Spam Scare

Recently, Carson gave us the go ahead to turn off our SpamShield because it was replaced by another filter. I, like many others here deactivated my WP-SpamShield plugin. Everything was fine for a while, however, recently, I had to flip the switch on WP SpamShield and reactivate it.

It started with a spam email that arrived in my inbox through my contact from. I didn't think much of it . That is until... I began getting one or two a day. So at that point I thought I'd turn WP SpamShield back on again. When I logged in, I was greeted by a pretty disturbing site. In my Admin panel, there was another name. Someone had actually hacked in and gave himself access to my WordPress site dashboard. I was so upset, I didn't think to take a screenshot first. I just wanted this person OUT as soon as possible. So first, I changed my password, then logged in and deleted this new user. I looked around but didn't see anything that had been altered or changed, so I was relieved about that. Nevertheless, I was still shook up finding a stranger lurking in my login box.

Next, I turned WP-SpamShield on again and, so far, no more spam emails. I don't know what to attribute the fact that I was attacked by a hacker and spam when everyone else seems to be protected without the extra layer. I may experiment another in the future by turning of the SpamShield again and documenting any changes if it happens again. For now, however, I'm going with the double dose of website armor.