Medley 50: My Site Got Hacked
Before we get into the normal medley, I have a not so fun story with a valuable lesson.
Sometime last week, someone started filling nateliason.com with malware and spammy links. Certain articles redirect you to app downloads, and some of the pages had hundreds of links added to the top menu (this last problem is still going on). If you ran into that, I’m very sorry and hope it didn’t create any problems on your end.
I’m not sure if the two are related, but a few days before that my server had hit capacity and knocked all of my sites offline for a few hours, at which point I decided I was done with BlueHost and started transferring over to CloudOptimus. Ben, who runs CloudOptimus, realized how badly the site was infected as he was transferring it and was able to clean it out, just as it was starting to get really bad in the BlueHost version of the site. He added a ton of new security features I should have added ages ago, and basically saved my ass.
But, the rest of my files on BlueHost are still corrupted, which they figured out yesterday and completely deactivated my account, taking all of my other sites offline. I’m still trying to clean everything up there, and hopefully get the rest of the sites back up.
I’m sure it’ll be okay soon, but it feels terrible to have something like this happen. I haven’t experienced this personally, but I imagine it’s not unlike having your house broken into. Since I know a number of people on this list have sites of their own, please do not make the same mistake I did by playing fast and loose with your security. Get your sites locked down, and consider switching to a more secure provider than the en-masse ones like BlueHost (obviously, I recommend talking to CloudOptimus, I have no affiliate relationship with them, they just took great care of everything).
I wish I had done all of this months ago when I could have prevented it, instead of trying to fix it after the fact. Don’t let it happen to you.
Alright, on to the medley!
If somehow you haven’t seen it : There’s a new Wait but Why article about Elon Musk’s Neuralink company! I’m about 1/3 of the way through it, and it’s as excellent as they all are.
Tiny homes : In an experiment that would only be acceptable in Austin Texas, Jeff Wilson lived in a renovated dumpster for a year before being inspired to build these gorgeous tiny homes. I don’t love the idea of investing in a huge house, but there’s something appealing about having one of these in a few of my favorite major cities.
No More Robo Calls: I’ve always been good about ignoring calls from unknown numbers, but in the last year or so the number of calls from telemarketing and machines has gotten insane. The Nomorobo app (on iPhone) goes in and completely blocks calls from all of these numbers, and so far seems to be working. Pretty good deal if they can stay ahead of the systems trying to get around it.
Stop Rolling Up : Unroll.Me has been a great service for making my inbox cleaner, but with this new info about them selling all of our email data and my new concerns around security, I think they have to go. The article makes a good point, we probably don’t want to give a service perpetual access to our Gmail accounts when so much lives there.
Have a great week, and go beef up your security!
Nat