Today, it was discovered, after 3 days of issues, that the reason the cloud was so sluggish was due to a single email address’s password being cracked by spammers. So, the entire network was bogged down, and the mailserver had to be taken offline, due to a backlog of 80,000+ spam messages queued and ready to go out.

Services from Yahoo!, AOL, etc. began to black-flag such things, so in order to get their semi-permanent block of mail coming from that address but originating off of Russian IP addresses, the hosting techs had to take mail off line in order to a). stop the onslaught and b). clean up the outgoing mail server that is literally jammed with outbound junk.

Please stay tuned for future changes that may be necessary to insure maximum security over the email channels. I’ve been mindful of security from a website access standpoint, but have been lax on email security. That is about to come to and end, given the past 72 hours’ issues! I hope to get word shortly from the cloud host (the fine folks at Agathon Group) as to when this will be resolved. The suggested time-frame would be yet this afternoon, so that’s the goal.

– Steve