I have had to remove the email update notification feature from The 100 Billionth Person.  Apparently, some internet services (like AOL) have decided that my notification messages are spam.  This has caused other email sent from my chcollins.com account to be rejected at the destination.

It is sad that services like AOL and SpamCop cannot distinguish between a spammer who sends out a million emails and a blog subscription service with less than ten subscribers, but until I find a better way to notify readers of updates, you will need to visit more often.   Sorry for the inconvenience.

Update: 6/2/2013

I can think of two ways that my update notices and other email may have come to be treated as spam by internet services.  My best guess as to the cause: my wife may have clicked on a malware link in an email that harvested her email address, as well as the addresses of those in her address book.  A spammer would then use her email address as the fake source of the spam.  Spam detection services (“spam cops”) would then put my wife’s email address on a blacklist, preventing her email from reaching its destination.  Since she has a chcollins.com account, other email from chcollins.com would also be suspect.

It is also possible (and likely) that robots attempted to “subscribe” to my blog using a fake email address.  My subscription app would then send out a confirmation email, providing a spammer my blog email address and my server IP address.  Again, the spammer could use my email information to send spam and thus poison my account.

I keep thinking, I’m just a little guy on the internet, who would want to bother with me?  But I have come to realize that it is the little guys who are the most vulnerable, for that very reason.  We are easy marks.  This isn’t your 1999 world wide web, Dorothy.