I was hacked.

Yup. A Book and a Latte was hacked for phishing purposes last week. If you follow me on Twitter you probably know that this came to my attention on Friday (after examining my files this started on Monday, or earlier). The hackers created a false website under my domain and then used my site’s email service (which I don’t use, so don’t check) to send tens of thousands of phishing scam emails. Uh-huh. I WISH I was joking. Just the IDEA that I’m associated in a phishing sceme in any shape or form makes my skin crawl. *shudder*

Honestly, I had no idea what to do… I had been taking a hiatus from blogging for a few days after being sort of burned out after going through the Blogger to WordPress move, and attending BBPOC. When I decided to catch up on blog related email, and to work on a review and some posts for this upcoming week, I learned that my site was hacked. Since I didn’t really know what to do, I forwarded the security email I received from domainsbyproxy.com to my host, Webhostingpad.com and hoped they’d help me resolve the issue. Um… yeah, not so much. Apparently that’s not what they’re meant to do. I’m new to this website stuff, so if it’s not plug-n-play then I’m pretty lost.  So my account was suspended, and I was locked out of it. Which meant my site was down, and I was locked out of the account so I couldn’t even TRY to fix it. Meanwhile I had steam coming out of my ears because my emails requesting guidance from Webhostingpad were seemingly going unanswered. I later realized (a day later) that some of the emails they sent were going to my spam box (but not all)… I ranted on Twitter that they were not communicating with me, but that’s not true, I only saw a fraction of their emails before finding the rest in spam.

All the phishing content has been deleted from my site’s files, as far as I know. I’m taking a crash course on how to check for vulnerabilities – with the help of my husband and Google. From what we’ve discovered, we’re fairly certain that someone hacked into my host account, and did not go through WordPress. In my defense, I had a strong password! Let’s just say I’ve changed a LOT of passwords over the past few days.

I sincerely apologize for my site being down for 3+ days. I hope this issue has been resolved… but I’m still working with Webhostingpad.com to figure out if I’m in the clear or if I need to start over and rebuild (thank goodness I have backup files)! Thank you for your patience. I know there’s been a lot of changes recently… so thank you for sticking with me! ((((HUGS)))) I hope to be back up and running — catching up on reviews and posts — tomorrow… it all depends on if I have to rebuild. *fingers crossed*

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