Imagine all your hard work turning to this spam overnight
I was reading blogs through Google Reader the other day and noticed a new item for my friend Don Godo's blog. He doesn't update real often so I immediately clicked to see what was new. Completely confused, I clicked out from the reader over to his blog.
His blog had been hacked. It was completely gone and replaced by a nonsensical real estate spam site. I wrote to him right away and he doesn't know how that could happen either. The only thing I can think of is that someone hacked his password.
At first I thought maybe he had deleted his blog but that wasn't the case. I suggested that he contact Blogger but I don't have much hope that they can do anything.
I've read that bloggers should never delete their blogs because spammers just pounce on the available URL's hoping to benefit from the built up audience of the prior blog and whatever outside links might be around to provide click-through traffic.
Depending upon the circumstances, it is better to just leave your blog on the internet for posterity, maybe making your last entry one which says there will be no more updates. If for some reason, you don't want others to see your blog anymore, you can make your blog private and unavailable to casual visitors with Blogger and probably other blogging services.
I've also read about blog backup services which backup your text, photos, and, in some cases, your blog's comments. I'm definitely inspired to check those out more thoroughly now. I keep a HTML backup of my template and each article, but just the thought of uploading 430 articles all over again makes my stomach hurt.
If anyone has any information about a good backup service or how to prevent blog hacking, I'm sure that I'm not the only one who would be interested.
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