When I visit my website, browser displays uggly message "This account has been suspended". Please help!
Account could be suspended for various reasons, in most cases, per billing issue (outstanding invoices) or abuse (spamming, malware etc). Please submit support ticket to support.westnic.net then find out a reason for cPanel account suspension. Billing issue could be resolved relatively easy, you can check your invoices here: auth.westnic.net then update same ticket with "invoices paid" message (please provide invoice numbers).
Abuse issues may take longer to resolve. In this article we will explain how to activate cPanel account if it was suspended per abuse issue.
1. Please submit support ticket to support.westnic.net with your domain name. Ask why it was suspended and how to activate/cleanup. In about 3-5 hours you'll receive a reply with abuse logs. In case of "spamming", we'd provide spam sample with full email headers. In case of "malware", "viruses" or "phishing", we'll give you complaint report (we receive those from external scanners on daily basis) and also file structure, for example, public_html folder contents with malware files and directories. IMPORTANT: Before you proceed with account activation, please make sure that your computers and mobile devides are free of viruses, trojan horses and vulnerabilities! Otherwise, account will be hacked again and again. Your options are:
Request removal of public_html folder with all contents. This option is free of charge. All data, except MySQL data bases and email accounts, will be lost. After public_html folder cleanup you'll receive new username and password to cPanel. Do not upload old files and folders back especially if they contain PHP scripts! You'll grant access to back-doors again. Basically, you should install new script from scratch then check existing data base for signs of compromise and, if nothing found, change user/pass to backend. Please remember: username to backend of Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal cannot be "admin", "administrator", "adm" and so on. It must be difficult to guess.
Request website restore from own backup, generated prior "hacking date" (we provide this information in abuse ticket). Please upload FULL cPanel backup into any active cPanel account (usually main account) then provide path to backup, for example, /home2/username/user4restore.tar.gz. We'll run restore free of charge. Please note that we don't accept public_html folder backups or any other incomplete backups. Backup must be "full cPanel backup".
Request full restore from our backup located on offsite backup server. We usually keep weekly, monthly and yearly backups on offsite servers. If backup file found, we'll give you a date when it was generated. Backup must be generated prior "hacking date" (when your account got compromised). Successful restore will cost $10 (one time fee). IMPORTANT: WestNIC, like any other hosting provider, doesn't guarantee availability of backups. Backups provided on "as is" basis. It's important to maintain own backups on personal computer. You can generate full cPanel backup at any time via cPanel > Backup > Generate full cPanel backup. Then download backup to personal computer and then remove. If you don't remove backup, future automatic backups will be disabled! Please download then remove backup files. Do not store backups on the same server.
After site restore we will provide new username and password to cPanel. You'll have 48 hours to update or remove all php scripts. If you leave website "as is", it will be hacked sooner or later and you'll pay another $10. Please update then secure all scripts as soon as you receive new user/pass to cPanel. DO NOT DELAY.
IMPORTANT: all data between backup and restore point will be lost. For example, backup was generated on October 1st, 2013. If you request restore on November 15th, all data between October 1st and November 15th will be lost! This applies to MySQL and email data. If this is not acceptable, please choose option D below.
Request manual account cleanup. In this option we will remove all offensive content, scan directories and other files. Old files, images, clean scripts will be left after cleanup. Also, data bases and email users will remain on the server. However, some infected php files will be removed (we'll tell you which ones). We'll provide full report when we complete manual cleanup task. In most cases, manual cleanup take 3 hours per website. This service will cost $20 (one time fee). We'll send full report and new username and password to cPanel.