Forum email features temporarily suspended

[Janice]

The Specktra forum is experiencing an issue with spam bots exploiting our "email to a friend" feature. To isolate the issue and track down the exploit I have temporarily suspended email features on the forum.

These are the areas I know are directly affected:

Report Bad Post
'Contact Us' Link
Email a Member
Email this Page to a Friend
New Post Notifications to Members

I am not 100% sure if this affects private message notifications as well, so please login periodically to check your messages if you are expecting communications from fellow specktraettes.

-Janice

[Janice]

An update - We've been working on this issue all day and have been unable to lock down where the exploit is. To prevent the server host from shutting down the site I've asked them to suspend all email services from the server. (They would shut the site down because the server is located within their network and it reflects poorly on their reputation to have Spam being sent from their network)

This means there won't be any new user registrations and you will not receive any notifications via email.

I'm in a tough spot, there are many custom integrations with the site including the Drupal/vBulletin front end we debuted at the beginning of this year.

The only answer I am getting is to upgrade the vBulletin software we are on, which means that potentially that SOME of the features you are accustomed to on the forum might not be supported in the newer version of the software. At this time, I do not know what features will be affected. What I do know is that I can not operate a site with no email going in or out for longer than absolutely necessary to figure out what it will take to upgrade the software to the newest version.

[Janice]

We are still working on the email issue, so please continue checking your inbox if you are expecting communication with fellow members.

Email services are still suspended until further notice. I hate to continue limping that along, but we are still working on finding a solution.

Thank you ALL for being so damn patient while the forum was closed. Hopefully we will have this all cleared up soon.