Not sure what just happened shortly after Midnight, about the Welcome email

[djkimmel]

Something very strange happened just after Midnight in the first few minutes of Wednesday 3/16/2011. You may have been logged out and/or received a message saying your account was not approved yet. It is fixed at the moment, but I'm checking into how it could have happened and apologize for the hassle.

[Durand Dan]

I just got an e-mail that said my account was approved and I am welcomed to Great Lakes Bass.com! I still have a total time logged in of 13days 17hours and 16minutes though!

[djkimmel]

You probably received a 'Welcome' message which was automated and I couldn't get around it in a hurry to make sure you could all get on the forum. Sorry about that. Still investigating what happened. Thanks. Dan

[djkimmel]

Yes. I was just posting the above about that. Glad you're still with us!

[djkimmel]

Happened again, but no email this time. I found out the source here. Now I have to figure out how it is happening. I believe I can keep it from happening again anyway until I find out what is going on and how to permanently fix it. Sorry about the hassle.

[Redbone]

It's prolly the radiation coming from Japan.

[River Walker]

 I just got an e-mail about 1:30am this morning welcoming to GLB-weird!

[FishermanJohn]

I got the same welcome message.  Everything seems ok with my account.

[REEL_MAN]

Isn't it great to know we're still welcome  Thanks Dan for all your hard work!!!!!

REELMAN
<))))>{

[Team houston]

You can say that again.

[djkimmel]

I was up until 5am trying to figure out what happened. Too many variables especially from outside servers I have no control or say over... SORRY about that everyone. A normal spam function I use multiple times every day went crazy last night somehow.

If you cannot log back in because you can't remember your password or some other issue, please email support@greatlakesbass.com and I'll fix them this evening ASAP (going to setup at the Grand Rapids show shortly for a few hours). I see a lot of people in the log trying to log on. I'll check tonight to see who still didn't get on. You can also call and leave a voice mail at 810-433-BASS (2277) if you prefer.

I will find out what happened if I can so I can make sure it doesn't happen again. I'm thinking it was related to an external spam database service that everyone uses that crashed last night since I'm not the only one this happened to.

[djkimmel]

Never a dull moment.

[Mike S.]

And to think, I thought you just really liked me and wanted to welcome me again.  Now I'm crushed.  It was just an accident.

[Cheetam]

Aliens.  Or maybe a 12-year-old Ukraine computer prodigy.

[Big dreams]

Hey Dan,

If you need some help, let me know.  I am a Security Administrator and deal with this on a daily basis.


BgD

[Skulley]

I hope we don't get charged for this..................



BD                     

[djkimmel]

I hope we don't get charged for this..................



BD                     

Just you BD. Just you...

[djkimmel]

And to think, I thought you just really liked me and wanted to welcome me again.  Now I'm crushed.  It was just an accident.

I sent your's manually by hand. Does that make you feel any better?

Oh... and welcome Mike!

[djkimmel]

Aliens.  Or maybe a 12-year-old Ukraine computer prodigy.

I looked hard. No evidence of  12 year olds or any other age. Aliens would be cool, but nothing there either. Appears to have been a sick, tired self-appointed spam cop who changed some stuff including a server externally and my version of the program to call his helpful and much appreciated database choked on whatever he did. Best I can reckon anyway. Seems to be fixed now.

It really does suck when something you trusted and done hundreds of times suddenly turns on you!

[djkimmel]

Hey Dan,

If you need some help, let me know.  I am a Security Administrator and deal with this on a daily basis.

BgD

Uh oh... I might have to make a note of that. Just a minute... noted

If it had happened closer to 2am - the favored time for many of my Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian and other 'friends,' I would have been much more worried. It didn't help that I was investigating a sign on from Italy where I have pretty much only gotten spammers so far. But it turned out to be a coincidence once I figured out what was causing the issue.

Looked at a bunch of the files they usually go after. No changes. Did a scan for things that don't belong. Nothing found. Found about the spam server crash and recovery on a support site and started putting some of it together. I'm still going to look into it a little more. And change some passwords and accesses to be safe. I must have close to 100 passwords and other security devices... oh boy.