Between a rock and a hard place

W

webling

Member
One of the providers I have a VPS with goes into my VPS sometimes and makes changes such as deleting files on one of the domains rather than contacting me with the necessary information so that I can handle things. Is this a good practice on their part or should I seek another upstream provider for the accounts on that VPS? I could move the domains without a lot of trouble that are on it because it's a small VPS where I have my own domains mostly, but want to know if I should tolerate what they are doing or if what they are doing is outside healthy boundries?

I pay my bill every month and have never had an issue in many years of business with them, but I am feeling like I want to take my business elsewhere.

I appreciate everyone's perspective because I know there are some excellent hosting companies on this site.
 
Are these files malware or command and control scripts, mass-mailing scripts etc?

If so, they might just be running a virus scanner on their nodes (thinking OpenVZ) and your files are being found and removed.

If these are just benign files or part of your website i.e. photos or html then I would be worried.

A little more information is needed before we can pass judgement.
 
ughosting said:
Are these files malware or command and control scripts, mass-mailing scripts etc?

If so, they might just be running a virus scanner on their nodes (thinking OpenVZ) and your files are being found and removed.

If these are just benign files or part of your website i.e. photos or html then I would be worried.

A little more information is needed before we can pass judgement.
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They were files in a Joomla site. The ones that are used for sending mail.
 
webling said:
One of the providers I have a VPS with goes into my VPS sometimes and makes changes such as deleting files on one of the domains rather than contacting me with the necessary information so that I can handle things. Is this a good practice on their part or should I seek another upstream provider for the accounts on that VPS? I could move the domains without a lot of trouble that are on it because it's a small VPS where I have my own domains mostly, but want to know if I should tolerate what they are doing or if what they are doing is outside healthy boundries?

I pay my bill every month and have never had an issue in many years of business with them, but I am feeling like I want to take my business elsewhere.

I appreciate everyone's perspective because I know there are some excellent hosting companies on this site.
Click to expand...

It's not good when someone remove your files without sending information to you. You must change access to ssh, or change provider.

Better rent vps KVN not OpenVZ

Did you contact with them ? why they remove it ?
 
ughosting said:
If so, they might just be running a virus scanner on their nodes (thinking OpenVZ) and your files are being found and removed.
Click to expand...

It's not normal remove files without notice, they must move them to folder /virus or other temp

webling said:
They were files in a Joomla site. The ones that are used for sending mail.
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You must upgrade your Joomla, because if one website has problem , all other too will have same.
 
HostLeet said:
Was your account found to have been sending spam? Have you contacted your host and asked why the files were removed?
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I do not send spam from my sites.

I should ask them why they think the site was sending spam since I haven't used it to send any email at all in several months.
 
oshqeu said:
It's not good when someone remove your files without sending information to you. You must change access to ssh, or change provider.

Better rent vps KVN not OpenVZ

Did you contact with them ? why they remove it ?
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I thought I should change providers also. My current provider is actually a reseller and doesn't actually own the servers I use. I'm thinking of changing to a company who owns their servers.
 
I am looking at another provider I have used in the past when I used to run IRC servers. They have far better VPS plans than my current provider and when I used them in the past I never had any altercations.
 
webling said:
I do not send spam from my sites.

I should ask them why they think the site was sending spam since I haven't used it to send any email at all in several months.
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So they did say your account was sending spam?? (the plot thickens lol)

Even if you personally didn't send spam but your account was somehow compromised due to a poor script or poor security practices, then I see nothing wrong with the host taking action to prevent further abuse, and you shouldn't either. :agree:
 
HostLeet said:
So they did say your account was sending spam?? (the plot thickens lol)

Even if you personally didn't send spam but your account was somehow compromised due to a poor script or poor security practices, then I see nothing wrong with the host taking action to prevent further abuse, and you shouldn't either. :agree:
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I would agree with that, they're just keeping up on security and it helps me also. I do tend to be very precise in my thinking but over the years I have learned to listen to others who have sound reasoning.

This happened on an interactive site and the original information I received from the provider was that the account contained some malicious contents that were used to send out spam mails.

So I don't know if something was compromised. I know that software such as Joomla is often a magnet for crackers and spam bots. Even on a wordpress site I have when I allowed registrations the site got cracked often and I had a mess to clean up each time. So I discontinued registrations and that solved the problems. Sometimes it's not the main program itself that is flawed it is the addons used with it.
 
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webling said:
I do not send spam from my sites.

I should ask them why they think the site was sending spam since I haven't used it to send any email at all in several months.
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You are using Joomla and if like a lot if my clients you will not be updating it when new updates get released, so someone could have found a weakness and placed a file in your account that is using it to send out spam and you will never know until your account gets suspended or terminated for spamming.

If i get spam reports on any of my clients, then the first thing i do is go into that account and check any files/folder that is mentioned in spam report to see if anything stands out that should not be in the file structure. I will isolate any strange files/folders and if needed i will suspend the account and then contact the client.
 
easyhostmedia said:
You are using Joomla and if like a lot if my clients you will not be updating it when new updates get released, so someone could have found a weakness and placed a file in your account that is using it to send out spam and you will never know until your account gets suspended or terminated for spamming.

If i get spam reports on any of my clients, then the first thing i do is go into that account and check any files/folder that is mentioned in spam report to see if anything stands out that should not be in the file structure. I will isolate any strange files/folders and if needed i will suspend the account and then contact the client.
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I am seriously thinking of discontinuing use of Joomla for this and many other reasons.
 
webling said:
I am seriously thinking of discontinuing use of Joomla for this and many other reasons.
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Joomla is no worse than Wordpress and other scripts when it comes to vulnerability. The trick is to have security plugins and making sure you update the scripts when updates and patches are released.
 
easyhostmedia said:
Joomla is no worse than Wordpress and other scripts when it comes to vulnerability. The trick is to have security plugins and making sure you update the scripts when updates and patches are released.
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Exactly, the thing is that I don't always have time to keep up on that. I need low maintenance websites for what I do, so simple web pages will do it for me. Granted I do enjoy building member sites, but the risk for me is not worth the effort it requires to maintain such a site.
 
webling said:
Exactly, the thing is that I don't always have time to keep up on that. I need low maintenance websites for what I do, so simple web pages will do it for me. Granted I do enjoy building member sites, but the risk for me is not worth the effort it requires to maintain such a site.
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look on sites like themeforest and you should find an HTML or PHP template that you can adapt to your needs and without the risk of a script.

I am forever informing clients to update their scripts through softaculous. some think 'well it aint broken so why fix it', they dont think of the security issues, so i give them 48 hrs to update scripts otherwise i do it from root access and charge them.
 
easyhostmedia said:
look on sites like themeforest and you should find an HTML or PHP template that you can adapt to your needs and without the risk of a script.

I am forever informing clients to update their scripts through softaculous. some think 'well it aint broken so why fix it', they dont think of the security issues, so i give them 48 hrs to update scripts otherwise i do it from root access and charge them.
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You are thinking like me. I am able to write the code myself but because of time restraints I do seek templates and I did find one that will work on the site I was using Joomla on. Thanks for your help.

Concerning web scripts since I have been using them more I am realizing the ever increasing number of spam bots online. When I check my stats and logs it's frightening, so a webmaster has to be on top of this all the time and as you say update your scripts constantly. I do have one blog I am running wordpress on, but that one I can keep up on and I have made serious security changes in that site to keep it secure.
 
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webling said:
You are thinking like me. I am able to write the code myself but because of time restraints I do seek templates and I did find one that will work on the site I was using Joomla on. Thanks for your help.

Concerning web scripts since I have been using them more I am realizing the ever increasing number of spam bots online. When I check my stats and logs it's frightening, so a webmaster has to be on top of this all the time and as you say update your scripts constantly. I do have one blog I am running wordpress on, but that one I can keep up on and I have made serious security changes in that site to keep it secure.
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At least Joomla and WP do release updates and patches and are quick to act if anything happens. Not like E107 who i will no longer allow on servers as a few years ago they got hacked and just ignored their users, we had a client who was using it and this left our server at risk as as a server admin i contacted E107 about this and was told in so many words tough and go away.

but i am no coder or developer, but know a bit about HTML and PHP, so always purchases template and then adapt them for my needs.
 
If you have your own VPS, and you don't have time for updates, why don't you buy Softaculous for $2 a month and automate the updates.

If you want to stop vulnerabilities a few dollars more you buy PatchMan.

This will remove the time you need to spend to make the updates and patches.
 
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