Tech Troubles

It’s been a while since I’ve written here. As you can see there are no archives for you to look back and see when. That’s because my website got hacked. Someone out there thought it would be a good idea to take over my site and have it collect information for them. I’m not sure what they thought they were going to get out of my site, or if they even thought of that at all. All I know is that I had some trouble uploading a post one night and the next thing I know Sweetie is on the phone with our provider saying “Go ahead – blow it all away.”

I don’t know all that much about how websites work – I leave that kind of thing to Sweetie since he loves it so much. So when he told me that the malicious code that had been inserted into my website was attacking other sites on our server I imagined a hydra made of the green letters and numbers from “The Matrix” reaching out and strangling the poor innocent websites all around. It made me feel better about losing everything on my site.

It was a little harder to take when Sweetie told me that we didn’t have a back up in place for the blog. Oh I have the original files for all the posts, I could put them all back up. I won’t have the comments on them though. Just as I had that, he had the original files that he used to create the look of the site – so that is back.

Now I have to say that I’m a little paranoid about this happening again. I feel like I want to lock all that windows and doors. No one comes in or out – but that doesn’t work. I still have to put this out there. I have to be willing to let people have some access to it, or I’m just talking to myself – and I can do that without the benefits of technology. I don’t have to be stupid about it though. We now have a back up system in place. It won’t stop people from hacking it again, but it will make the recovery time a whole lot shorter.

Let me just take this opportunity to remind you to back up your files. Computers are wonderful things right up until they break, get hacked, decide to go for a swim or take up drinking. BACK UP YOUR FILES, ALL OF THEM. Thank you.