Email hosting question

[same_sky]

I came home today to an email from my hosting company, advising me that one of my domains is receiving close to one million emails per day lately, and has caused problems with the email system over several days and crashed the entire server at some point. As a result, they have disabled email to the entire domain. Pertinently, these one million emails are being sent to completely made-up accounts. I chose not to redirect the "catchall" email long ago due to an excessive amount of spam (but nowhere near that many!) I have no idea what caused this but it's pretty obvious to anyone, I would think, that I am not actively soliciting one million emails a day on purpose. (Basic math says that if I am doing nothing but reading emails for eighteen hours a day, I would still need to read 926 per minute just to keep up.) Besides that, they should have access to my account to see a) what email address I have set up and b) what email addresses are being used.

They suggest that I buy or lease a "decent dedicated server" or buy another domain name. Or use gmail. (Seriously, they said that. Gmail. Which, gmail is fine but I have been PAYING THEM FOR EMAIL for over three years now.) I understand, really I do, that I am not their only customer. However, they mentioned words like "lately" and "investigations" and "we have tried various methods", which indicates that they've known about the problem for at least some time, but didn't give me the slightest warning that there was a problem until they sent an email saying that they had disabled all email.

This email account, btw, is the oldest one M and I have open. We're not using it that much for new correspondence but we have kept the accounts open so that people who have that address will be able to stay in contact--it gets a fair amount of spam (NOT a million, though!) However, as of today, any email we've gotten to this domain will bounce. No warning, no nothing. As a matter of fact, I used that email address just today to sign up for something and I bet that's going to get screwed up now.

Is this a reasonable thing for them to do? Considering that the volume of email is so, so not my fault? kapuhi? What do you think? What should they do? What should I do?

Because... even though I'm trying to be understanding, I can't help but be a little annoyed over here. On the other hand, I really don't want to get mad at them and leave because the thought of trying to move Mosaic Minds (they host five domains for me) gives me the heebie jeebies. ;) On the other hand.. they don't thrill me in other ways, either, so I don't know. Decisions, decisions.

Edited to add: I should have checked this before I sent them a reply this afternoon, but... they have actually disabled the entire site, which certainly wasn't mentioned in the email at all. The connection is closed as soon as you attempt it. Great.

Comments

[carrieb.livejournal.com]

That really sucks that they can't come up with some other solution. Shouldn't they be able to employ some kind of spam killer from their end that would take care of that? I have no idea how any of this works, but it just seems like a good company would know how to fix this problem without causing trouble for you. . .and that they would have warned you before taking such drastic action!

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

I was annoyed, but trying not to be, about the email, but now that I've seen that they've disabled the whole freaking domain, I'm kind of pissed. It's not that I really care oodles about the site (it's the k-image site, which is pretty inactive) but it's the principle of the thing. Bastards!

[lizardek.livejournal.com]

please tell me this isn't 1and1.com?

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

No, it's a company called Hummingbird Hosting. :) You're safe!

p.s. Did 1&1 ever start charging you? I'm pretty sure that it was Jan or so of 2003 when I signed up with them, so I expected them to start looking for money in 2006, but they didn't.

[kapuhi.livejournal.com]

Whoa. :) I was reading this, formulating a response in my mind and hoping I could say it in a "hey I don't comment much but this is technical so if you don't mind advice" way, and then, you asked me?? :)

My advice is to shut off the domain for a month or two. Kill all access to it. Some emails will get through, and they'll hit your old host as "last known." They'll have to deal. Spammers have rudimentary programs which delete undeliverable addresses from their lists. If they didn't, their lists would just grow and grow and get more out of date. They are business people, despite their subhuman status. If your domain starts returning bounces, most will remove it.

Do you have access to DNS settings? Can you set it to something fake, like 127.0.0.1? It'll make the domain inaccessible. Some domain handlers will let you simply set all mail to 'reject'. What you want to do is bounce as much email as possible for a month.

After that, open it back up again. It may never leave all lists, but 1M a day is insane. :) Even I have never achieved that. The older the domain, the more lists you're on.

Hope that helps.. I'd be happy to host your domain if you need a place because of this host not supporting you.. though, I will say, if spam to it slogs the server I might need to dump it too. You gotta maintain services, you know. :) But as a temp DNS, I'm perfectly willing.

Honestly, Gmail isn't such a bad option as a DNS port. They're opening a new domain forwarding system which is relatively transparent and gives you the benefit of their bazillion-server capabilities. Pretty much like they kicked ass in every other basic net need this year.

I could type for another hour about this but had better not. This is LJ, after all. :) If I can help, please let me know. Basic advice: cut the domain off from receiving input for at least a month. It can only help.

[same-sky.livejournal.com]

Of course I asked you! Who else would I ask?

I do totally understand that they're doing what they have to do, etc. I suppose what I'm less happy about is that they did it first, told me about it afterwards, did not EVER tell me that they disabled the whole site (not just email) and basically have said "hey, live with it, but keep giving us money." I mean, for one thing, I have another server I could move it to right now without any problem, but that feels unethical since I know it's being slammed by spammers already, so I won't--I do understand that it's not normal or right to get that much email. One million IS insane. I think I have owned the domain for four years or so, and some Japanese person had it before. I'm going to blame them. ;) It's just that it's FRUSTRATING for me and they are not displaying the proper amount of understanding.

I don't exactly know at the moment what I have access to--I'm guessing not anything useful. I have done some server-type stuff, but it's not my thing and I'm a little outmatched here. Since they've already done their thing I don't know what I could do about it anyway.

I do appreciate your offer of help. I'm not sure what I should do as yet, and I don't want to drag you into my problem but I still appreciate it. :)

Argh.

[drottningen.livejournal.com]

I would call and complain that at the very least they should have been clear about what they disabled. Can they just turn off the email and leave the site up or something. Also complain that you received no warnings before this happened, and since they obviously knew about it, they should have at least warned you... obviously you didn't know it was this bad.