The manual payout feature doesn't work... This means that if somebody gets into your account, they can't take your coins immediately, all they can do is change your payment address, which if you are prudent, you check beforehand. All you can do is wait for the auto payout, which requires a minmium of 20 coins to trigger.

I'm just wondering if all this fuss has to do with the upswing in Feathercoin price.

I wouldn't freak out. I didn't freak out when BTC was 5$ or 15$ ... I did freak out when it was over 200$ and thats when I sold, but that was eight months after I started mining. Geeze, there was guys that didn't hoard their coin and didn't they cry .. "that game cost me 20 BTC thats 5000$ I lost".. Anyhoo...