This afternoon we took a very nice drive to a very nice place, and when we returned home I noticed about a thousand new customer accounts. Considering most of them had long internet links as ‘names’ – charming ones like ‘Sindi wants to talk sexy to YOU’ and ‘Tiffani replied to your message’ – it was clear that something rotten was going on.

That something is some kind of relentless spambot attack which has been going on for hours. Literally a dozen new accounts a minute were being created. Worse yet, we were getting auto email replies from people around the world whose emails were used by the spambots to create the accounts. (When someone creates an account on the sales site, it generates a ‘Welcome to Goodwriters’ reply via email.) So basically it’s possible that hundreds – or thousands – of people have gotten unwanted welcome emails from me, for an account they did not create. This of course makes me worry that *my* site will be flagged as a spambot!

In an attempt to stop this madness I finally switched the site to ‘maintenance’ mode, while I wait for the website admin to install an addon called Honey Pot which should take care of the issue. It appears to have worked… and I wish I’d thought of doing it hours ago.

I can only delete accounts one account at a time. Spare a thought for my mouse-hand!