My Host suspended my smf forum for sending mass emails

[smarty84]

Hi
My host has suspended my account,  i have a domain  but i am using free hosting. i cannot afford premium hosting right now, because this is the first time i am creating forum and i am not sure how it is sending the emails. There is no register user yet. the only thing i was doing is just developing it. i was using facebook integration mod and successfully connected facebook login to the forum. and was using a free theme. I am not sure how it is happened.  please help me
This is the exact message i am getting while logging in to the control panel

[Your account is Suspended due to Abuse Your Account  has sent more than 250 email messages and only gets 1 visitors per day. Sending large amount of messages is not allowed as it overloads the mail server and we risk to get server IP address blacklisted  ]

[Looking]

Your problem = free hosting. You need to have your own paid hosting - save up, get something proper.

[Orangine]

Why spending money if you don't have to?
You can use Google Apps. It's free and it will give you a lot more than email. There's a lot of tutorials of how to bind GApps to your hosting account on Youtube.
The only thing is if your free hosting provider allow you to change MX records.

[smarty84]

Thank you for your quick reply "Looking". i really appreciate it.
i cannot afford paid hosting right now due to financial issue. i can afford only after 6 months. i have even contacted a paid host they also said they can allow only 200 emails / hour. so this problem can also happen there.
i want to know how it can send 250 mails in single day i don't had any registered member there and i just started making forum 2 days ago only. i just had integrated facebook please help me

[smarty84]

Why spending money if you don't have to?
You can use Google Apps [nofollow]. It's free and it will give you a lot more than email. There's a lot of tutorials of how to bind GApps to your hosting account on Youtube.
The only thing is if your free hosting provider allow you to change MX records.

i appreciate your reply Orangine.
How can i do that, My forum host is www.3owl.com [nofollow].

[Looking]

If you want to be serious about having your own forum and controlling it then reliance on free services means they can suspend you for any reason anytime because it is free and they dictate your usage. If it isn't the mail, it might be bandwidth, if not bandwidth then CPU usage and on and on. if the issue right now is mail then if you can tweak to stop notifications of topics then that might be a help and then use some other service to send out newsletters.

[smarty84]

If you want to be serious about having your own forum and controlling it then reliance on free services means they can suspend you for any reason anytime because it is free and they dictate your usage. If it isn't the mail, it might be bandwidth, if not bandwidth then CPU usage and on and on. if the issue right now is mail then if you can tweak to stop notifications of topics then that might be a help and then use some other service to send out newsletters.

So you mean to say that it is because of the notifications of the topic and newsletter. Dear i didn't had any topic in the forum because as i already said, i was developing it and regarding newsletter i had only news quote that appears below the Menu tabs. and is mass mails can happen due to facebook  integration for log in?

Yes i am serious about having a forum  and if i managed to get paid host then there is also a limit of 200 mails/ hour.
But The Main Question is  if i dont have any registered member, guests and even there is no news letter then how it can send 250 mail / day???

[Orangine]

And why would you need more? It's almost 5000 emails a day!
SMF has a built in queue for mass email sending, so you could limit it to let's say 150/hour and not to worry about it.

[Chalky]

I'm not sure I can be much help but I'm trying to direct the help towards your actual problem...

In admin, check your task log to see whether there is any indication there of what actual messages may have been sent.  Check also the scheduled tasks and mail options to see whether there is anything unusual there.

Regardless of your hosting choice SMF should not be sending out so many emails in such a short space of time when you have no registered members. Guys, the problem is that smarty84 is not aware of having sent ANY emails so simply setting limits isn't going to fix the problem.

Maybe someone who knows more than I can tell us how to find out what all those sent messages actually were. As you say there is no point moving to paid hosting if they are only going to ban you for spamming also due to an error in your setup somewhere.

[smarty84]

And why would you need more? It's almost 5000 emails a day!
SMF has a built in queue for mass email sending, so you could limit it to let's say 150/hour and not to worry about it.

Dear as i already said i cannot afford paid hosting right now. and you also said

Why spending money if you don't have to?
You can use Google Apps. It's free and it will give you a lot more than email. There's a lot of tutorials of how to bind GApps to your hosting account on Youtube.
The only thing is if your free hosting provider allow you to change MX records.

please tell me can i do that in free hosting cpanal?

[Looking]

Maybe this isn't about SMF but another script on your site sending Emails.

Ask your host to pull up the Exim logs and tell you where in your account this has been happening.

[Orangine]

And why would you need more? It's almost 5000 emails a day!
SMF has a built in queue for mass email sending, so you could limit it to let's say 150/hour and not to worry about it.

Dear as i already said i cannot afford paid hosting right now. and you also said

Huh? I never mentioned paid hosting, I asked WHY on earth would you need to send 5000 emails a day.

[MrPhil]

With no registered members, no way SMF would be sending out emails. It's clear that your site or account has been hacked and a spammer is using it to mass email. Discuss security with your host. Look at all your files and "cron jobs" (scheduled tasks) for anything you can't account for.

[smarty84]

I'm not sure I can be much help but I'm trying to direct the help towards your actual problem...

In admin, check your task log to see whether there is any indication there of what actual messages may have been sent.  Check also the scheduled tasks and mail options to see whether there is anything unusual there.

Regardless of your hosting choice SMF should not be sending out so many emails in such a short space of time when you have no registered members. Guys, the problem is that smarty84 is not aware of having sent ANY emails so simply setting limits isn't going to fix the problem.

Maybe someone who knows more than I can tell us how to find out what all those sent messages actually were. As you say there is no point moving to paid hosting if they are only going to ban you for spamming also due to an error in your setup somewhere.

Thank you for your reply. i really appreciate it.
Right now i cannot login to the Admin account because the hosing provided has suspended my account. I have requested to resolve this issue in their hosting support section and as soon as i get a reply from there i will post it here. and i would like to tell what steps i did while developing my forum
installed smf through fantastico provided in hosting
then installed SA_Facebook_Integration, tinypicplugin_smf_mod_v1.0.0, Custom Copyright v1.0.2[i haven't deleted smf copyright just added website url below it], removed a help tab from menu and installed a custom theme
then i made a app in facebook and successfully connected  and tested it with my forum
that's what i did, nothing else

[smarty84]

With no registered members, no way SMF would be sending out emails. It's clear that your site or account has been hacked and a spammer is using it to mass email. Discuss security with your host. Look at all your files and "cron jobs" (scheduled tasks) for anything you can't account for.

How it can be hacked dear, i registered domain 2 days ago and then after registering domain i registered for hosting. Nobody knows about the domain except hosting and domain provider and ME.

[floridaflatlander]

A hacker could have allready been on the machine. Take your time and do as instructed above. You can have slow and cheap(er) or fast and expensive. You chose slow and cheap, nothing wrong with that people do it all the time one way or another. You just need to work trough it.

[MrPhil]

i registered domain 2 days ago and then after registering domain i registered for hosting. Nobody knows about the domain except hosting and domain provider and ME.

Not true. The existence of your domain is immediately published and available to hackers, who will throw everything at it in an attempt to break whatever software you have installed on your site. Also, being free/cheap hosting, it's possible they have an internal security breach or another user doing some unauthorized poking around.

[floridaflatlander]

I have requested to resolve this issue in their hosting support section

Thank God I've never dealt with a free host but this may be as slow as Christmas. Have your questions in order when you start emailing them.

[smarty84]

I have requested to resolve this issue in their hosting support section

Thank God I've never dealt with a free host but this may be as slow as Christmas. Have your questions in order when you start emailing them.

Yes, waiting for their reply

[mrintech]

SMF has built-in Mail Queue system which allows you to restrict total number of Emails to be sent every hour: http://wiki.simplemachines.org/smf/Mail#Mail_Settings - Just set the number lower than your host's hourly Email Limit and everything will be fine

Also, try to get a Paid Host in future

Why spending money if you don't have to?
You can use Google Apps. It's free and it will give you a lot more than email. There's a lot of tutorials of how to bind GApps to your hosting account on Youtube.
The only thing is if your free hosting provider allow you to change MX records.

AFAIK, even you use Google Apps for your Domain Name and edit MX Entries, your Web Hosting Server is responsible for initiating and sending Emails. The Google Apps Email Address will be used only in "FROM" field

Correct me if I am wrong!