550 Error when trying to delete Malware

[nb99]

Hi all

New to the forum and not very techie so apologies in advance! I have tried to find the answer on the forum but not found a similar enough example to help me. I know you all give your time for free so any thoughts/idea very much appreciated.

I run a small website hosted on fxdomains. I received an email saying they had found malware on my site - no idea how that gets there, but anyway. I tried to go into the file manager in my hosting account but couldn't find the folder (/stats), so figured it might be hidden. Went through Filezilla and found the hidden folder and the file concerned but when I tried to delete it I get a 550 error. The permission on the file says the owner has read and write permission (which I thought would include me as the site owner) but I still can't delete it. I tried the customer service at Fxdomains but they had nothing to add of any value, except trying to sell me their Malware preventation and removal service (a cynic might think they are motivated to add malware to your account to sell you their removal service....!).

Has anyone any ideas as to how I can delete the file? And if anyone has any thoughts/advice as to how to prevent Malware appearing that would be great too. Thanks v much.

NB

PS - For what it's worth I'm running version 3.31.0 on a windows 7 laptop.

[botg]

Went through Filezilla and found the hidden folder and the file concerned but when I tried to delete it I get a 550 error. The permission on the file says the owner has read and write permission (which I thought would include me as the site owner) but I still can't delete it

There are many different user accounts on a modern system. Some accounts correspond to actual persons, while others are used by system services, e.g. www-data is a common user account a webserver runs under.

If your user account lacks permission to delete the file, either the actual owner of the file or the root user need to remove it.

if anyone has any thoughts/advice as to how to prevent Malware appearing that would be great too

Avoid using CMS products, keep tight permissions and keep every single piece of software up-to-date on a daily basis.

[boco]

Owner is meant in the technical sense (file owner in the filesystem). That is the OS account that created/has been assigned the file, but that's not necessarily you.
While it might indeed be a permission issue, there is another plausible explanation: The file can't be deleted because it is still in use by another process.

Since you as simple webspace customer cannot elevate your permissions, and you cannot control processes running on the server, you need to ask (read: demand) that server support takes care of this. That's the kind of service you're (also) paying for, every month/year.

I tried the customer service at Fxdomains but they had nothing to add of any value, except trying to sell me their Malware preventation and removal service (a cynic might think they are motivated to add malware to your account to sell you their removal service....!).

I don't think they intentionally add any malware, as that would be computer sabotage. However, they most probably spread FUD by crying wolf about anything that MIGHT remotely be an infection, then use customer confusion to their advantage for selling you their overpriced snake oil. Not the first time, won't be the last.

[nb99]

OK thanks guys. I'll get back on to customer service and will be more forceful. Will revert and update once I have spoken to them.

Thanks.

[nb99]

So I spent over an hour on the phone with customer service and they finally sorted the permission issue and deleted the file for me. Thanks for help on this matter - now resolved.