What to Do When Your Website Gets Hacked

Hacking or stealing pages on websites is quite common and this week my site http://www.margaretgill.com/ got hacked.

My poor site looked more like the inside of a warehouse selling internet drugs than my lovely little site filled with love. After my initial feelings of violation and insecurity it became something I just had to “get over” because it is one of the hazards of having a website.

If it happens to your site, the first thing to do is to get your hosting company to change your password so the hackers can’t get at the site again, or at least it will make it harder to get back into your site. Be aware too that the hackers may have imbedded code in the site that will make it easy to repeat the action again, in which case you will need to completely reload your website from your back up files (tell me you have those!)

Also don’t forget to change your policy on passwords because lets be honest I have had the same password on my website since the day it was created back in 2002 and it has caused some minor irritations for me today. Also make sure you have numbers and letters in your password, it just makes it a wee bit harder for the hackers to get through.

Internet security is something we always have to be aware of and I’ll be speaking with my supplier to ensure I have everything in place to be certain it doesn’t happen again but it is not something that should make you stop in tracks and not use the technology. In my instance, the Universe has come in with a little message to remind me to make myself as safe as I can and then just “get on with it”.