Salvage

Today, my website exploded...

Too dramatic? Okay, let's dial it back a bit. It started last night when, out of curiosity, I search for my own website on Google. Actually, I searched for myself, but I knew my website should pop up in the results.

It did. With a warning. And I immediately knew why.

At some point, a bit of code attached itself to my website. I don't think it's especially malicious, except that it draws spam to the site, and tries to attach itself to links in the description on social media. On a couple of occasions I've had to actively removed the description to prevent the code displaying.

I searched through my site, but I could never find it.

Today, I decided to search everything. Everything. Unfortunately, beginning at my hosting site was probably the worst decision I could have made. It said I didn't have Wordpress installed. That made me worry, that maybe the code had done something. I clicked 'Install' through the host...and lost everything.

So, that sucked.

I panicked, I clicked 'Uninstall', it fixed nothing. In fact, I was left with literally nothing. Not even a Wordpress site without anything on it.

Damn.

I went to FileZilla. I tried fixing the site manually. Over an hour passed, no progress made. I panicked even more. I Googled everything I could think of to try fix it. Eventually, I decided to try add Wordpress to the site again. I downloaded the most up to date version, because my older files didn't seem to be doing anything.

And boom: the site was back. I still had my posts. I calmed down.

Except... well, I couldn't actually access any pages. And that damned code was still there. I could see popping up as my website got back on its feet, pages not loading quite so quickly as they should. I snarled. In my head, I snarled. I would get it yet, just as soon as the website was functioning.

Google, again. Getting annoyed. Permalinks, that was the answer. And dammit, I made it work. I made the damned thing work.

There was only one thing left to do: wipe that damn code off my site, once and for all.

I went to the Editor in Wordpress, reserved for editing the Theme. I didn't care: I knew what I was looking for. I had seen a word of the code pop up over and over again. I searched for it on every page in the Editor, and finally, there in the Header file, I found it: a massive block of text and HTML links, a beacon for spam bots, a paragraph to paste itself onto social media descriptions of posts from my website.

I killed the bugger, claimed back my site.

It's all calm now. The site isn't dangerous - never was - but that code was there. It was more of a bother for me than for anyone else. Want proof? Google have a diagnostic check: http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/diagnostic?site=paulcarrollwriter.com

It's all fine. Even back in  February it was fine, with the code on it. It wasn't malware, which was a relief to discover. It was just an annoying beacon.

I can stop being all dramatic about it, now, right?

Facebook Spamming Issues

Several people, by no direct fault of their own, have become spammers on Facebook. The problem has gotten a bit out of hand. It's simple: they see a link a friend posts on their page, they click it, and within seconds the same link with the same comment is posted at least a dozen other people. It can be stopped by removing the post without clicking the link. The X is found in the top right-hand corner of the post. Make sure to click "Remove Post..." instead of the other options, as they may cause your friend problems in the future. It's highlighted below, in blue, so you can't miss it.

There are two big offenders in the spamming: Osama and a link to show you what you'll look like when you're older. There are obvious reasons why people think these are genuine links: everyone wants clarification that Osama is dead and lots of people are amused enough by images to click the second link.

So far I can't see any major problems with these links except that they spam the heck out of as many people as the link possibly can. The more friends you have, the more people will get spammed. Simple as that.

The biggest issue seems to be that they are just annoying links, posted dozens of times all over Facebook. There may be more in the future, but for now these are the two I am familiar with. Before the admins at Facebook can get around to fixing this problem, users can prevent themselves becoming the centre for spam by simply removing these posts from their pages; even if you don't click it, your friend might. Hopefully the tide of spam will stop within a few days if everyone follows this simple advice.