Did you miss me? Even though I’ve been adding a few posts to my blog 2-3 times a week, you haven’t gotten any notifications from me in almost two-months.

Here’s why…

My team and I had been fighting a problem. Sometime in April, I noticed that if I tried to access my site using the Facebook app through my tablet, I was redirected to a porn site. I’d close the window, then click on the link again. I was then taken to my site.

I thought it was glitch and ignored it…

That’s until I got a few emails from people on my list who reported the same issue. They were surprised that they’d go to the porn site after clicking on the link that came from my site. On top of that, a few plug-ins stopped working and there were glorious errors on my site.

So my team started to investigate…

They deleted plugins, then reinstalled them. They emptied the cache, then restarted it. They checked the server, yet couldn’t find anything wrong.

And the problem wasn’t going away. In fact, it was getting worst…

While at the library one day, I tried to access my site. I got a warning message saying that my site was inaccessible because it contained adult content.

Emails were not getting through to my clients. Often, I’d get a phone call or email saying “Hey, you promised to reach out to me and you haven’t.” When they’d check their Spam or Bulk folder, my email would be sitting there.

When emails were being sent back to me saying they were undelivered due to too many attempts, I knew that this was now beyond the expertise of my team and I. It was now time to call in the big guns.

I reached out to my hosting company…

They started an investigation. It took them about 24-hours, but they came back with the diagnosis:

“Hackers have exploited a vulnerability in a theme on one of your websites and installed malware.”

After the hosting company completed their scan, they removed the malware and all the damage it had caused. I’m lucky that the malware didn’t do too much damage. I didn’t lose any data, nor did the the hosting company charge me for the work they did.

My team spend an entire day deleting old websites, upgrading the software on the ones I’m currently using and removing outdated databases and plug-ins. In fact, there were some websites that hadn’t been touched in three-years. It was through one of these websites that hackers exploited a vulnerability.

We went from 33 databases (and domains) to 13 and plan to get down to three by the end of the summer. I also signed up for a service that will send daily reports on the health of my 13 remaining websites.

This was a wake-up call…

We can’t wait to fix things. When you notice that there’s a problem, the best thing to do is to fix it right away. Don’t wait. Not only does this advice apply to your websites, but it also applies to your money.

• When you notice that you’re charged a bit extra on your bill, don’t wait.
• If there’s a bank account in your name that you haven’t used in some time – and it’s still open – don’t wait.
• If you’re sent a letter about a class action lawsuit filed on behalf of you, the consumer, don’t wait.
• If you’ve signed up for a program and you haven’t received any communications from the trainer, don’t wait.

Waiting will cost you more. Instead, take action right away. That’s the signs of a good money manager.

Update…

My team has reported that it may take a few weeks for everything to get back to normal. The malware that was installed tricked search engines and email delivery servers into thinking that we were serving up adult content over here. Hence the reason our emails were being delivered directly into people’s Spam/Bulk/Junk folders.

To avoid this in the future, I highly recommend that you create a folder and email filter in your inbox for my emails. Call the folder Faithfully Rich or Leesa Renee Hall and create an email filter so that any email sent from me will be delivered into the folder you created. Also, be sure to tell the email filter that my emails are Not Spam. That way, you’ll never miss out.