TellMeAboutThat.com Does Not Use Phishing Tactics or Cookies

Within the last week, I received a notification from Google that visitors had reported one of my sites, www.email.tellmeaboutthat.com, was a phishing site. Google contacted me because I have Google ads on all 94 of my sites. That same day, I received a notification from my hosting provider, Host Gator, that they had detected malicious script in that same site. Host Gator’s security team took care of it for me and I went in and cleaned up the mess that the hacker had left behind.

Host Gator recommended that I change my cPanel and FTP passwords to prevent further attacks. Here’s the thing, I used a password generator that helps you create passwords that are difficult to break the code on. I say difficult because, obviously, someone was able to get in and mess with my site script. The password that I used had nothing to do with anything in my personal life. It was not made up of names of people in my life, their birth dates, anniversaries, pets names, my favorite car or anything like that. In fact it was an arbitrary set of words, numbers and symbols that I made up, in anger, after the last time I got hacked. The password generator gave me a “very strong” rating, the highest rating you can get on that particular software.

Why am I telling you this? Because I love you guys and want you to know that no matter how strong or impossible to break you think your last name and birth year password is, someone can figure it out. I learned that the bad guys use encryption software that can scan your ID’s and passwords and figure them out. This applies to your online banking, social sites such as Twitter and Face book, email access and work computers. So if you use the same password for everything, or you use passwords based on people, dates and events in your life, then change them.

This isn’t just about hackers changing web pages and causing havoc for site owners such as myself, but everything you do on line. Here are some tips from Host Gator for setting passwords:

A strong password is a password that meets the following guidelines:

• Be seven or fourteen characters long, due to the way in which encryption works. For obvious reasons, fourteen characters are preferable.
• Contain both uppercase and lowercase letters.
• Contain numbers.
• Contain symbols, such as ` ! ” ? $ ? % ^ & * ( ) _ – + = { [ } ] : ; @ ‘ ~ # | \ < , > . ? /
• Contain a symbol in the second, third, fourth, fifth or sixth position (due to the way in which encryption works).
• Not resemble any of your previous passwords.
• Not be your name, your friend’s or family member’s name, or your login.
• Not be a dictionary word or common name

Even if you do all of the above, a determined hacker can still get in, but if you occasionally change the password you’ll make it more difficult. Identity theft is at an all time high, so protect what is yours.

By the way, I do not allow any type of phishing from my sites nor do my sites collect cookies. I’m not interested in collecting your personal information. I only want to entertain and enlighten you. 

Don’t forget to go to the links on the right and finish you Christmas shopping.