Malware = stress and apologies

Thursday I was hit with some unexpected stress about the new order of books we have had printed. I was trying to deal with that and knew Friday, which was already busy would have to have dealt with book issues squeezed into it.

Imagine my dismay when Friday morning Lani told me our site had been attacked by malware. I found out about 15 minutes before I was leaving for the temple. I had to decide. Temple or Computer? I chose the temple. Although this was strssful, I knew that I’m couldn’t be the only person something like this has happened to. Plus, even large businesses require the assistance of services found on sites like C2CYBER.COM to help prevent these attacks, so I wasn’t alone. With this being said, I could have done without it.

Fixing the Problem

When I got home Lani had already done some great things, like install a malware plugin and did a scan. I also changed some settings in our blog because it was possibly a ping back malware thing…. I still don’t understand what happened completely. But we thought it was solved and asked Google to recheck it.

I was just glad that I had Lani there who could help me out. I mean it wouldn’t have been the end of the world, as I would have just used a company like RemoveMalware to help me.

Saturday morning I woke up and found it had not been solved by what we had done. I figured this out moments before heading out for an all day trip.

Lani luckily took over again and did something else with the malware plugin and that time it really did fix it. However I didn’t have time to ask Google to recheck it until Monday. So the announcement spread and the problem looked worse and worse. However we did have things fixed by Saturday, Google just didn’t know it and since I wasn’t 100% sure it was fixed (per acknowledgement by Google) so I spent a few hours on Monday trying to figure out if there were other things…

My friend Angela finally called me at 1 and said, “You need a break.” I owed her a Shamrock Shake, because of her birth (will blog about that later) so I went to her house and recharged. It was wonderful. I took a sweet picture of her baby and Tracine’s baby together.

Then I went back home and yelled at my kids while I was on the phone with Go Daddy. At the end of the day I was grumpy and tired. But woke up this morning to find that all was well.

I apologize for

  • not backing up our website! (I had downloaded a plugin, but didn’t know it was failing each time it was supposed to download!!). After hearing this story, a couple of our close friends recommended we looked into the idea of using Managed IT Consultants. This way, we’ll know for sure that everything will be backed up and secure. Plus, we can get advice from professionals who know what they are talking about. There’s nothing worse than losing all of your files, especially when it is to do with work.
  • not asking Google to check our site on Saturday after we made the final fixes
  • yelling at my kids
  • the fact that others websites ended up with warning notices for awhile

I am grumpy

  • there are people who create things like malware. What is the point?

I am grateful for

  • the temple
  • my family
  • my Gift of Giving Life Sisters
  • prayer
  • our website. I thought we might need to delete it and lose everything, that thought made me SO sad

Please forgive us and our website

Also chose to learn from us!

  • Back up your blog/website!
  • Disable pingbacks on your blog.
  • Run anti-malware checks occasionally

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