DWerden.com Site Is Back and Healthy

[dwerden]

Forgive me for posting this is the music topic, but my site is definitely music-oriented, and I would like this notice to be seen by any potential visitors. (Moderator, feel free to move to non-music if you think that's more appropriate)

Some of you may have tried to visit my site recently only to receive a warning from Google about malware. The server my site is on is shared by many other websites. This is fairly typical on most of the non-Amazon-sized sites you visit and is mostly invisible to the end user. It seems that one of the sites on this server picked up a nasty virus and it spread through Windows to all the other sites, including mine. Google crawls my site very frequently and picked up on the problem right away and began issuing the warning.

After days of work with my hosting company, we got the site cleaned up. It actually required a full restore from a backup of the site from before the infection hit. It was more complex on my site than some others because there are thousands of pages to manage.

Anyway, we're good to go, and Google has confirmed that we're clean now. I apologize for any inconvenience during this time.

This brings up a good point, so I will take a minute to remind us all of something we already should know. Always, always, always make sure your own computer's operating system and software (especially the browser) are up to date, and make sure you have up-to-date anti-virus software running. This is somewhat less necessary for Mac computers, but even Apple is suggesting taking precautions these days.

If you need help in this, I suggest visiting Kim Komando's site. She is a computer talk-show host who offers some very good advice. Specifically I would suggest this page:

http://www.komando.com/securitycenter/

She has links to several security programs, most of which are free. You should have an anti-virus program running all the time (she lists 3), and you should have a good firewall running. The firewall prevents some programs from getting to you, and can also alert you when a program is trying to act as a server on your computer. When a virus hits you, it may try to send information about you elsewhere, or it may try to email all your contact. A good firewall can warn you and prevent this. Then she suggests some anti-spyware. These are generally programs you run periodically to check over your computer. And you will see that she recommends Firefox for safer browsing. Microsoft's Internet Explorer is generally more vulnerable to attack. And once IE is attacked, it has "hooks" into your PC's operating system that Firefox does not.

Thanks for your patience, folks. It's a dangerous world out there!

[bearphonium]

Thanks, Dave, I was missing my euphonium fixes!

[Todd S. Malicoate]

Welcome back! I have always enjoyed your site.

[iiipopes]

Yes, indeed. I was taken aback when I first saw the "warning," then surmised what may have happened. Glad it's sorted out.

[Rick F]

This is indeed good news. I was missing staying up to date on that forum as well.

I can personally vouch for one of the free AVs mentioned in the link that David Werden shared in his post. I've used 'avast' myself for about 2 or 3 years without any problems. Avast warned me through its 'webshield' that there was a suspect or nasty script trying to run - which avast then shut down.

Glad the site is all clean now.