Last week, several lines of “seemingly malicious code” found its way into SF’s theme. This prompted Google, Firefox, Google Chrome and even Twitter, to quickly label this blog as a “Reported Attack Site“.

If you happened to visit SF from the RSS feed, the email subscriber list, or basically clicked to SF from anywhere on the web, you likely saw the intimidating message below which I’m now calling the “Red Screen of Death“. (Curiously, Internet Explorer 8 did not give any such warning.)

I’m told the foreign code was “seemingly harmless”, but aberrant enough for Google to red flag SF as a potential security threat. Considering that I know next to nothing about internet security or HTML coding, I had to call in some hired guns to resolve the issue.

Preferably, someone who had seen this problem before.

HostGator to the Rescue!

For the last year, a friend/colleague has been hosting this blog free of charge. Every once in a while, I would do some stock related research to return the favor.

When this security issue came up, he was unsure how to go about fixing the problem and I would have had to hire an IT professional to do the work. Since I’m more of the frugal type and confident that I wanted to continue blogging for a few more years, I decided to search for a web hosting company who would solve this “Reported Site Attack”  issue for me in return for my business.

I was looking for:

1. Tech Support. A support staff who knew how to fix this pain-in-the-ass problem immediately.
2. Translating skills. I’m a tech idiot, so I need to be treated like a lost American tourist in Bangkok when it comes to anything involving this blog.
3. Continued protection. I really didn’t like the idea that my blog just tested positive for the equivalent of “Internet VD”, so it’s time to adopt a few safe blogging procedures.
4. Pricing. This blog is not monetized (yet), so I wanted to keep my hosting costs as economical as possible.

After a referral from fellow personal finance blogger @MattJabs (also an IT manager), I sent a quick email to HostGator asking if they could resolve this problem if I used their web hosting services. They said yes, and I quickly signed on the dotted line.

So for the next three years, I’ll pay roughly $5 per month (by paying in advance) for a solid blog hosting company, my “Reported Attack Site” issue resolved for free, and I’ll get all the future tech support I should ever need.

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