The Bad side of Internet Marketing

One of the worst things that can happen for any VRE (virtual real estate) owner a.k.a. Internet Marketer is that their sites get attacked, and there are so many different ways this can happen to you folks, so listen up, and listen up good. 😀

If your personal computer gets compromised, a hacker can steal your passwords, log into your sites and create havoc on them. No matter how careful you are, with so many sites getting hacked or compromised on a daily basis, you’ve got to make sure that your computer is running the latest and up to date anti spy ware program. That your firewall and anti virus programs are up to date. Run a root-kit Killer or Trojan hunter if you only even suspect there may be something lurking.  Don’t wait to catch the virus, deal with it before it happens.

Should you be infected make sure that you alert your web hosting provider and have all your passwords changed. DO IT STRAIGHT AWAY.

If you have a clean backup of your site replace the infected files with the clean ones. Take the time to painstakingly go through every folder look for rogue files you know shouldn’t be there. (js.php / search.php), If you have a reseller account make sure you check the skeleton folder!

Once you have cleaned up your sites check them out in Google Chrome, if there are any nasties left there Chrome will alert you with a red screen. Firefox is not as good as Chrome for detecting compromised web sites, and I.E. aids and abets the spread of the bot-nets and their scripts.

Be extremely thorough when clearing up the mess these people leave behind, one missed file with the script in and the whole thing starts all over again.

Check out your site statistics – some good cpanels have web ftp statistics that can give you some very valuable information when tracking down the hackers and could give you the proof you need in a Court of Law should you decide to do as much damage to the hacker as they have done to you.

So Mr 46.161.24.102 – I’ve removed all your hard work and replaced it with what was there before you came along. I’ll never get my time back, but at least I did get my VRE back.

The next post is a Truly Amazing story of The Real GOOD in Internet Marketing……….