The Hacking of Taylor Blue

Bloggers come and go, but when Taylor Blue went missing, I could feel that something was wrong! After I bought MomsCashBlog, Taylor Blue was a frequent commenter and she welcomed me with open arms and encouraging words from my very first post. I considered her a good blogging friend and of course I went to her site, taylorsentertainmentnews.com and I was hooked on it from the very first visit. She had a great entertainment gossip blog that was laid out beautifully with pictures of entertainers and the music industry, interesting stories, great ads, and it was updated constantly… sometimes even 4 or 5 times a day! (Wow, that’s dedication!) I went to it ALL the time to get my daily or weekly dose of entertainment gossip. Then one day, it was gone! I tried again and again and again and still could not find it. Althought it took me a while to find her (no site… no e-mail), I kept at it and I finally found another wonderful entertainment site that I liked a lot and something told me to e-mailed the admin and ask if she knew anything about Taylor Blue’s site. The Admin of TEN Gossip.com told me she WAS Taylor Blue, and she told me what happened to her taylorsentertainment blog. It was actually a horror story for bloggers because Taylor Blue’s wonderful blog that she put so much work into, had been hacked!

After a few e-mails back and forth, I asked if she would mind sharing her story with us on MomsCashBlog or if she’d rather just forget the whole experience.  She wrote back and said “YES,  I would love for people to know what happened and maybe they can prevent it from happening to their blog.” So I asked Taylor Blue a few questions thru e-mail about her hacking experience… a blogger’s nightmare!

When did you start the “taylorsentertainmentnews.com” blog, and when did it get hacked?

TB: I had taken ownership of taylorsentertainmentnews.com just before Christmas of 2007. In the six months or so that I had had that domain I got hacked three times. Once every three months.

How did it happen? Was it a slow process, or did your site just disappear one day?
TB: It started that I would go to my site and it would be slow loading and then say it was down. I could tell that something was wrong when I went to post on my site and and it would go down again. The person helping me out would then say I had lost everything and would have to start over again. There was nothing I could really put my finger on.  But when it happened the second time I started to feel really funny every day… not knowing if I had a blog that day or not. The last time it was just messed up. It was wrecked beyond the state that it could be fixed.

They went so far as to change all my passwords so I couldn’t get  into my wordpress panel or cpanel.  The only way I found out was when they got into my database and shut down my site. It would say that it wasn’t available. So I couldn’t even log into my wordpress panel. When I was finally told it was a hacking I was livid. There was nothing I could do. I felt like someone literally went into my chest and ripped out my heart. It’s an extreme feeling because I was doing probably five or more posts a day, so there was alot of work I put into my blog.

Do you know who did this, or was it just a random act?
TB: The celebrity gossip field is very competitive. For someone to do it to a gossip blog doesn’t surprise me at all.  I will just say that being in the genre I’m in… it could be anyone…someone that thinks I’m a threat to them or someone who gets a kick out of ripping someone’s site apart. I’m sure there was a way to find out but I was just too exhausted to think about doing anything about it. I thought the damage had already been done. There was nothing that could be done to get my information back. So, I really didn’t explore who did it.

What advice would you give others about keeping our blogs safe.
TB:  Hackers are really sneaky. I would just say to get the added protection on your site. There is a security plug-in I have added… and one thing that is really important… BACK UP YOUR WORK!!!!! I think that is the biggest way you can protect yourself and your blog from hacking. My friend and I used to back up the blog in the cpanel but I was told that the hackers had gotten into that and even messed up my backup. So… always keep a backup not anywhere near your site. It is important to know that you have to keep a backup somewhere other than on your site!

 I am so glad you didn’t let this horrible experience stop you from blogging.  I think it will make you stronger than ever. You were victimized yet you didn’t become a “victim” and that’s important! It’s painful to lose all of your hard work and to know that someone intentionally did this to you. But I know that your new blog, TEN Gossip is a great success and it will continue to be. (Love the new name, by the way!)

TB: I think it’s almost like the stages  people go through when they are mourning a death. I went through the same things all three times. I was so in denial, and then I would just cry and cry, you feel like you were robbed, someone came into your space and took your things. After I got over it I would realize if I didn’t start over again the hackers would win. There was a lot of stories on my site that I was so proud of. But they were all gone. Things I had covered, like Heath Ledger’s death that I would loved to have looked back on. So, when I got hacked the third time I knew something had to change. It was happening every three months and I couldn’t handle it emotionally. I started a new site, with a new name and a new host. And I didn’t tell people about it, but people knew it was me anyways even though I wrote the posts as admin.

I chose a different name because I wanted to start new. I ended up picking a smaller name that was easier to remember. The other name sucked anyways I was just afraid since I was established under the long name it would never work. I ended up picking “TEN Gossip”. Ten being the first three letters of Taylor’s Entertainment News. But the switch went really good. I’m really glad I ened up changing everything. A change can do anyone good.”
Thanks to Taylor Blue! for telling us her story! I am sorry this happened to her, but I wish her much success down the road and I’ll continue to follow TEN Gossip.com, just as I did her other wondferful site.

Note from JJ: I thank Taylor Blue for telling us her story. It could happen to any of us.  There are MANY blogs that have been hacked but we just don’t always hear about it because they are gone and many bloggers don’t bother starting a new one since it takes a lot of time to start over again, and for some people it’s just not worth the effort. (It’s a personal choice that each person has to make depending upon their circumstances.) It’s good to hear about hacking from someone who’s been there so we can be aware of the signs and learn all we can on how to prevent it from happening to us. 

Sometime this month, I’ll be doing another post with info from experts about safeguarding our blogs, so stay tuned. (hint: you can never be completely safe from hacking!) For now, I wanted everyone to know about Taylor Blue’s experience and how she is still on the blogging scene despite being hacked and losing everything. Kudos to Taylor Blue!