I came back from a run today (a really tough run, by the way), to one of those good/bad emails. I’d been hoping to join an exclusive ad network and I got a wonderful email stating they were interested in my websites. There was a small note at the end of the email – stating that my site seemed to be down? I went to it right away, and this is what I saw.
Ugh! After a quick call to my host, BlueHost, I found out that my site had been hacked.
Some of you may know this isn’t my first experience with being hacked. Back in 2006, Mom’s Favorite Stuff was hacked, and “invisible” links were added to the bottom of each of my posts, pointing to pharmaceutical websites. But since then, I’ve been lucky.
I guess this is a reminder to me – and any other blogger who reads this:
- Keep your password secure, and make it really hard to guess
- Make sure your web host keeps backups
- Ensure your software script (WordPress in my case) is up to date
I was lucky this time – I caught it quickly and my host had a very recent backup. But, it could have been a very big problem.
Photo credit: Jen DeCesari
