Got K-lined on Freenode

This morning I woke up to my irssi client not being connected anymore to the Freenode IRC servers. irssi clearly states why, I got k-lined while I was sleeping! Also several query (private message) windows are open, so I was at least at the receiving end of spam.

My first thoughts go out to my irssi server, is it compromised and am I sending out spam? After a few minutes of searching, I notice nothing out of the ordinary. I check the Freenode website and find some useful information about usermodes. Let's try if I can connect to Freenode again... it works! Quickly I set my usermode to +R which blocks (ignores) messages from unidentified users with:

/mode username +R

Seems like a good idea to join #freenode and check about the details of my k-line. Upon joining the channel, I read the channel topic and it is immediately clear what is going:

If you were k-lined, it was a mistake, our apologies | freenode is currently suffering from a wave of PM spam. Please do not follow links. Please set `/mode yourusername +R` to minimise spam. | Welcome to #freenode. On-call staff can be found via '/stats p'. For a list of all staff, try '/who freenode/staff/*'. | Please do not copy spam into channels. | freenode #live takes place 28-29 O

Luckily I already read up on usermodes and it is good to hear that my k-line was indeed a mistake. I wish the Freenode team a lot of luck with fighting this spam wave.