Update: Aweber has released a statement about the data breach, confirming that some subscriber email addresses were compromised.
There has been news going around on Twitter and other blogs that Aweber, the mailing list service that I use for this blog, may have experienced a security breach of some kind.
The only indication of this so far has been widespread reports of people’s special email addresses that they set up for a given mailing list receiving unusually high levels of spam recently. The spam messages all seem to be pharma type (fake pharmacy drugs etc) so far, according to those reports.
From my own personal perspective I have certainly been receiving a lot of that type of spam at addresses I specifically used for certain mailing lists, as well as to addresses I used only when testing my own mailing list configuration.
I don’t want to alarm anyone since this situation is still unfolding and not much is known, but at the same time I did not want to say nothing about it in case my own mailing list subscribers are receiving spam and starting to wonder why. It pains me that people have trusted me with their email address and signed up to my list, and that it may now have been compromised due to problems outside of my control.
Naturally I assure you that I am not sending out any spam. There is no indication in my Aweber control panel that my account has been compromised and used to send messages. I have changed my password as precaution but depending on the nature of this cat I don’t know if that puts it back into the bag or not.
In terms of further information I am staying tuned to Problogger who hopefully has enough clout to get the answers we’re all looking for.
If you have any other questions or problems please let me know in the comments here or use my contact form.
