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FTM · Nov 01, 2006

Hi Nightrider, a friend of mine got an email a couple days ago from her server company. Here is a little piece of it.

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

First, you need to know the email addresss being used to send the suspicious email. If they are using a name, then anyone can send email using an address like that. There really isn't a log of all outgoing email from your server unless your host maintains that information. Without knowing the email address attached to these questionable email messages, it would be difficult to take action to prevent it...

You could try changing the password to all domain email accounts that you have. I doubt that would change anything though...

And if your friend is running on phpBB 2.0.21, she is not far behind at all, regardless of what your host claims. The 2.0.22 Update only modified small portions of 15 files and it is possible that your friend's members might encounter session errors after it has been applied. That was a fairly common complaint after the phpBB 2.0.22 update was released. Besides, the phpBB version has nothing to do with whether someone is misusing the email system. The phpBB 2.0.22 update will not correct that problem...

munky2

FTM · Nov 01, 2006

That is what I was trying to tell her, that updating the forum is not going to help the problem she is having. She only wanted that done because the host told her to do it to help with this problem, I don't think she really understands what happened. She thinks someone signed up to her forum, and then sent out spam emails. I am thinking it has nothing to do with anyone that signed up on her forum, it's simply a hacker using her account to send spam email. Like I said, she doesn't understand. I will have her contact her host and ask which email address was being used, and will also have her change all her passwords to all email accounts. If the address is her webmaster address, can that be changed and not used? Or is that the default email that has to be there for phpbb to work?

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

I think you can change the passwords for all of your default domain email accounts. I don't think you can delete the email account, but you should be able to delete the account if you have no plans to use it...

If her members are sending spam email using her forum software, then their email addies will be attached to the outgoing email, not the addy to your forum. So once you have the email addy responsible for this, it should give you a good idea of where to look for the perpetrator, if it actually did originate from the community...

munky2

FTM · Nov 01, 2006

Ok, thanks Nightrider. I just talked to her, and she agreed the forum update won't help. So she has emailed her host and asked for the email address the spam was being sent from, and we will see what he says.

Nightrider · Sep 25, 2004

I bet once all is said and done, the email address won't have anything to do with your friend's community...

munky2