in those 10 years.
Recently, I had 1 account just get completely inundated with Spam over the last few months. I futzed with Spam Assassin, and had well over 150+ filters setup and I still could not stop it.
I asked Hawk for some help in trying to get it under control, and was simply told to lower my Spam Assassin number, so I dropped it to 3 and it did nothing.
Next, a spammer used my business Email name to deliver spam. I doubt the account was compromised as I have a pretty complex password scheme. However as soon as I started seeing the bounced Emails, I deleted the account, as anything is possible. This is the first time in 10 years that account got compromised.
Hawk throttled my Email accounts back to sending 1 email and hour, but nothing was ever communicated to me, nor did anyone contact me about the spam, I was supposedly sending.
I found out when I tried to respond to customers and got a returned message that I exceeded the number of Emails allowed per hour(1). Really guys????... you couldn't contact me to discuss the situation. I have no doubt I lost revenue over this, and that is a different matter that will be dealt with.
When I asked what was going on all I got was we found your account *********** sending spam, with an example attached.
I responded with the below comment
I have been complaining for several weeks that I have been receiving an overwhelming amount of Spam, and have actually eliminated the Email box altogether to stop it since you didn't seem to be able or want to help. This has gotten incredibly frustrating, it is not me, the mail box has been deleted now for a couple of weeks. I brought it back for one day, still got Spam and deleted it again. So I have to ask what tools do you have in place that help me stop it, or barring my completely eliminating my business email boxes what advice can you give me to help?
I have been with you guys for quite a few years and in the last few months the Spam has gotten completely out of control. Spamassasin was useless, or not setup correctly. I have it down to 3 and that still didn't stop it, any lower and I may miss business email.
My xxxxxxxx email boxes were also compromised, so again what preventive measures are there or should I put in place to stop it? I have complicated passwords, so they are not easy to crack.
Please what can I do to stop it?
This went unanswered and the case is "Unassigned" so I took that as get lost, and find another host. Pretty pathetic way to treat a 10 year customer, IMO.
What is a HUGE disappointment was the lack of caring and communication with a long term customer, albeit I am small potatoes, so maybe they are no longer interested in dealing with the small business person.
Moved on to another hosting company
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11-04-2013, 12:25 AM #2Web Hosting Master
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- Jul 2008
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- 1,665
Sounds like you had a rough time. I do understand that, and perhaps they should have made a better effort to help you.
But you are stating your account has been comprised? There should be logs and your IP to compare against to get to the bottom of it.
Also the bounced emails you get? Did you read the header in them to see if they even originated from the server your mail is hosted at?
Also another reason to insure SPF, DKIM is setup, but if somebody is forging your email, even though the email server rejects and bounces it because it sees it coming from a non confirmed sender, the emails will bounce back to you.
So hopefully that gives you a bit of understanding.
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11-04-2013, 12:32 AM #3Aspiring Evangelist
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- Sep 2012
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- 394
You know that its weekend though? And that maybe its midnight on their timezone? Try updating your ticket see if anyone answers it, or you can also try to message their representative here, you might get a reply. Just be patient.
And the way how you draw conclusions on how they didnt answer your ticket is just plain childish.Epidrive Webhosting Solutions - Premium Quality Hosting Made Affordable
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11-04-2013, 12:40 AM #4Web Hosting Master
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11-04-2013, 12:42 AM #5Web Hosting Master
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Sometimes reputable companies turn into a bch for no reason. This usually happen when they acquire stability. However, probably you were also hostile in your replies, and thats why this was left unsolved. all this IMHO. Don't take it personal.
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11-04-2013, 12:45 AM #6Aspiring Evangelist
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11-04-2013, 12:47 AM #7Web Hosting Master
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██ l Dedigeeks • Shared • Wordpress • Dedicated • Established 2006
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██ l cPanel/WHM • R1Soft Backups • 24/7/365 Support • SMS Hosting Alerts*
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11-04-2013, 01:46 AM #8Web Hosting Industry Expert
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- Dec 2007
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- Indiana, USA
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I pinged a couple of people at HawkHost concerning this thread - I assume they're sleeping or unavailable at the moment but hopefully they'll be in soon to address this ticket and the OP's concerns.
@OP - if you can go ahead and post a ticket ID [or ticket IDs] so that when a HH representative does see this thread they can investigate - that would be a great step.
It's entirely possible you've slipped through the cracks and management isn't aware.█ Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,700 websites since 2007.
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11-04-2013, 01:48 AM #9Newbie
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- Mar 2004
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- San Jose, CA
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- 14
What I posted was the update on October 24th, I realize I should have added that, so I apologize for not being clearer. I would think in 10 days, I should have gotten some sort of a response.
Don't they advertise fast response to Support issues?
No one bothered to contact me to let me know that my business email was being throttled back to only one an hour. You would think severely restricting someone's ability to do business would warrant some sort of contact to let me know it was going to happen.
Things happen I get that, we all have our moments but the lack of communication is what has me upset, they pretty much shutdown Email, which my business is dependent on without letting me know.
When I did contact them about it, I just got - you were sending spam and an example. Not any type of explanation of what I can do as next steps, or even an explanation it was against the TOS and we need to know what you are going to do in the future to solve it, or even, we no longer want you as a customer due to your spamming.
Or here is a concept... Hey we noticed you just sent out 10K worth of emails and we suspect someone got into your account or is using your email address, and you need to take some action. Simply nothing.. they just let me flounder
I am a Technical Support Manager for a Silicon Valley Software company, which by the way we also host our software and in no way shape or form, does any issue with my customers go like this, nor does it go 10 days without an answer.
@jcarney The example they gave me does look like it came from my hawkhost account, which just further exasperates the situation in my eyes. No way should anyone from the outside be able to get into a user account.
Unfortunately I deleted the outlook email box, as I did not want to take chance on what virus/trojans or malware be sitting there, so I can't tell if all were done that way.
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11-04-2013, 02:05 AM #10Premium Member
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- Oct 2013
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- Singapore
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I agree 10 days without a response is way too much. Perhaps your ticket is currently flagged for a higher-up to handle and he/she doesn't happen to be in the office this period, though if that was the case, it would have been decent if they could have informed you first. Hopefully their representative could drop in here to shed some light on what is happening.
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11-04-2013, 02:07 AM #11Web Hosting Industry Expert
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- Dec 2007
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- Indiana, USA
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- 19,196
Speaking from experience - it can be easy to overlook a single ticket in a sea of hundreds or thousands.
If you haven't heard back - I would get with management and make sure there's not some sort of explanation for it. It's possible you're entirely right and they're ignoring you but I find it unlikely with what I know about HawkHost and their corporate culture.
Do you know if that was manual intervention? It's entirely possible it was automatic. I'm not making excuses but simply providing plausible explanations.
Not everybody equates email with 'doing business' - you do for sure - but not everybody does.
That said - they have to do what they can to prevent outbound SPAM from affecting their other customers. You weren't able to send email because you were limited but how would you feel if you couldn't send email because other users on the server were sending spam [and were not limited/restricted in any way as a result]?
Do please get with their management before making any rash decisions. If they have a legitimate reason for a lack of response it's up to you to judge whether you should jump ship. If they don't have a good reason - then the decision is easy.
If I had to speculate - you asked why - they told you why and left it at that. If you need more information or want to take action - I suspect you need to take it a bit further.
Do understand I have no inside information so I'm speaking generally - I could be wrong as I don't know all of the details.
If it's an automatic process they may not be aware. Let's put this into perspective - say they host 100,000 accounts [no idea, hypothetical] and 1,000 accounts per day are limited for sending spam. That's a LOT of accounts to chase down due to the accounts clearly violating the Terms of Service and likely the law.
An automated system would handle these issues quickly and efficiently but wouldn't have the 'human touch'.
I would presume your customer count is in the hundreds or thousands and not the tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands?
That said - it's entirely possible that you, as a company, do not face the same issues of scale that HawkHost face. Do you offer email services? Do you have to deal with out bound spam?
Make sure you're not comparing apples to oranges.
Understand that out of every 1,000 account compromises we've seen [we're not HawkHost] 1,000 of those were due to security issues on the user's end - using a shared password, using an insecure password, running outdated software, etc... I'm not placing blame on you - but more likely than not - the compromise of your email account was not something that HawkHost did or did not do. It's much more likely based upon my real-world experience over the years that your email compromise was something you did [or did not] do.
Again - speaking generally so don't take it personally - I could be wrong and I'm more than happy to admit that up front.
It's unlikely numerous methods were used - but it's best to know how it happened so you can fix it and prevent it in the future.█ Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,700 websites since 2007.
█ Ultra-Fast Cloud Shared and Pay-By-Use Reseller Hosting Powered by LiteSpeed!
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11-04-2013, 02:10 AM #12Web Hosting Master
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- Aug 2004
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- Canada
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When we find spam which we find from our own scanners as well as AOL, hotmail, spamcop, spamhaus and others we email accounts notifying them of this. The email informs the account holder that email sending has been disabled and instructions are sent to contact us as well as possible reasons for the spam.
We put this system in place over 6 months ago and we've received a lot of great feedback that this is significantly better than our old policies. Our old policies meant we were disabling an account and emailing the account holder. This is what most providers do and we don't think this is a good way of handling it. With our system at the very least web sites stay online until the webmaster contacts us.
Unfortunately a suggested policy of emailing users and saying hey you sent 10,000 spam emails would result problems for many more businesses. The situation sucks but our options are stop the spam from one user and affect his business or ignore it and watch it affect many businesses. So we disable the email sending provide a sample then the expectation is the spam source is resolved before email privileges are restored.
If you have an active ticket where we missed replying to you please pm me a ticket numberLast edited by TonyB; 11-04-2013 at 02:24 AM.
█ Tony B. - Chief Executive Officer
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11-04-2013, 02:31 AM #13Newbie
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- San Jose, CA
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- 14
I was definitely not hostile, as a Tech Support manager I know how that goes. No question I expressed frustration in what I posted, but I don't know of anyone that wouldn't be frustrated. I was trying to be very accommodating and asking for help and recommendations.
Sorry about the time frame, I am simply livid as this has now cost me several thousands of $$$ of revenue.
I first contacted Support on Sept 27th, after fighting spam since late July. The answer was to change the Spam Assassin number to 3.
My response back was "I was hoping for a little more than that as SpamAssassin didn't seem to be working, but since it was all they had I told then I would slowly drop the number down and see what happens, and they could close the case. It didn't work and I added quite a few filters.
I don't recall the exact date I saw the bounced messages coming, but the Email account was deleted with three hours of getting those messages. Two Saturdays ago I turned it back on, and the next day I received about 10 Spams, so I deleted the account again and it has not been put back.
On Oct 23rd I sent in the Email to Hawk that was bounced due to sending more than 1 an hour. I had no idea what it was about. As I discovered my manager was using his personal Email to answer customers questions to get around it. I was out of the office until October 23rd. feedback from those that did answer thought it was Spam, since it did not come from the business named account.
On the 24th I was told I was spamming, and was given the example, and that was it. No explanation about only being able to send 1 Email and hour or any explanation about it at all. I responded back the same day asking what I need to do and asked for help. I got nothing back.
When you throttle a business's Email without an explanation, and don't respond to requests for help, what other conclusion can you come to?
Was I frustrated, you bet, being a Tech Support Manager and responsible for part of a NOC, this was incredibly frustrating.
Hope this helps. I thought long and hard before posting this, I own a business and am extremely sensitive about posts like this.
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11-04-2013, 02:42 AM #14Web Hosting Master
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I would like to clarify a bit here we sent an email on October 10th informing the account holder that spam was originating from the account. This went to deaf ears no response from anyone regarding it. This would have gladly been resolved if someone responded to us but no one did. This is exactly why we don't just email people and wait for a response. It simply does not work because so many people ignore the warning emails. A user typically doesn't respond to them until it affects their business. In this case it was being unable to send email. In other cases it's a big warning message on a web site.
As far as tickets and responses ever feel not getting a quick response can always respond to the ticket again. It's possible it was closed by mistake. If it's a support ticket always can ask it to be escalated.
Now as far as spam filtering we hear the complaints and that is why we're closing in on having a much more robust solution in place. The vast majority of web hosts are running spam assassin or some RBL's maybe a bit of custom filtering. It's not nearly as effective as dedicated email services. We hope we'll soon be able to say our email filtering is just as effective as these services while at the same time still being a web hosting provider.█ Tony B. - Chief Executive Officer
█ Hawk Host Inc. Proudly serving websites since 2004
█ Quality Shared and Cloud Hosting
█ PHP 5.2.x - PHP 8.1.X Support!
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11-04-2013, 11:21 AM #15<< Insert Funny Title >>
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If email is critical to your business, you should seriously consider a dedicated email service separate from your web hosting account. Google Apps and Office 365 come to mind, however there are other similar services out there. If you have competent, in house IT staff, you may also be able to consider running your own mail server.
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11-04-2013, 11:34 AM #16Web Hosting Master
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Just to add to this, depending on the amount of mailboxes, there are a lot of easy to use mail server applications. They install on Windows, have a GUI, etc. Really easy to use. If email is that important, I'd check into that.
On a side note, I've been using Sherweb for exchange email for about 3 years now. They've been rock solid, no issues. I'd recommend checking them out.
I do think Google Apps are cheaper though, and I've been tempted to check out Google Apps myself.█ Bobby - PreciselyManaged.com - Precision Hosting Solutions
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11-04-2013, 03:16 PM #17Web Hosting Industry Expert
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You do realize, of course, that hosting a site, and email, that - if down - results in thousands of dollars of lost revenue on a shared hosting plan costing only a few dollars per month is foolish right?
If you stand to lose thousands of dollars over a few days or a few hours - you really should be paying substantially more the infrastructure that is critical to running your business.
Google Apps, Office 365, a hosted Exchange server, a self-hosted exchange server - all viable options - some better than others.█ Michael Denney - MDDHosting.com - Proudly hosting more than 37,700 websites since 2007.
█ Ultra-Fast Cloud Shared and Pay-By-Use Reseller Hosting Powered by LiteSpeed!
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11-04-2013, 03:46 PM #18Web Hosting Master
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Google apps has limits. If you're sending email and making thousands in less than a month, you're sending more than their limits - probably.
I can't come up with a way to buy that in my own mind though. Making that kind of coin in less than a month and using a shared plan?█ █ █
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