I’ve been hacked!

Over the weekend I checked my sites only to find that every single index page on every site had been replaced by an interloper – the Q8hack. Luckily this wasn’t too damaging. About an hour’s work and I’d restored all the correct index files again.

One unfortunate aspect, though, is that anyone who tried to access any of my sites will have seen the hacked page and, unless they hit refresh when visiting again, their browser cache will continue to show the incorrect page.

However I got off likely. One of the sites at which I’m a member, Earn1kaday, found that their forum had been shut down because their webhosts had found an ‘infestation’ that was attacking and damaging other sites.

How these attacks happened I don’t yet know. Clearly the hackers have to break security to get into the servers to perform these ‘infestations’. We’ll probably never know the answer.

I could warn you, if you run your own sites, to always make sure you have a backup of each site ready to restore just in case a server hack brings your sites down. But, in my experience, people don’t bother about backups until the worst happens!

But it does remind me that I was going to write a report on avoiding email hacks and scams which are far more prevalent. I’m seeing more intelligent use by email scammers of clever tricks these days and, whilst I’ve concocted a recipe for avoiding these, not everyone manages to avoid the ravages of an email opened by mistake.

So I’ll start writing and I’ll get this report to you as quickly as I can. If you’re a subscriber you’ll get it for free.