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Fantasy Index system status

One of our mail servers (not our main one) was hacked last night, and a spammer used it to send junk e-mail messages. As a result Verizon.net is blocking e-mail from FantasyIndex.com, and any other provider worth its salt will also be blocking our mail.

We are working to contain the problem and to alert Internet service providers that we've fixed it. In the meantime, you may need to access your subscription through the subscriber login box at the top right corner of this page.

Here's what happened: We had a secret subdomain in place for testing purposes -- test.fantasyindex.com -- and the password for that account was "test." That was incredibly stupid of us. The hackers somehow discovered the subdomain -- hats off to them -- and didn't have to work hard to guess the password and send out spam.

Your personal information was not at risk. The spammers merely used our system to send junk e-mail. Our customer database is housed on a separate computer system with separate, secure passwords. And as you know if you've ever telephoned us to order, we do not retain customer credit card numbers. After card numbers are processed, our merchant processor (Verisign/Paypal) overwrites the middle eight digits with X's.

This is an embarrassing moment for our company. We're often angry with ISPs who block our mail because of the repeated use of the word fantasy. But now we're clearly in the wrong, with thousands of spam messages sent through our server. Be assured that we will make certain that this does not happen again.

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