The Internet can be a dangerous place. I have a number of websites, almost a dozen, and a couple of weeks ago found that they had been hacked. That means someone figured out my passwords and accessed the sites. Not content just to break in, they spread viruses throughout all of my websites. Then when anyone came to visit one of my sites, they would be warned that there was a virus and the site would be blocked by the anti-virus software on their own computer.

If you came to might site when it was infected and didn’t have anti-virus protection, the virus would have hopped on down to your computer. Since you should always have an anti-virus program installed on your machine you were probably spared that agony. I use a program called Avast on my own computer. AVG is also another really good option and both are free downloads. Some people also use McCafee, Kaspurskey, or Norton. There may be others as well, but those are the main ones. And if you have two different anti-virus programs running, they might cancel each other out, so in this case two is not better than one.

Anyway, once I found out my websites had a major problem, they had to be taken down and repaired and it took almost two weeks to finally get things back to normal. Regina, the lady who runs WP Security Lock and who managed to fix things, worked hard every day until she straightened it all out. Since I had so many websites and they were all so badly infected, it took her some time.

Regina also left me with some advice that I’d like to share:

• If you use WordPress for your website, like I did, make sure all plugins are current and you have the most recent version.
• Don’t use the same password on all of the different websites you log into. This is a big problem for most people because we can’t possibly remember so many passwords. I was writing all mine down, but ended up creating fairly easy ones so they wouldn’t be too difficult to enter. But that isn’t a good idea either since a really strong password should have all kinds of characters that would be really difficult to figure out.
• Regina suggested I use something called LastPass and it will generate special passwords for you. Then you only have to remember the one login for their service and they do the rest. Sounds good to me!

If you’d like to find out more about Regina and her WordPress Security Service, click here.

And now that my life is getting back to somewhat normal, I want to wish you happy computing and remember to take time to get out in the fresh air!
Carol

P.S. If you would like to join my online webinars and learn how to share your expertise using the Internet, please visit my main site at carolbremner.com to register.

I don’t know about you, but I used to find joining a webinar to be a little bit intimidating. Although it has probably been a couple of years since the first time I tried to access a webinar on the Internet, I still remember how frustrated and stupid I felt. In fact, I could not for the life of me figure out how to hear properly and finally left in defeat. Then once I got used to watching and listening, I still couldn’t figure out how to talk when the lines were opened for comments.

As an FYI, it helps if you have a microphone and speakers plugged in to your computer. I know, it sounds silly that I wouldn’t know that, but I didn’t grow up with computers. In fact, I remember standing in front of a computer monitor shouting at it, thinking that way people could hear me. Okay, stop laughing.

Since my motto is “You’re never too old to learn”, fast forward to today and I am now conducting weekly webinars and really enjoying it. So I’ve created a quick, little video if you’re feeling as webinar challenged as I was. I hope it helps.

And please let me know how you make out.

Happy Computing,
Carol

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