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+1 vote
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in Q2A Core by
edited by
My site has been suspended twice cause Q2A Has been sending out spam mail, I reinstalled a fresh copy last night and the next day, My site was suspended again, I have copy of all the files and plugins, Ian using version 1.74, can some one please have a look at it and tell me if they can find anything wrong with it, I can email a copy of the files just send me a email at thejbforum@gmail.com and I will send you what I have...

update, here is what my web host sent me that the qta was doing

Account is suspended due to sending spam emails. There are a lot of messages with subject 'Your Questionsrus comment has been added to' , bellow you have these 4 example mail logs:

2016-06-11 09:14:26 [514045] 1bBik6-0029j3-Mf <= no-reply@questionsrus.com U=allbridg P=local S=2345 M8S=0 id=647e39471794b3a2d4dc950ce52e43b8@questionsrus.com T="Your Questionsrus comment has been added to" from <no-reply@questionsrus.com> for anifihaga@4prkrmmail.net
2016-06-11 09:14:26 [514065] 1bBik6-0029jN-Sm <= no-reply@questionsrus.com U=allbridg P=local S=2337 M8S=0 id=cc647135ccd855128a494218d701de7a@questionsrus.com T="Your Questionsrus comment has been added to" from <no-reply@questionsrus.com> for upkaji@formdmail.net
2016-06-11 09:14:27 [514085] 1bBik7-0029jh-17 <= no-reply@questionsrus.com U=allbridg P=local S=2337 M8S=0 id=1e79bcca72bf6f11b57048fd53678e80@questionsrus.com T="Your Questionsrus comment has been added to" from <no-reply@questionsrus.com> for atenequw@gmaildd.com

Could you kindly explain if this is something you are aware ? Is it possible to consider using a remote SMTP service like mailgun.com or critsend.com ?
Q2A version: 1.74
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I really need to get this problem looked into...
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edited by
I have no ideal why you  people are down voting  and flagging a security issue, But I do not find it funny...
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Iam currently trying trying to work with the webhost by setting up private smtp server at a place called mailgun.com, its a free server that is suppose to give you 10.000 emails per month free, Truthfully I really do know why iam even bothering  no one ever bothers to post of my site anyway...
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Suspended by hosting service? Which one?
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I was suspended by byethost , I have been with them for a long time, they use to be a very good web host provider and the people there would work with you, when my site got suspended the second time, I told them to enable my account and I take down the q2a script until I could get t fixed but they refused to do so until I reset my account once again...
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okay. I guess there is some issue with the site content then. I would suggest to run the site and only allow logged in users to post and enable moderation for posts by all users having < 110 points. This will avoid most of the spammers. If the site was suspended for normal emails from Q2A, I would suggest to change the host.
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Well as far as people posting spam on the site I never really had any  issues with that, that stuff really did not bother me that much, The problem I am having is someone hacking into the site and sending out spam email...
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So do you mean that the above emails titled "Your Questionsrus comment has been added to" were just sent and such comments were not actually made on the site?
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I have no real ideal that was what my webhost provided my in a report...
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But that is important to know- if those emails are genuine- that means those are not spam emails- if you have DB access you can look in qa_users table for those emails. 09:14:26 - 2 emails were sent. But there are not enough details to guess if those emails are genuine or spam. Do you have a more detailed report? If you can't attach here, you can email to arjunsuresh1987 at gmail
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No, that is all I have...
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okay. Is this an old site? How many users, no. of questions?
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The site is less then a year old, I probably had under 50 members in all...
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okay, if you don't mind then you can email me your DB dump file. I can give you a temporary hosting service for a few days and see if there is any issue.
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Thanks, I may take you up on that, But I want to see  happens after I get this smtp server set up.
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okay :) That should solve the issue as well but only if the generated emails are not actually spams.
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I think what Iam going to do when I get the site back up and running is send out a general mail letting people know do to spammers all account will be deleted and if they want their accounts they will simply have reregister them...

1 Answer

+2 votes
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That's kind of a strange reason to mark something as spam. The same thing happens even with huge sites like Twitter/Facebook, they send out emails with subjects like "you have a new follower" and must send out millions of these a day.

You may be able to get around this by making the subjects more unique. Most of the emails sent have extra parameters that can be added to the language files, though it seems these are not documented well.

Example: in the file qa-include/lang/qa-lang-emails.php, you can edit the lines with 'c_commented_subject' and 'q_answered_subject' to these:

'c_commented_subject' => 'Your ^site_title comment has been added to by ^c_handle',

'q_answered_subject' => 'Your ^site_title question was answered by ^a_handle',

So there will be much less duplication.

As for external mail services, yes you may find these work better. Honestly I've had nothing but problems with email provided by web hosts, always way too unreliable in my experience. Mailgun or Sparkpost are great alternatives.

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I have not even sent out any emails Scott, This stuff just started all of a sudden, Ive have had the site up for months, I tell people about the site on other sites trying to get people to join, So far Iam basically the only real person that has really posted on it, I did have a bunch of spam I left on it for a while that people were posting But I deleted that, right now  Iam trying to work with the web host by setting up a private smtp with bullitmail.com in order to get the site back up and running...
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Emails are sent out automatically when someone answers a question, if the asker ticked the box "Email me..." when they posted the question. If you've had a bunch of spam answers/comments they may have been answering/commenting on their own posts and got those emails sent out.

Do you know what is the content of the emails being sent? Is it the usual Q2A format? Like this

Scott,

Your question on Question2Answer Q&A has been answered by [user]:

...

Your question was:

...
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Scott, I was basically the only person asking questions short of a few spam advertisements, so there was not people asking or answering comments or anything like that...
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