The title of this thread is the exact title of an email I received from LP this evening.

I have a website that is primarily used for storing my own personal data, and so I can test sites I create. I do have some add-on sites, one that is dead and does nothing, another a friend has his site on.

I checked with my friend and he has not sent anything, nor does he have a large list. If he does send anything it is maybe to about 20-30 people, and only one or two have an AOL account. They live local, so we talked with them and confirmed that they did not list anything as spam.

I don’t even use email through my site, except for my mother. She knows nothing about computers, so I’m certain she’s not making money on the side by sending out emails for Viagra or something.

What bothers me the most is that after reading other posts in the forums I have found that this is a situation where you are guilty until proven innocent. What’s more, you get warned without a shred of proof that you did anything. They state in the email that “Lunarpages does not have the authority to override a determination of spam.” No, what they do is threaten to pull the plug if it doesn’t stop. Never mind the fact that you have no idea in hell what they are even talking about, you damned.

What’s even weirder is that you have to go on this wild goose chase to provide some sort of proof that you didn’t and don’t send spam. Then after some time writing emails to support, calling support and worrying about whether your site is going to be online every time you go to it, you get off the hook because of your word that you are not doing it. I mean really, if that is all I need to do then why not just ask me kindly if I am doing it instead of threatening me? Why should I have to defend myself against nothing I did?

I have been with LP for over 5 years and have had only a handful of problems. However, getting an email using verbiage like “we have a zero tolerance” as a threat about something I have no control over is enough to make me consider the idea of looking for another provider.

An accusation such as this, with no substantial proof to back it up, tells me that I am no longer valued as a customer. Warning me in this manner is not respect or gratitude. You might as well said “Although you have been a customer for over five years, and have a spotless record of no infraction of this type or anything remotely closed to it, we’re going to have to take your site down because someone pointed to you as the culprit and we believe them more. But thanks for the big chunk of changed you plopped down for our superb service.”

The jury is still out. I haven’t received any response from suspended@, and from what I have read it will be up to me to write email over and over and to call support and listen to Blondie sing “Heart of Glass” repeatedly. Meanwhile I think I’m going to have to start surfing for a new host. I have enough going on in my life that I don’t need to worry about a hosting company that has decided that tyranny rules.

You might use the control panel File manager or another FTP client to take a look at the files on the server. I've had instances of PHP scripts being broken into by outsiders and used to send spam.

Better not be so public about that! It violates the LP Acceptable Use Policy to give away, sell, lease, or otherwise transfer capacity or resources to someone else.

 
I would also like to add this little tid bit of information. This should help others who get the big WARNING email.

There are sites that can help you read, and actually trace your email headers to their origin. This is something LP folks could do before making unfounded accusations to their customers.

One of these sites is http://emailtrackerpro.visualware.com/. I put my headers into this and found that the email actually originated from France. Seems it is one of those big mass email places that sent the email to feedback@ my domain.

I forgot to mention this too, I don’t have an email on my addon domain, or any other, that is called feedback@.

So make sure you ask LP for the headers, and then trace them. You’ll know in no time if your site was hacked and sending email that you don’t know about, or if one of LP’s underlings just woke from a nap, had blurry eyes, and pressed the panic button on your site.

I think you are mis-understanding what is going on. This isn't about spam email being sent to you at an LP address, this is about what can happen when YOU get an email from a spammer and report it as spam. In this case I am quickly learning that this is possobly an attack by a spammer who is sending email to a non-existing account that bounces back and THEY report it as spam.

In short, if someone reports your site for sending spam LP threatens you. They even admit that they don't decide what is or isn't spam. They just react to a report that has your domain on it. It doesn't matter that you didn't send it. They just threaten to shut you down based on unfounded accusations and misread header of an email.

The proof IS in the headers. Here is what the report looked like from the program I mentioned above. This is the actual report I got when I read the headers.

So unless my LP server just happens to be in France.... I rest my case.

And why would I send SPAM to greeting-cards.com? In fact, go on the web and look up greeting-cards.com. There is no such place that I can find.
Cy