What an awful 24 hours. Yesterday, I discovered that the ReidBlog had been hacked by malware, which is really horrible because I don't really even know what that is ... in any event, the hack attack led to a cascade of horrors, up to and including being banned by Twitter, blacklisted by Google, and deleted from various progressive blog feeds (which of course, was what they had to do...)
So in the interests of helping my fellow man (and avoiding an escalation in blogger alcohol consumption...) permit me to offer a few tips to those of you still brave enough to read this blog:
1) If you have digg code installed on your posts, take it off. I had digg code on some posts dating back to last fall. I have since quit using it, but the old codes were apparently creating a vulnerability to hackeration.
2) If you use stat counter code, beware! My web host stopped offering direct stat service more than a year ago, leading your intrepid blogger to use an outside service, goodstats.org. Apparently, they had a big malware hode in them, too.
3) If way back in the day when you started your site, you enabled Frontpage settings, disable them. I can't tell you why, but that is a tip given to me by a kindly helpdesk type poster at Google Webmaster tools.
4) If you are hacked, you will have to put in a shitload of time, frustration and effort to fix it and undo the damage. Which leads to ...
5. So if you're thinking about adding that new bit of cool sounding code to your site, think long and hard about it. In most cases, the slower load time and security vulnerabilities simply aren't worth it.
Happy blogging, and be careful out there...Labels: Blogger issues, blogs, hackers, web security |
