You’ve Been Hacked! How Long Before You Know?

If you’ve ever been hacked, you know what a nightmare it can be to sit down at your computer, browse to your website and immediately get assaulted with popups, see horrid images, get a screen full of weird links, or a page about some political statement from somewhere else in the world.  Aside from immediately getting to work to fix it, you’ve probably wondered when it happened and how long it had been like that.

Google announced last week they want to help.  They’re going to begin sending notifications to sites they suspect have been hacked.  They’ll try to find the contact info on your site, but first they’ll check webmaster tools and if you’re using it, they’ll be able to tell you as soon as they notice. 

They’ll also be adding a warning into the search listings, much like they do with malware sites now.

If you’ve got an account with webmaster tools make sure you’ve got your site(s) listed and your contact info is up to date.  If not, you can get a free account here: https://www.google.com/webmasters/tools

And for the full scoop, check out the article on the Google blog -> http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/12/new-hacked-site-notifications-in-search.html