Did you notice that Pocket Your Dollars was down for most of the day Tuesday? The long and short of it is my domain was hijacked by someone in Asia, they disabled the site, and deleted a bunch of my website files, corrupting WordPress. WordPress powers this blog and the best option was restoring this site back to its state as of Saturday, August 2. Although I was seriously impacted, you as readers were not and are not at any risk.
All posts and comments left since August 2, including those I prepped to go live while I’m out, have been lost too.
I am turning to you for help. Can you keep the conversation going around here through Friday so that I can finish my vacation without taking a day to reconstruct the content I had hoped to provide you? I am going to post an Open Mic and ask you to kep the conversation going. As difficult as it is for me to leave you without some of the great things I planned to share, I know that these last few days on vacation are precious to my family and that I need to keep my focus here
For those that want the long story on the domain hijack, keep reading. Amy, who is monitoring Pocket Your Dollars’ comments this week, called me at the cabin and said that the site had been down since mid-afternoon (and once I got online I could see a number of you commented on the Facebook page too). I called the web hosting company expecting it to be a small technical glitch on their end. To my surprise, they could not speak to me about the domain www.pocketyourdollars.com because Carrie Rocha was not listed on the account, the owner was listed as living in Vietnam, the password was not what I had been using and until I emailed a copy of my driver’s license and a recent statement from them they could not even speak to me about the account.
Ugh. It was 8:15 pm, my girls were in bed, my husband was out fishing and I was in the cabin with no internet, no scanner and no idea what to do. I called the coffee shop in town where I’d used wifi earlier in the week and asked for suggestions on where I could have something scanned. Nothing. I called Wal Mart’s Customer Service desk and the gal there suggested I try the police. Why not, I figured? I called the non-emergency number and reached the county Sheriff. Bingo.
After my husband came in from fishing (he didn’t catch anything, in case you were wondering) I left for the Sheriff’s office. He scanned my driver’s license and let me use his computer, right in the hub of the 911 call center, to email it and a recent billing statement to the web hosting company.
The web hosting company’s (Bluehost.com) staff were great as they restored Pocket Your Dollars using a back-up from August 8. They knew I was grabbing a wifi connection from my car outside a closed coffee shop, with limited battery on my laptop, so they went above and beyond to help me secure things (think: change passwords to something crazy and hard to crack) and get me back on the road.
I write this from a County Kitchen while I wait for the restore to take effect. I have rejuiced my laptop, will return to the coffee shop to upload this post, and then back to the woods for a few more days of R&R.
I’ll be back this weekend!
About Carrie Rocha
Carrie, I am so sorry to read of the difficulties you have been having with your site!
Carrie – that is awful!! Anything you need – I am around until Sat if you need any store deal posted!!
That’s awful! I’m glad you were able to get it back again, especially less than 24 hours later. (In my experience, problems like this can take a long time to recover from.)
I’m wondering if you or others have theories about how this happened. Insufficient password?
I’m so sorry for all your troubles, but very happy you were able to get everything up and running again so quickly! Enjoy the rest of your vacation!
Carrie,
You are doing such an awesome job with Pocket Your Dollars. The information you provide is so abundant and complete–and very helpful to those of us lacking in time but who want to save at the stores. You are definitely right–enjoy your family and your vacation! Your readers will still be here when you return! Have a wonderful vacation!
Jen
Oh, Carrie! What a nightmare! I’m so sorry you had to deal with this on your vacation (or anytime really!). I hope the last few days of your vacation are fun and relaxing!
enjoy the NW.
Wow…the dedication you have for this site is amazing. Thanks for all you’ve done…now go and enjoy your vacation!
I’m so sorry to hear about this! What a thing to have to deal with, while you’re trying to have a fun, relaxing vacation.
Thanks for taking time out of your vacation to get your wonderful site back up and running!
Wow, talk about a vacation bummer!? Enjoy your vacation, it’s the little moments that count and it’s great to see some keep their priorities in the appropriate order. You are an inspiration.
What a shame that someone would do this, Carrie. I’ve just recently started using your site, but I think it’s great! Enjoy the rest of your vacation time.
Carrie I just wanted to say that something so horrible should have never happened to someone as wonderful and selfless as you. We all truly appreciate all the time and hard work you put into this site and we are so happy that you were able to take a vacation this week, but it is too bad that something so mean had to happen while you were trying to get away from all the stress! Hopefully this will never happen to you again. But thank you for checking in and getting the site restored for us. After a few days I’m sure we would have started panicing that we lost you! Hope you were able to have a great time – we sure missed you!