MCHost Forums Gone?

Portal Home > Knowledgebase > Articles Database > MCHost Forums Gone?

Posted by -paradox-, 08-02-2003, 02:28 PM
I'm a MCHost client that is going through difficulties with the support help desk at MCHost. The tickets just get closed without the problem being solved. The ususal alternative to get a problem fixed was posting on the forums. MCHost forums have been "under maintenance" for so long now that they must closed on purpose. Does any other MCHost member know what is going on there? Is MCHost planning on closing shop? Is there an email addy that they will respond from? Is it time to download the files and get to a safe host? TIA for any info/help.
Posted by zipcode, 08-02-2003, 02:47 PM
Hi, Try emailing them and ask what the situation is with the forum, if it is planned they must have an eta or at least let you know what the problem is.
Posted by vito, 08-02-2003, 03:45 PM
I was a McHost customer 18 months ago. Even though I asked to be removed from their forums, they never did it. I suppose I should have just changed the email in my profile to a non address and be done with it. Because today, something's going on related to their forums. Just now, in a matter of 5 minutes. I received 530 emails from mchost@mchost.com !!!!! Nothing in the emails except for just random numbers. The only way I could stop it was to quickly set up an email filter in my cPanel. Is someone using the McHost forum memberlist to mailbomb in some way? ito
Posted by MCHost-Marc, 08-02-2003, 04:15 PM
We're in no way closing business, just our forums are temporarily offline, thats all. As for the 500+ emails you've received, can you please post the headers of that? I'd be interested in seeing them because there is nothing in our logs from mchost@mchost.com for months.
Posted by vito, 08-02-2003, 04:41 PM
Actually, it was from mchost.com@mchost.com . I'd prefer to keep the headers off the public forum so I'll send it to you by other means, Marc. Vito
Posted by Atlonim, 08-02-2003, 04:45 PM
Months???? You must be joking!!!!! I've got the same load of BS two weeks ago.... From - Thu Jul 17 14:47:34 2003 X-UIDL: 59dbd1f778ee27451d9c47d4c9662d7f X-Mozilla-Status: 0003 X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000 Return-path: Envelope-to: xxxxxx@*********** Delivery-date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 18:16:32 +0000 Received: from [209.124.83.154] (helo=core.dnsrouter.com) by xxx.*********** with esmtp (TLSv1ES-CBC3-SHA:168) (Exim 4.20) id 19dDIu-0007ls-C9 for xxxxx@xxxxx.com; Thu, 17 Jul 2003 18:16:32 +0000 Received: from nobody by core.dnsrouter.com with local (Exim 3.36 #1) id 19dDMA-0003RW-00 for xxxxxx@***********; Thu, 17 Jul 2003 14:19:54 -0400 To: xxxxx@*********** Subject: From: "MCHost Forums Mailer" Message-Id: Date: Thu, 17 Jul 2003 14:19:54 -0400 X-AntiAbuse: This header was added to track abuse, please include it with any abuse report X-AntiAbuse: Primary Hostname - core.dnsrouter.com X-AntiAbuse: Original Domain - xx*********** X-AntiAbuse: Originator/Caller UID/GID - [99 99] / [99 99] X-AntiAbuse: Sender Address Domain - core.dnsrouter.com
Posted by MCHost-Marc, 08-02-2003, 04:47 PM
Send them to me at wyss1@mail.com , please. My marc@mchost.com mail account has your address blocked because you forwarded all those emails to our server (not sure why).
Posted by MCHost-Marc, 08-02-2003, 04:48 PM
You only got 1 email, not 500. Note yours came from forums@mchost.com which means you're a forum member and have thus received forum announcements.
Posted by Atlonim, 08-02-2003, 04:50 PM
So you knew...
Posted by vito, 08-02-2003, 04:50 PM
Well, whenever I get unwanted mail, I always send it back to sender. So I set up the email filter that way. OK, I'll send it to your email address. Vito
Posted by Atlonim, 08-02-2003, 04:51 PM
I've got over 100 in two days, with no subject line nor content.
Posted by vito, 08-02-2003, 04:56 PM
Marc, I don't want to spend anymore time on this. I just tried sending to the email you suggested, and it bounced back with Error 01372: User's Disk Quota Exceeded. Sorry, your message cannot be delivered as the recipient has exceeded his disk space limit for email. Why don't you check the other way I could send a message to a WHT member. You know, the one that I am not allowed to say was sent... Geez, what a hassle this is. Vito
Posted by Pilgrim, 08-02-2003, 05:39 PM
Why don't you just send him a pm?
Posted by vito, 08-02-2003, 06:01 PM
Well, yeah, that's what I did. But rules here prohibit me from saying I sent one. For crying out loud, Marc, it's as frustrating trying to communicate with you when I'm not your customer as when I was. Is it so difficult to figure out that I PMed you a sample of one of the 530 headers and emails that I got from your server?? You still have not picked up the PM almost an hour and a half later, and now you went offline. Do you want to deal with this or not? If you are not able to keep people from hacking your servers and using them to mailbomb, then you should at least deal with the issue in a timely way when you're told about it later. Vito
Posted by -paradox-, 08-02-2003, 06:19 PM
How long does it take for a company to "maintain" it own forums? How do you define temporary ... weeks, months, years ? With the forums needing maintenance for such a long period of time it looks like the place is shutting down? When will they be back?
Posted by MCHost-Marc, 08-02-2003, 06:40 PM
Okay, what are you talking about? Nobody has hacked our servers. Someone sent you emails with a forged header. Those emails never were anywhere close to our servers. The headers you've sent me show: If you do a traceroute to mchost.com, it will show you our IP is 209.124.83.157 , not 64.191.111.115. So before you go around saying in public that our servers got hacked, which they did not and which is reputation damaging, first do a traceroute and notice that the email has a forged header and never came from us in the first place. Anyone can easily setup demodemo.com on their server and send emails with forged headers, that doesn't mean your server got hacked. So, stop accusing us from sending you 500 emails, stop spreading around in public forums that our servers got hacked. That server does not even belong to us.
Posted by MCHost-Marc, 08-02-2003, 06:42 PM
The forums will be offline for as long as we believe is necessary. We've had several clients completely ignore the forum rules and abuse the forums, including competitors sign up with us to get access to the forums and advertise to our clients, so we have decided to close it down for now. It may be back up in a day or in a month, there is no ETA. As stated on our forums, please direct all customer support issues to our secure clients area.
Posted by brandonk, 08-02-2003, 07:15 PM
Since when do you care about you reputation?
Posted by anon-e-mouse, 08-02-2003, 07:21 PM
I suggest you open them up again so your disgruntled clients don't come here looking for support.
Posted by MCHost-Marc, 08-02-2003, 07:22 PM
And your point is? That was very professional, congratulations on the cheap shot.
Posted by Pilgrim, 08-02-2003, 07:28 PM
Hang on... before you people go kill each other over this.. that IP looks mighty familiar! I can't remember names, wouldn't recognise the face of my best friend if bumped into him but I hardly ever forget a number And I have definatly seen that IP earlier today. Take a look at this! http://www.webhostingtalk.com/showth...hreadid=171664 Looks like someone is playing you guys out and is probably having a good laugh about it.
Posted by vito, 08-02-2003, 08:09 PM
Well, then I guess I will need to educate myself more on how forged email works. If what you're saying is true and the email did not come from your server, then I apologize for my statement. Not knowing how it could be disguised, to me it looked like it was coming from mchost.com. Vito
Posted by Fisherman, 08-02-2003, 08:32 PM
It's happened to us too. We've had someone send mail that said it was coming from one of our domains. The headers were forged but the ip is telling. It may have originated from the same ip range as the one you got. Hope that made sense. Last edited by Fisherman; 08-02-2003 at 08:38 PM.
Posted by SoftWareRevue, 08-02-2003, 08:32 PM
We received some of those mchost.com@mchost.com mails too. Definitly didn't come from Marc or anyone at mchost. They came from a Burst server via our friendly WHT Bomber. Now can we get back on the topic of, "MCHost Forums Gone?" please.
Posted by Fisherman, 08-02-2003, 08:33 PM
Any way to track this bug and squash him?
Posted by Aussie Bob, 08-03-2003, 12:53 AM
I doubt those emails came from mchost. Sounds like the work of a certian mail bomber. [edit] and I read the posts above me to see just that!!
Posted by Aussie Bob, 08-03-2003, 12:57 AM
Or at least remove the forum link from your sig file here.
Posted by coight, 08-03-2003, 07:09 AM
Actually if you do a search that IP is being used by a spammer. They were spamming from webhostingtalk.com yesterday contact burst regarding it.
Posted by anon-e-mouse, 08-03-2003, 07:16 AM

Posted by Aussie Bob, 08-03-2003, 08:40 AM
What's to discuss? They were there and now they are not. Marc has stated his reasons for removing the forum. It's all them competitors signing up so they can promote to mchost's clients.
Posted by -paradox-, 08-03-2003, 09:31 AM
Actually I think that there are some issues. When a company such as MCHost removes its forums it removes a piece of the package that its clients bought into. MCHosts web site states as part of support services they provide "Community Forums - The MCHost customer forums is an online community of where reseller plan and dedicated server owners can interact with each other, discuss issues and share experiences. Communicate with other clients!" The issue of other competitors signing up to avertise to MCHosts clients is certainly something that has to be dealt with but surely that can be done by deleting the thread and banning the member. Yes I know they can sign up again but at MCHost to get access to the main forums you have to be a customer so at worst MCHost would be getting at least a month's rent from the basic package for each competitors thread that had to be deleted The MCHost forums did have some clients going there for support issues that should have been more properly targeted at the MCHost help desk area but lots of clients were seeking support in the forums because they could not get into the help desk area as it was recently chaged to a new system. The forums used to contain a section of server notices. If there was aserver down or going through an upgrade a notice would be posted there. The forums were a place where a client could get help from other clients not just MCHost. If you had a question about things like SQL or what program is better than another, there was always some knowlegable fellow member who was on board to help you. With the forums gone, anon-e-mouse is absolutely correct, a lot of MCHost clients will be comming to these boards and others to look for help. Many of us found MCHost from right here. Well at the very least the reference to forums should be dropped from the web site and the sig. Maybe someone will put up an alternative MCHost forums for the MCHost membership but they would probably name that bulletin board the MC Ghosted Forums or the MC Toasted Forums.
Posted by NexDog, 08-03-2003, 09:34 AM
Don't you still have an account there, Mr Bob?
Posted by anon-e-mouse, 08-03-2003, 09:41 AM
Maybe Marc will With that said, Marc, if you care a tiny bit for your clients, get your support act into gear. Do not use these forums at WHT for your support issues, it is getting very tiresome closing all your "support" threads (Some of which went on for over a week without a word from you).

Add to Favourites Print this Article