I cannot believe this happened. Somebody hacked into my website, uploaded a bunch of files, and used that to send out spam to thousands of people. I just had to delete about 15 files from my server. I'm currently using hosting through 1and1.com and they informed me that the hacker was able to do this because I had my permissions set to 777 in my configuration file. This is the first time this has ever happened that I know about. I think everybody should check their websites to make sure there are no strange files they never uploaded. You could be the next victim.
best thing to do for preventing hacking is to hire an ethical hacker who can check our websites for any security risks.
1and1.com informed me of the problem They actually disabled my hosting account until I responded to their emails that warned me of this problem.
Actually, I don't think that was the problem. My website got hacked AGAIN and 1and1.com just disabled my account which is getting very annoying since I have other websites that are being hosted on the same account. I just contacted 1and1.com and asked them if they can tell me exactly how this was happening and how I can prevent it. If they don't give me a decent response then I will assume that the hacker is penetrating their firewall somehow. I will move my website to a different host and see if this problem continues. If it doesn't then this will verify my suspicions.