I Got Hacked

So probably one of the worst things that has happened to me online ever happened 2 weeks ago… my site was hacked. I hadn’t upgraded the version of adlogger I was using on the site and someone inserted some malicious code which then took over my site redirecting any visitor to a pure adsense page.

Google spotted this and took the following action:

Which utterly decimated my website traffic but I wholeheartedly applaud Google for doing… 100% the right thing to do and interestingly they spotted the issue at essentially the same time as I did and removed it from the site so great job by them!

 

The one thing that does frustrate me about this is that Google funded the hacker. It’s obviously terrible I got hacked and I have revised my processes to hopefully make things  better but it’s doubly terrible that hackers are now funding themselves via Google AdSense… Given the experience I have in this marketplace through my affiliate work over the years it is also clear that people don’t do this unless they are getting away with it, so Google can’t be taking the money from them fast enough to dissuade them from doing this… that’s the only way it works. This is also not the first time I have seen Google funding this kind of abuse.

Comments

[Neil Shearing]

Sorry you got hacked, Alex. Loving your blog, btw, please post more often! :)

[Will]

Ouch!