Garden Website Hacked According to Google

**D* G* <g*@gmail.com>**

When I said I would add some note about Wordpress Plugins, I hadn't
considered adding them quite so quickly but one plugin in particular has
proven to be quite worthwhile over the last few weeks so I thought I'd pass
this one along because I'm sure you can all use it.

Certainly one of our own needs some assistance right about now.

It's called Wordfence Security by Maunder (author name) and it's exactly
what it sounds like - a security system for your self-hosted Wordpress
installation.

it scans your files looking for "issues" on an ongoing basis and sends
along both the simple (you need to upgrade XX plugin) to banal (XX
subscriber has a weak password that can be hacked) to critical issues
requiring immediate action.

One of the critical ones landed on my desk last night to give me a New
Year's present this morning when I unfolded the laptop after our trip.
Emails with "critical" in their heading get my attention as do the big red
Xs on the plugin report screen. ;-(

Terra Nova - who I link to on one of my sites - has been identified by
Google as hosting malware.  In other words, it's been hacked.  And their
"Google reputation" is pretty much in the compost bin.  So the outward
links I had on my site were flagged as leading to a malware site and my
readers might be infected if they went there.

The first thing I did was to email Dan and the PR company handling their
account (I don't have the tech guys email)

The second thing I did this morning was to remove those links.  This not
only preserves my readers experience, it also preserves my reputation with
Google.

There's no secret about this now as Chrome is now blocking TerraNova (if
you try to get to the nursery website using the Chrome browser, you can't.

As soon as Terra Nova gets itself cleaned up with Google - then I will
restore all links

The important point here is that TerraNova may have cleaned up their site,
it may be a false positive or they may be infected. But whatever - Google
thinks they're infected so the tech team there has to do something
immediately to fix the issue on their site and with Google.

And this plugin notified me of the issue so I could take proactive steps to
preserve my own site integrity and ranking with Google.

You may want to experiment with this plugin and temporarily remove
TerraNova links on your own site to preserve your own site integrity with
Google

And as soon as I get some kind of feedback I will let this list know
immediately.

Doug

-- 

Doug Green
Helping a million readers a month
http://www.douggreensgarden.com/about.html <http://www.simplegiftsfarm.com>
https://www.amazon.com/author/douglasgreen
_______________________________________________
gardenwriters mailing list
gardenwriters@lists.ibiblio.org
http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/gardenwriters
GWL list website  http://www.ibiblio.org/gardenwriters
GWL has searchable message archives at:
http://www.hort.net/lists/gardenwriters
If you have photos for GWL, send them to gwlphotos@hort.net and they can be viewed at  http://www.hort.net/lists/gwlphotos