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    Spam received by abbywinters.com members

    Recently we have received a couple of reports from customers who have been receiving spam on email addresses that they use exclusively for their abbywinters.com accounts.

    We have traced the leak to a breach earlier this year in the 3rd-party software we use for these discussion boards. The nature of the vulnerability was such that members' email addresses could have been exposed to attackers. We were aware of the breach when it occurred and repaired the vulnerability immediately. However, at that time it was not clear whether the attackers had been successful in acquiring any email addresses.

    We recommend that those of you who have email address that you set up specifically for use with your abbywinters.com account should switch to a new email address and close your current ones.

    As a further measure to prevent further such incidents, we will soon remove email addresses from all forum accounts that are not subscribed to any threads. If you are not already subscribed to any forum threads and you wish to use the thread subscription feature in future, you will need to add your email address to your forum profile, which you can do here.

    We are also bringing forward plans already in place to unify the main site and forum logins.

    #2
    Originally posted by willow View Post
    As a further measure to prevent further such incidents, we will soon remove email addresses from all forum accounts that are not subscribed to any threads. If you are not already subscribed to any forum threads and you wish to use the thread subscription feature in future, you will need to add your email address to your forum profile, which you can do here.
    I am not subscribed to any threads and have no plans for doing so. Will anything change for me?

    Comment


      #3
      Originally posted by artlover View Post
      I am not subscribed to any threads and have no plans for doing so. Will anything change for me?
      No

      Comment


        #4
        Originally posted by artlover View Post
        I am not subscribed to any threads and have no plans for doing so. Will anything change for me?
        Artlover, you don't have to be subscribed to any threads or websites. If you have ever sent an email to an unprotected website your email address can be harvested and put on a spam list and then sold to millions of spammers. To my knowledge, this website is protected.

        Cheers JC

        Comment


          #5
          I suppose those in charge will have thought it through, but I continue to be slightly surprised that the world at large can read this discussion board without being logged in. I appreciate that you would want potential members to get a flavour of what goes on, and to view some of it, but I wonder whether the whole thing should just be as open as it is? I believe that with the software you can have areas flagged for access only by logged in members. As it stands, I think that the Googlebot even gets in to index it, now and then, as I have been very surprised to get AW references from the forums coming up in response to topics not remotely connected with AW or the sort of things being discussed around here!

          Comment


            #6
            why do you feel that's bad?

            Comment


              #7
              Originally posted by Abby View Post
              why do you feel that's bad?
              I suppose I equate membership of AW and therefore of the messageboards as being like membership of a private club or society, and that what is discussed and said in that "club" is for the members. Of course, there may be areas which are like going outside the "club" and having a discussion in public, and these could be the open areas which the whole world can observe, and prospective members can browse, a bit like an ante-room. But I find it odd that you (I mean a member in general, not you, Abby!) can't regard talking among the members as being just for them to hear, and that anything you say (albeit we all work with pseudonyms) can be logged by the rest of the world. For instance, many of the discussions are good and open and frank, and great among friends, but there are others who, eavesdropping on it all from the outside, may misinterpret what is said, and use it for their own purposes that "There are members of an organisation like Abby Winters who hold dangerous and immoral views". You are feeding manna straight into the hands of these pseudo-Christian groups who would tell the rest of the world how to behave, in my opinion. I just wonder whether that's wise, when it would be so easy to limit outside access to certain areas only.

              Comment


                #8
                Originally posted by heckelphon View Post
                (albeit we all work with pseudonyms)
                .........I use my real name. why would anyone use a pseudonym ?
                peesoup

                Comment


                  #9
                  Willow, were models emails affected by this or only members? I subscribe to all the threads I post in...

                  Luv Melinda

                  Comment


                    #10
                    Related question; does changing the email adress in User CP also affect already active subscriptions?
                    (as Melinda I auto-subscribe to all threads I reply to)

                    I suppose this is the disadvanatage of using one of the most populair forum-software packages (a bit like windows in that regard;-).

                    Comment


                      #11
                      Originally posted by peesoup View Post
                      .........I use my real name. why would anyone use a pseudonym ?
                      peesoup

                      i slowly am using my real name and pseudoephidrine .... swiftly

                      Comment


                        #12
                        Originally posted by fransAW View Post
                        Related question; does changing the email adress in User CP also affect already active subscriptions?
                        In case anybody else is wondering; yes it works that way. Just get a gmail adress or something. Enter that email-adress in your UserCP (you will need to enter your forum password there as well) and all subscriptions will be mailed nicely to the new adress.

                        Comment

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