Yikes…in the past hour I experienced both a case of credit card fraud and an email inbox attack. I have to assume the two were related.

First, one of my cards was used to purchase a one-way flight from Miami to Panama City for tomorrow under someone else’s name. The confirmation email was sent to my address because they had my card on file, so I was able to immediately call the airline and the bank to cancel the charge and the card. (Bitcoin does not fix this!)

Almost immediately afterward, my email was deluged with subscriptions to random services including marketing newsletters, clothing stores, AI tools, streaming video services, crypto wallets, and even free online piano lessons. Some of the subscriptions were in other languages, including Spanish, Russian, Turkish, and Japanese.

And then it all stopped as suddenly as it started. My guess is this was a sophisticated attack to try to prevent me from discovering the fraudulent airline ticket until it was too late to cancel the flight by temporarily flooding my inbox, but I’ve never seen anything quite like this before.

And for some reason, I now have the urge to take piano lessons.