unauthorized email sent and inappropriate ads

+Blessings upon you!
Our forum, tobteacherforum was created for teachers to interact about concepts of Theology of the Body within our diocesan schools. On Sunday, Mar. 18, an email was sent out to users (I'm presuming all users) that came from sender: TOB Teacher Forum <noreply@forumotion.com> with the message line: Classroom door/bulletin board/room posters on TOB Teacher Forum. This email contained information from our forum in an attractive format. However, the other administrator and I did not send this, nor authorize it to be sent. In addition, the links throughout the message were not to the forum, but to another site (for example: https://go.topicit.net/9BUUpHU4nL) When clicked, they led to what looked like our forum, but the ads showing up were inappropriate. Thus, I have three questions:
1. Did forumotion actually send out this email and if so, why?
2. If forumotion did send out the email, why did it allow inappropriate ads?
3. If forumotion did not send out the email, then it appears that someone has hijacked our site for phishing purposes and put inappropriate ads on it. Can this be remedied?

If this cannot be easily remedied, or we cannot be assured that it will not happen again, what do we need to do to completely discontinue the forum?

Thank you for your help and God bless you!
Sister Mary Angela

Hello sr.mary-angela

The feature "Newsletters Popular Contents"was announced a few weeks ago on this forum and on the admin panel of your forum. The announcement contains the procedure to disable this feature for your forum in one click.

You can find more détails here: https://help.forumotion.com/t155037-new-newsletters-popular-contents#1065227

Regarding the problem of inappropriate advertising, it has already been reported by other members this weekend. The cause was the ad provider who had activated a certain category of content. As soon as the alert was given, everything is back to normal. Unless you still encounter inappropriate ads?

Hello,

C driko is right about both, what you got was probably a popular contents newsletter that is auto sent from our system every 15 days. The links should be to topics on your forum, however, there is a section on the bottom where it says 'You may also like' this has to do with publications, if you don't have any, it displays ones from other forums. Just create 3 publications with pictures and stuff and this will stop.

As for the ads, it is my understanding these should be resolved or else is in the process of being solved. There is an only topic on that issur where you can make a report on it if you still get them: https://help.forumotion.com/t155321-only-topic-inappropriate-ads .

-Brandon