Greetings and Salutations!

We have been having some mail hiccups over the past few days. I thought it was just our mail server and I did the upgrade of our mail software to try to help with that. It turns out it was actually a problem with Katharion, the people who do our anti-spam processing for us.

I worked with them last night, they thought they had it resolved, but mail started giving us fresh new "denied access" errors this morning. I just got off the phone with Katharion and I think we've now got those sorted out.

The root cause of all the problems are that hackers are deluging the facility Katharion uses. The hackers are doing what's called "denial of service" attacks. The hackers are hammering someone else's servers in that facility to harass them. Because the hackers are jamming up all the lines, it means Katharion's servers are being affected too, which then affects our mail. It's amazing how interconnected all the systems are nowadays! It could be that hackers are going after AOL, for example, and just because Katharion's servers happen to be in the same building it creates a cascade effect to then slow down everyone that uses Katharion.

In any case, the attacks are now under control, Katharion has us moved to servers in another facility, and I think mail is all working properly again.

I apologize for any trouble the mail jamming has caused you - I know how frustrating it is when mail gets stuck! In emergencies you can email me directly at LShea@charter.net which is my home address.

Hopefully going forward everything should be smooth. We're on a nice new MailEnable version 5 which has cool features and Katharion has more back up plans in place should a future attack occur. So things should be better as we progress!

Let me know if you have any questions, and if you see any mail hiccups in the coming days!

Lisa Shea, owner
BellaOnline.com

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