No Pie List.

So, as it turns out, our website was hacked at some point in the last 24 hours.

Within a 30 minute span this morning, over 50 people called the store, texted me, or sent Facebook messages to me alerting me to a possible hack on our site.  As it turns out, visiting the site by typing in the URL made it look like everything was just fine.  But Googling us and then clicking on the link redirected to SO. MUCH. PORN.  Awkward, no?  If you want to really humble yourself, just call your web hosting company and announce to the tech support person who answers the call..."ummm...my website has been hacked by porn and I have no idea how to fix it."

Once on the phone with a security specialist and screeching out my demand that the site be taken down immediately, I was hit with a rapid fire line of questioning that I'm still second guessing 10 hours later.  Did I want to pay $109 to have the site fully scanned and cleaned of malware?  Yep, if that is what it costs.  Did I want to pay $99 a month to have it cleaned every month?  Uhhh...that seems expensive.  Do I really need that?  Then what about $49 a month to have it cleaned, just not cleaned as well as in the $99 plan?  Uhhh, that sounds better, I guess.  What about upgrading our firewall?  NO CLUE...JUST TAKE DOWN THE PORN AS SOON AS POSSIBLE, PLEASE.

Once we sorted out all the basics, the person on the other end of the line floored me by asking what countries I would like to block from our site.  What?  That is a thing?  They suggested we just block everyone not in the United States of America, which frankly seemed a little drastic to me.  I confessed that I'm trying to build World Pie Domination and just not America Pie Domination, plus it all smacked as a wee bit isolationist for my tastes.

So then they asked if I would just like to block countries that are known threats.  This was interesting, because I wasn't really aware that a list of that sort existed.  Apparently, on the list is China, Russia, Pakistan, and Ukraine.  HUH.  It seemed like a terribly haste decision to block the largest country in the world from our site, but I couldn't linger another second and delay our site being taken down and swept clean of the malware...so I consented.  For the next six months, we will block that traffic and then the site will be reviewed for hacking attempts and we can make another decision in six months (I think this is how it went down...the discussion got very technical toward the end and I lacked focus knowing that Behind-The-Scenes Tech Guru Jason would live for all the details that would soon follow in an email.)

So, I guess in the end, we are World Pie Domination-ish...just minus four countries for the short-term.

But as for the hackers, wherever they might be...No Pie list forever.  NO PIE FOREVER.