I apologize that it has been so long since my last entry. We had an unfortunate incident happen this weekend that has caused me a lot of grief.
My husband had a long weekend off and we were looking forward to having some time together as a family. Usually when vacation time is taken, we are running around like crazy. This time, we had looked forward to some time together just relaxing. Unfortunately, this weekend someone hacked into our forum and sent out private messages to every single person that had registered on my site. Within a matter of minutes, inappropriate pictures had been posted to our forum and also sent out to each person’s email boxes. The message had been entitled, “Urgent Message from Admin” and said that it was from “Amy.” We began frantically disabling features on our board, removing users, and sending out a message to let users know not to open messages. It was embarrassing and mortifying for someone who tries to run a very family-friendly website especially since I try to keep such a close eye on things.
When I began the website, I wanted a safe place for people to be able to visit. I have been very diligent about maintaining our boards and our user’s privacy. I have never charged anything and have tried to even offer free advertising to our users. I have never pleaded with anyone for donations and I have tried to continually update the site with new information.
My goal has and always will be to continue these things. It was an upsetting incident that I had no control over and I felt targeted by these people who have nothing better to do than to repeatedly expose people to these types of images.
Unfortunately, we have discovered that we were not the only site that had been targeted and others who had this type of forum also experienced the same thing. Some of the images that were sent out to their users were much more graphic and they had many more registered users.
Even more disheartening was the fact that I got some of the meanest emails from people about what they received. Anyone who knows me or who visits my site would know that I would NEVER send this type of thing out. I am a Christian mother and this probably was more upsetting to me than the fact that the incident even happened. I will not go into great detail the messages I received, but they were extremely hurtful and made me question if doing a website is worth all of this.
I work on our site day and night. There is not a part of my day where I am not thinking about it, planning an article in my head, searching for information, or trying to interact with everyone on our forum. If you broke down my wages for the site, it would probably work out to be half of minimum wage. So why do I do it? Because I love the people I have met from doing it, I love the opportunities that it has provided me, and I want to be home with my children more than anything in the world. I love the fact that the site has helped me be a better mother and challenged me to live within our means. The blessings from it are great and I hate to ever complain about it because I feel so lucky…it was just a lot to swallow in one weekend.
I appreciate those of you who sent me so many kind messages and were so understanding about the situation. I deeply apologize that this happened and I hope that we can prevent future problems like this from happening. Unfortunately, that is one of the downfalls of having a website and I see why many people give up.
I am going to be working on my Freebie Friday entry so please check back tomorrow. Thank you again for being such loyal readers.