Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Looking Over A Tandy Precipice Into My Bleak World In Texas

That is the precipice looking over the edge of Tandy Falls you're looking at in the picture.

A couple hours ago, looking over a precipice into a dark abyss, was a perfect metaphor for how I was feeling.

In my website world I've been feeling a bit insecure lately due to the hacking incidents with bogus code being injected into my webpages. The problem seems to be easily fixed, once I discover it.

Today I thought to myself if someone could alter my code, what stops them from altering the code that tells Google that a click should be credited to my AdSense account? So, I got back here from taking a picture of the Tandy Falls precipice and clicked on my Eyes on Texas index page to check out the Google code. It was all as it should be.

But when I got to the bottom of the HTML there it was again, the nefarious code about which no one can tell me what it does. I quickly looked at the usual other suspect pages, then the other websites. I found no other problems.

I over wrote the bad index page with a clean version, went to my webhost and submitted a support ticket. I was hungry and wanted lunch and did not feel like sitting on the phone waiting to talk to support.

After lunch I had a reply from a tech guy telling me the problem had been found, fixed and I should have no further problems. I've been told that before.

So, I then go to my Eyes on Texas website and what do I see? In big bold letters "DUE TO TECHNICAL COMPLICATIONS THIS WEBSITE IS NOT CURRENTLY AVAILABLE."

I bet you can guess how happy this made me. My first impulse is to call customer support. Then I decided to see if I could over write the file. That worked.

I was afraid the entire website had been deleted, due to verbiage in the reply from customer suppport that said, "I have looked through your whole account and I stumbled across a php file that has been granting access to the hacker. I have deleted this file and your site, and your site should be completely clean, I have placed another cleaner script inside your account to remove any added scripts that file may have left."

I figured he meant "on" your site, not "and" your site. Apparently I was right, because the website is still there. I have heard this blather about being completely clean before.

We'll see.

1 comment:

  1. Looks to me that you're getting what you're paying for. If I were to experience the problems that you've experienced with your host I would've already jettisoned them like yesterdays birdcage liner. CI Host on the corner of Central and Airport Frwy in Bedford are local. Who knows, maybe it would be possible to get help from them and not have to speak to a Romanian.
    http://tinyurl.com/yhl9mtl

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