This morning, I logged into my computer, opened Mac Mail and within seconds, hundreds of failed delivery messages started pouring into my inbox.
It appeared that somehow one of my Cheriton House Publishing email addresses had been hacked and the hacker had set up my account to send out hundreds of spam emails the moment I logged in.
I rang my hosting company, NetRegistry, and I was 24th in the queue. Eventually I got through and the person who answered seemed remarkably unsurprised when I told her what had happened.
She told me to change my email account password, which I did, and I asked her to delete all the hundreds of emails that had been sent out at 8.39 am when I logged on, and she said she would, because although most of them had failed to deliver (I only have a small quota on my account as to how many emails can be sent in a day) they were still set up to be sent later, so I wanted them gone.
I then checked my computer and found nothing suspicious on it, but I still took it to the Apple store to be checked for malware, which is where it still is at the moment. Luckily I still have my writing computer (my Mac Book Air) which I'm using now to write this blog post, and my blog is 100% online so I can access it from any computer.
When I got home from dropping off my computer, my husband Dean and I used his computer to look online at my cheritonhousepublishing.com website files (he has Adobe Dreamweaver on his computer which he uses to update some of my websites for me). And sure enough we found a suspicious folder called .well-known. I've never had a file or folder on any of my websites by that name. In fact I have none that start with a dot. So we deleted that folder and all its contents, whatever that might have been.
Interestingly enough, when I went to the Apple store, the guy there told me that it was unlikely that my computer had been compromised with malware because Mac computers are so safe and it's unusual for anyone to get their computer infected.
He said it was more likely that Netregistry had been compromised which would explain why the person I had spoken to on the phone earlier seemed so unsurprised when I said my account and been hacked and she just walked me through the process of changing my password and updating my email settings. She's probably been going through that same process with the other 23 people ahead of me in the unusually long queue.
I have since looked at NetRegistry's Twitter account and they knew about the email spamming last week and didn't tell me (or anyone else). And it says that because of all the spamming, 12 of their servers, so far, have been blacklisted which means that no one can send or receive email from their website accounts. They also advise customers to subscribe to email updates. HILARIOUS considering customers can't send or receive emails. Some also had commented that their sites are offline too and have been for several days.
This is why Cheriton House Publishing is the last account I have with NetRegistry. This company has been getting worse everyyear day so I've slowly been moving my websites to different companies. I was going to leave this last one till the end of it's hosting account, which expires in April 2020, but I think I'll move it sooner rather than later.
If you've received a spam email from CHP today, it wasn't me. I've done everything I can to stop these emails from being sent. It's NetRegistry that is failing everyone and letting their servers become so compromised that they've been blacklisted.
Just remember that Cheriton House Publishing is NOT a spammer.
If the site is still up, you can go and look at all the books available to help you write more and earn more.
Plus there are plenty of free ebooks for you to download.
Although... maybe now is not the best time to download anything from a NetRegistry Server.
Only kidding.
My site has a security certificate. :)
https://ruthiswriting.com
It appeared that somehow one of my Cheriton House Publishing email addresses had been hacked and the hacker had set up my account to send out hundreds of spam emails the moment I logged in.
I rang my hosting company, NetRegistry, and I was 24th in the queue. Eventually I got through and the person who answered seemed remarkably unsurprised when I told her what had happened.
She told me to change my email account password, which I did, and I asked her to delete all the hundreds of emails that had been sent out at 8.39 am when I logged on, and she said she would, because although most of them had failed to deliver (I only have a small quota on my account as to how many emails can be sent in a day) they were still set up to be sent later, so I wanted them gone.
I then checked my computer and found nothing suspicious on it, but I still took it to the Apple store to be checked for malware, which is where it still is at the moment. Luckily I still have my writing computer (my Mac Book Air) which I'm using now to write this blog post, and my blog is 100% online so I can access it from any computer.
When I got home from dropping off my computer, my husband Dean and I used his computer to look online at my cheritonhousepublishing.com website files (he has Adobe Dreamweaver on his computer which he uses to update some of my websites for me). And sure enough we found a suspicious folder called .well-known. I've never had a file or folder on any of my websites by that name. In fact I have none that start with a dot. So we deleted that folder and all its contents, whatever that might have been.
Interestingly enough, when I went to the Apple store, the guy there told me that it was unlikely that my computer had been compromised with malware because Mac computers are so safe and it's unusual for anyone to get their computer infected.
He said it was more likely that Netregistry had been compromised which would explain why the person I had spoken to on the phone earlier seemed so unsurprised when I said my account and been hacked and she just walked me through the process of changing my password and updating my email settings. She's probably been going through that same process with the other 23 people ahead of me in the unusually long queue.
I have since looked at NetRegistry's Twitter account and they knew about the email spamming last week and didn't tell me (or anyone else). And it says that because of all the spamming, 12 of their servers, so far, have been blacklisted which means that no one can send or receive email from their website accounts. They also advise customers to subscribe to email updates. HILARIOUS considering customers can't send or receive emails. Some also had commented that their sites are offline too and have been for several days.
This is why Cheriton House Publishing is the last account I have with NetRegistry. This company has been getting worse every
If you've received a spam email from CHP today, it wasn't me. I've done everything I can to stop these emails from being sent. It's NetRegistry that is failing everyone and letting their servers become so compromised that they've been blacklisted.
Just remember that Cheriton House Publishing is NOT a spammer.
If the site is still up, you can go and look at all the books available to help you write more and earn more.
Plus there are plenty of free ebooks for you to download.
Although... maybe now is not the best time to download anything from a NetRegistry Server.
Only kidding.
My site has a security certificate. :)
https://ruthiswriting.com
