I just found out... you think I'm spam.

If you are receiving my blog without having subscribed to it, I think I know why.

Most likely your email account was included in someone's contacts, and that person's account was hacked. Nasty bots then proceeded to record YOUR email address, using it not only to send you phishing emails, but your address was also used to sign up for all kinds of things you never asked for. Like my blog.

I figured this out when, after many months of not paying attention to my blog stats, I saw that my posts were being flagged as spam. I went into the mailing list, and saw obviously fake email addresses, but also apparently real ones. The giveaway was how many of these "subscribers" signed up on the same day, even when I had not posted anything recently. 

The hackers/bots behind this will not stop signing people up (I don't know why), but if all I do is "archive" your email address, you will still be on my list. The only real solution, as far as I can tell, is for you to go to my blog (or the bottom of this email if that is how you are reading this) and click UNSUBSCRIBE. That will definitively remove you from the list (until the next bot attack).  Of course, if you don't mind my occasional posts, please feel free to stick around!

As a reminder: change your passwords frequently, both for your email accounts and for websites that you frequently visit. Set up "two-factor authentication" so that nothing can be done without you confirming that choice in a second step. It is a pain, I know, but it can help slow the rate of abuse of your account information. Unfortunately, with AI now being used to craft and enact these attacks, it will get more and more challenging for us to protect our information. I wish I could give you more of a guarantee, but this is the world we live in.

Pray for all those behind the scenes who use their God-given intelligence to exploit other people through misuse of the marvels of technology.

Sister Anne