This is due to hackers all over the world using your username and password to access this site. We have advanced and aggressive software in place to combat this, as it is a serious problem that greatly increasing our operating costs.
The system has never made a false positive suspension to date, so no matter how hard you find it to believe, your username and password have been “cracked” or discovered by hackers – or else, you’d not be seeing this page.
This happened because:
- You shared your password with friends (hopefully not likely) OR
- Hackers used software to “guess” the password (much more likely)
This did not happen because:
- You used your account from home, work, and a friend’s house all on the same day
- You disconnected and reconnected several times from your ISP on the same day
- You use an ISP or connection method that utilises dynamic IPs (cable, AOL)
- You had several browsers or browser windows open to this site at the same time
- You used several different ISPs in the same day
These things could never cause your account to be listed as “hacked”, and we consider these legitimate usage.
What can I do about it?
Head on over to our Contact page, fill in the info, and say in the notes that you received a message that your account was hacked. We will unlock your account, and issue you with a new password. You will not be able to access the site until we have done this. We’ll always do it in under 24 hours, and often in under an hour.
As hackers will keep trying to access your account after the password reset, we recommend you also change your username. Log in to abbywinters.com, User Control Panel, Preferences, General, Change Username.
Hackers!
Hackers use software to guess your password and username combination. Hackers use lists of tens of thousands of words at this website – and many others – to try to break in. They will get many “denied” errors, but after trying millions of combinations over several hours, they will come up with a list of access info pairs (ie, a username and a password that works).
Likelihood of this is greatly increased if you use:
- any dictionary word (in pretty much every language) (“sex”, “secret”)
- contractions of several words (“letmein”, “goodporn”)
- a proper noun (like “Schumacher”, or “Ajax”)
- a common letter-number combo (like “sk8ers” or “sexy69″)
- the same password as you did with other sites (if it was simple)
Note: It is not your machine that has been hacked, it’s mine! It was hacked because you chose a password that was too simple.
In future, for your username AND your password, please be sure to use a jumbled mixture of letters (upper and lowercase), and numbers, not a dictionary word, or a password you have used before. It says this very clearly when you are asked to enter a password when you signup. Please do not use any punctuation characters. Here’s a nifty tool which not only assesses the strength of your password, but provides cues on how you might improve it.
Once hackers have this access information, they then post it to a site dedicated to hacked passwords, so other people can use them. Our software detects lots of people using the same access pair, and suspends your account.
Password Sharing?
Please be sure to keep your access info secret, and to not share it with anyone (including friends!). You have paid for your access to this site, not everyone else’s! Ask them to sign up as well, to support the site. Please.
We are able to maintain this website, and ease of use, by having these safeguards in place. If we did not, WE would assign YOU a password and username, each ten characters long, random letters, numbers and punctuation, to gain access. Sure, then we’d have no more hacker problems, but you would be greatly inconvenienced. By letting you choose your own access info, we make it easier for you to be a member… but you have to help us a little as well!