I’m back!
February 5, 2008 by Lillie
I apologize if you tried to access my blog yesterday or this morning and got a strange “file download” message instead of the blog.
My Web host upgraded the server and ran into a problem with PHP scripts. There was no virus, no hacker, no danger to your computer … just a technological glitch.
Technology! I can’t imagine life without it, and most of the time it makes life better. But sometimes …
[tags]blog[/tags]
Lillie,
So glad you’re back! Had me a little worried for a while there yesterday!
Jeanne
Glad you’re back online, Lillie. I knew something was wrong when my browser attempted to “call” a Word document instead of your site. With all of the security problem online I was hoping that your site wasn’t hacked. Glad you’re back!
I was a little frustrated, Jeanne.
I had three sites I maintain for clients that are built on WordPress, so they were completely down along with four other blogs. My clients and I are very happy to be back!
As frustrating as it was, however, I have to say my Web host was great – he sent out several messages to keep us informed on the status, and through the many years I’ve been a customer, problems of any kind have been extremely rare.
Thanks, Matt. I’m glad it was just an upgrade problem. Several years ago, the site for a business I was involved in was hacked before it had even gone live. Somebody in Vietnam got in through the shopping cart and left obscene messages on every page. Fortunately, there was no data to steal or destroy, so it was just a nuisance. The Webmaster worked with the shopping cart company to resolve the security breach and cleaned up the obscenities, and the site launched on schedule.
But several months later, my credit card company called me and asked me if I purchased a server in Atlanta. I’m in Texas, and my credit card was in my purse, but someone in Atlanta used a card to purchase the server. So I went through all the “stuff” you have to go through when something like that happens. All I knew was that someone accessed my personal information somewhere and made up a fake card.
A few days after that, I got a call from a lady who said, “I don’t whether I should be talking to you or not, but I checked you out online and from what I see on your Web site, I don’t think you’re the kind of person to do what it looks like you did.” She then told me someone using my name and address had made fraudulent charges on her credit card.
We talked at length and finally found a connection – we had both made purchases online at the same site about the same time. I went to the site and discovered they were using the same shopping cart as our business site – the one that had been hacked and supposedly the problem fixed. So I e-mailed the site owner where we had shopped, then I contacted the Webmaster for the company I was with to tell him there still appeared to be a security breach in the shopping cart.
He told me the problem was fixed, but each user of the shopping cart had to take action to plug the hole, so to speak. He went to the Web site where I had made the purchase and actually could get in through the “hole.” He saw the notice to the site owner of exactly what needed to be done to resolve the security issue … but it hadn’t been done. I followed up with the site owner, and she insisted they didn’t have a problem. I told her my Webmaster saw credit card information on x number of clients – enough details that she could tell he had actually been into her site (of course with no malicious intent and taking no action – just checking to see if there was another problem with the cart we needed to know about).
We corresponded by e-mail for days, and she adamantly insisted that her site was secure, and I didn’t know what I was talking about. Finally, however, they got enough complaints that she had to admit they had a security breach and a hacker had obtained access to their complete customer records, including credit card numbers. She didn’t think it was a problem because the cards weren’t used fraudulently on her site. What she didn’t understand was that these guys didn’t want to spend $5 for her products. They wanted credit card numbers to buy $1000 servers.
Finally, the site owner sent a notice to all her customers that there had been unauthorized access to their records, but she still told people they probably didn’t have anything to worry about because they hadn’t had any fraudulent charges for her products (none of which sold for more than $10)!
So, yeah, I’m very glad it was a technology glitch and not a hacker!