A few years back, people only thought of WordPress as a blogging website. However, today it has been used for all kinds of websites.
In 2020, websites have become a necessity, and no business can survive without one.
With more websites being created every day, there is more room for malicious attacks online. Especially if you are an inexperienced site user.
To ensure that your website security is top-notch, you need to scan and do a website check often. Here are warning signs that you have been hacked.
You Are Not Able To Log In
This is one of the most common signs that your website is under threat. However, other reasons, such as forgetting your password can lead to this. Nonetheless, if you remember your password but still cannot access your website, you may be hacked. Some of the hackers go to the extent of deleting your account altogether.
You Get Alerts from Browsers
Many browsers will give you alerts when an imminent hack is on the way. There will be pop-ups like “phishing attack ahead,” which is an indication that your site has some malware. The malware may trick people who visit your website to take action, which will make matters worse. The malware will affect your website traffic as it infects computers of all your visitors.
Unresponsive or Slow Website
No website is immune to attacks. A hacker sends requests to the server to gain access to your site by using fake IPs, servers, and hacked computers. Activities like this bring about a slow website, which is unresponsive or even unavailable.
To avoid this, you need to check your servers from time to time, identify IPs with many requests, and get rid of them. It is important to note that a slow website may be a result of network interruptions, and you need to check this.
Bouncing Emails
One thing that may bring serious problems is emails bouncing back. How does this even happen? A person installs scripts onto your site and sends emails using your IP address. Customers report them as spam and sites, including spamhaus.org, block you because of these reports.
You need to check on your customers to make sure they are getting your emails.
Unexpected Flow
Many of the websites turn off new registrations. However, if you have done this and still realized that you have new users, it means you have been hacked. When you develop your website, ensure you have a secure firewall that is hard to pass. Update your website to make it hard for hackers to bypass the firewall.
Drop-in Website Traffic
If you notice a sudden drop in website traffic, chances are you have a hacker on your site. Technically, malware on your website will redirect visitors to the hackers’ site, reducing traffic flow in yours. Track your visitors regularly, and be keen if there is any drop in the traffic flow. Use a website traffic checker to ensure that you maintain a steady stream of visitors to your website.
Weird Search Results
Does your site display the wrong title or meta-description? Then your WordPress is undoubtedly under threat. The hackers inject malware into your website and compromise how search engines see your site.
Getting Information from Your Customers
Your customers get to view your website more than you do. They may detect a hack before Google does and immediately notify you. If you get information from visitors, ensure you take immediate action, including a hack test on your website to verify the integrity of the information.
Never take any information given to you for granted. The sooner you take action, the better it will be for you and take control of the situation quickly.
How to Protect Your Website from Hackers
There are several ways to remain proactive and make sure that your WordPress website is safe from hackers.
- Use a Code Scanner
Hackers are smart and they will hide infections very well. However, you are in luck as you can use a source code scanner to detect a hack. Do a manual scan with a code scanner, and it will detect and remove the hack successfully. You can also use the scanner to identify patterns that will match the malware code.
- Check Your Passwords
At least everyone out there understands the importance of using strong passwords. However, knowing is one thing and implementing is another. Most people may opt for the easy way out, and they end up using weak passwords.
Store your website’s password in an encrypted value, as this will make it difficult even for the smartest hacker to crack. For the safety of your site, do not hesitate to go an extra mile.
- Use a Monitoring Service
A monitoring service will inform you of downtime and the number of times your website changes than the standard percentage. Your page should not change so much and it will only have minor changes like copyright year or date. One of the best website security checkers is having a monitoring service that will check your site changes.
The best monitoring service should be able to do it from several locations. If you can monitor different pages from multiple locations, your success rate is bound to improve.
Conclusion
Being hacked is frustrating, as it will slow down how your business performs. It may also make you lose you many customers in the end. You need to seek help from individuals and companies that offer WordPress services. One way you can keep hackers away is by changing your password. You should also ensure you scan the site from malware.
