When You Get One of Those "Your Site Has Been Hacked" Ransom Emails
Published on February 24, 2023
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
First off, I should point out the website that was allegedly hacked was not hosted here on WA. I trust their site security processes to protect our sites.
No, the site is question is hosted with another company. I do this because some of the things I do with WordPress aren't supported or don't work on WA due to their strict security protocols.
In any case, I received an email from a hacker informing me that one of my sites had been hacked and that unless I paid him $3,500, in Bitcoin, within 3 days, he would cause havoc for me and my site.
You may have received emails like this in the past or you may do so in the future.
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So the first thing to do is to not panic.
Most of these emails are designed to frighten website owners into coughing up cash to protect their sites.
And, if nothing happens to your site after you've paid, then the hacker was honourable in not destroying your site and work, wasn't he (they're almost always he's)?
No, because if your site was never hacked in the first place, there was nothing to fix so the hacker is working as an old time mobster, pressuring you into paying protection money.
wealthyAnyway, I go over what I did once I received this threat in this full blog post:
I Got A Ransom Email For A Hacked Website
You might find some of the information useful.
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