Before I get into what happened today that kind of freaked me out for a minute or two, I’d like to post a link to a blog I also found today by coincidence…because of what freaked me out this morning.
This link will take you to the NGBLOG, to an article about Jenna Lyons coming out officially.
Remember Jenna Lyons? She’s the President and Creative Director of JCrew, and she’s officially come out as a lesbian.
It apparently happened during some awards ceremony earlier this week.
Last year, Ms. Lyons ignited a huge controversy when their catalogue published a photo of her painting her then five-year-old son’s toenails hot pink.
Of course I remember that. I even posted about it here in April of 2011 and I joined the facebook page for “Paint Your Toenails Pink Day.” And, in a short story that I wrote for a ravenousromance.com Christmas Anthology (can’t recall the title now; it’s in the link) I actually wrote about a character who did paint his toenails “tipsy” pink. It’s interesting how things always come around sooner or later. The last thing I was thinking about today were pink toenails.
In any event, something strange happened this morning. Evidently, if you link to a blog that’s been infected with malware people will get a warning about your blog if they use Firefox, Google Chrome, or Safari. I only use IE and AOL software, and the warning won’t happen with them, so I had no idea this was happening to me.
And I wouldn’t have known if it hadn’t been for two people who sent me private messages the moment it happened. One of those two people was the owner of NGBLOG, and I can’t thank him enough for contacting me about it. It’s really a great blog and I hope you take the time to check out all of his posts.
After he contacted me, I got into the warning immediately. I don’t like that sort of thing getting around. And I make sure I’m well protected at all times against these things. If anyone else has been experiencing this you might want to pay attention…and this does NOT mean that my blog was infected in any way, shape or form by anything or anyone. What happened was just a warning. It does not mean I have to worry about anything.
First, I found out who the malware warning was coming from and I deleted all posts and a link on my sidebar to the web site that was causing it. I hated to do it, but didn’t have a choice. Then I did a full diagnostic review of my own blog to see if anything had been compromised and I found nothing wrong. Everything came up fine and I had not been infected.
I repeat: I had not been infected and there is nothing wrong.
After that, I went to this web site and downloaded the software to both double check and make sure nothing like this would happen again. It’s worth the time and the effort to do this. It’s worth the piece of mind alone…even if there’s nothing wrong. And I would suggest that if anyone has been experiencing anything like this, make sure you do it soon. You don’t want to take a chance of having warning signs pop up every time someone tries to read your blog. And that’s all they really are: warning signs. But they can freak a person out, especially nowadays when we’re not sure what’s safe and what’s not.
And this is really important. IT IS VERY IMPORTANT. Whatever you do, if you see something like this please don’t go screaming about it on social media and posting it on someone’s timeline on Facebook. Please take the time to send the blogger a private e-mail or a private message about it. If people see things like this on social media they tend to panic, and you don’t want to hurt someone else’s web site traffic that way. Think before you act…or react…and use your brain.
