My Posts are being deleted!! Hacked??
-
I recently started a second WP blog, and had two posts under it. I started the blog last Wednesday (March 29, 2012). I had posted a “welcome to my blog” post on the opening day, then posted last night a lengthy post. I compose in the blog, so I have no back up. I know some people compose in MS Word then transfer. I think I will start to do that.
But anyway, to my problem: I went to my blog this morning to correct a misspelling in the first post. Everything was fine. I edited the post, went to click “update” and it said, this post is in the trash you must recover it. I thought, hmmm that’s really odd. So I went to the dashboard, found the trash and tried to restore it, but it said that it was no longer there. I checked my other, lengthier post, and it had disappeared, too! It’s like someone hacked my account, deleted both posts and then deleted permanently from the trash!! This is so bizarre!
I immediately changed my account password, and posted a post titled “Hacked?!?!?” and posted a couple of paragraphs about what happened. That was a couple hours ago. I just went back to my blog and THAT post has disappeared!! It’s showing in the trash, but when I try to restore it, it’s telling me I don’t have permission to do that.
I have cleared my cache, cleared my cookies, run a full virus and spyware scan on my computer. Nothing. Everything’s clean!
Anyone have any ideas about what the heck is going on?? There was no controversial or adult content in my blog, and so I can’t imagine that WP is going in and deleting them due to objectionable content. I mean, if they found something objectionable about it, they’d just suspend my blog, right?
I have a second, main blog that I have had for over a year and a half, I immediately checked it because I’ve got over 125 posts in that one and would be devastated if it disappeared, but it appears to be intact.
I have also notified WP so hopefully they can help me.
Has anyone else had this happen??? Ideas??
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
-
-
I have flagged this thread for Staff attention. Please immediately email Staff at this address with the spaces I must used to have it display here in the forum removed from it support @ wordpress.com
-
Yes I have already contacted WP about this issue and sent in a support request. After my post this morning disappeared, I thought I’d try the forums to see if anyone else has had this problem. The weird thing is if I was being hacked, they could get to my main blog too, and if their intention was to do serious damage, they could have gone in a deleted all those posts, too, but they didn’t touch that one.
Not sure why this second blog was being targeted.
-
Is there anyone else on that blog with you as an admin or editor?
While in that blog dashboard, go to users > all users and look to see if anyone else is listed there.
-
-
Please change your password no matter what just in case.
There have been a few cases where someone got the username and password for someone and deleted the blog – other cases they had their computer running and logged into their site or had the remember everything set up for their browser and the account was accessed that way.
-
@ bookworm821 re: your words below –
I have a second, main blog that I have had for over a year and a half, I immediately checked it because I’ve got over 125 posts in that one and would be devastated if it disappeared, but it appears to be intact.
It’s just a suggestion.but if you really love your posts on this main blog, you could do what i have done which is to Export a copy of your blog to your computer; so that if you ever did lose any of it for any reason online, you would be able to restore any posts.
Hope that helps, good luck with it all :) -
@ SacredPath: After reading your suggestion, I checked it, and I am the only one listed as admin or user, just in case.
@auxclass: I did change my password immediately, but since my “Hacked” post was deleted, also, I changed it again. The weird thing is that my first blog was not touched, and only the postings were deleted on this second blog. The “about me” is still there, and they did not attempt to delete the blog itself, thankfully. I live alone, and no one could come in and sit at my computer and do damage without my knowing about it, but yes I do go away and leave it open and logged in. But it’s just me here and this happened while I was at home.
@ dovesgold: Yes, that is a fantastic idea, and I will do that immediately and periodically. Thank you for the suggestion! :)
-
The history on your blog shows several posts that were deliberately deleted by your bookworm821 account.
First, change your email password, as anyone with access to your email address can reset your password, then change your WordPress.com password again.
Also, make sure that you control physical access to your computer if you stay logged in, especially if you’re in a household with children.
-
@ macmanx: Thanks for the suggestion; I did both.
And I have no one else in my household except for me. And all posts were deleted while I was home. Some of the posts were being deleted even as I sat there working on my blog!! That’s what makes this so extraordinarily strange.
Thanks for the suggestions, though. I’ve changed both passwords on the WP account and my email account to something I’ve never used before. I put up another post, and it has stayed put — so far. Although it looks like I “liked” my own post, and I don’t recall doing that, although I could have hit something accidentally. This is just too weird.
-
Do you by any chance have any plugin or add-on in your browser that is meant to increase its speed by pre-downloading stuff for you off of web pages?
-
@ bookworm821 your’e welcome :) It’s well worth doing and only takes a second;
also do remember to check your browser settings and make sure it does not keep passwords etc., and that it deletes history and everything when you close it. Some browsers you can set to do this automatically and others you have to remember to do it yourself. All the best :) -
The reason I mentioned the plugins or add-ons is that there have been a couple of cases where those items installed in a browser were following links on the dashboard pages and actually deleted posts without the user doing anything, simply by following the “delete” link on the post editor page.
-
There was one browser add-on that “eliminated bad code” that wiped out everything in somebody’s blog. The whole blog. It was horrible. DEFINITELY export a copy of the blog immediately.
And since the Post By Email option took effect, your email is effectively an extension of your blog and when you change the one password, always change the other immediately as well.
It COULD just be the error that other people have been reporting, ie the “if you edit a long post sometimes it gets deleted” and the other error of “sometimes it says you don’t have permission on your secondary blog” but it would be awfully coincidental.
- The topic ‘My Posts are being deleted!! Hacked??’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 