A little while back, e-Literate suddenly got hit by a spammer who was registering for email subscriptions to the site at a rate of dozens of new email addresses every hour. After trying a number of less extreme measures, I ended up removing the subscription widget from the site. Unfortunately, as a few of you have since pointed out to me, by removing the option to subscribe by email, I also inadvertently removed the option to unsubscribe. Once I realized there was a problem (and cleared some time to figure out what to do about it), I investigated a number of other email subscription plugins, hoping that I could find one that is more secure. After some significant research, I came to the conclusion, that there is no alternate solution that I can trust more than the one we already have.
The good news is that I discovered the plugin we have been using has an option to disable the subscribe feature while leaving on the unsubscribe feature. I have done so. You can now find the unsubscribe capability back near the top of the right-hand sidebar. Please go ahead and unsubscribe yourself if that’s what you’re looking to do. If any of you need help unsubscribing, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me.
Sorry for the trouble. On a related note, I hope to reactivate the email subscription feature for new subscribers once I can find the right combination of spam plugins to block the spam registrations without getting in the way of actual humans trying to use the site.