Argh. Spammers Should Die A Slow And Painful Death.

Apparently the address book for the Yahoo account I use for this blog was compromised today.

As such, if I sent you an email form this account or if we've communicated by the Yahoo email account before, you may have received an email purporting to be from me with a link in it.

Obviously, don't click on it. The big tip off is that the from: address, while having my name on it, the underlying email reply address is ashlee@newriverretreat.com.

If you did receive such an email, my apologies for the inconvenience and bother.

If you have a Yahoo account, I'd suggest checking it and probably changing the password just in case as well.

I don't think this is a hack of the account itself as it had a pretty strong and long passphrase, but just in case I changed it and added two-step verification. I suspect this is yet again another Yahoo-wide vulnerability.

Damn spammer scum.

It Must be Tax Season......

Based on the amount of IRS related spam I've been receiving lately, the scammers and spammers are out for your identifying info using the IRS as a cover.

I've now received spam with everything from the charmingly misspelled subject line of "Accaunt blocked!" to multiples with the same nonsensical subject line of "ssubfed", to emails with fake from: addresses like scam.irs.gov and scamreport.irs.gov (maybe that's what you'd call a clue to the unwary?), investigation.irs.gov, and security.irs.gov.

Folks, the IRS does not initiate communication with tax payers via email, and never in such a nonsensical and ungrammatical fashion (tax code excepted).

The IRS much prefers to send really scary-looking letters to your address of record.

Add on to this the fact that the email address receiving these emails is completely unconnected with anything I have to do with taxes and the whole thing is an easily deleted scam and spam-fest.

Do not reply to these false emails, and certainly do not respond with any personally identifying information or this tax season you'll be dealing with identity theft on top of filing your returns this year.