Usually I’m talking to you about something new in social media or something new regarding your marketing plan. But today I want to let you know about something that I found out just recently and it’s going to affect quite a few of you. There was an announcement last week made of a breach of privacy information by Godaddy on Managed WordPress accounts. That means if you have a WordPress hosting plan with Godaddy you probably have been breached.
The sad thing is the breach happened back in September and it wasn’t found until recently so there was a good six weeks of activity where they were able to get into these accounts steal passwords and steal login information. There’s a good chance that they could have gotten gotten data from your website. You probably have gotten an email in the last day or two. Don’t ignore that email!
You need to change all your passwords change all of your Godaddy hosting passwords, and, in fact, they’re going to make you or be locked out. If you didn’t get that email you need to contact Godaddy right now. You will need to change your WordPress login password, the sFTP password and probably the database password. If your wp admin login was a password that you’ve used other places, then you may want to change that too.
It’s a pretty serious breach and for it to go on as long as it did that’s really pretty scary especially with Godaddy being as popular as they are and people think of them as the ultimate hosting plan. For my hosting clients, you were not affected since I just other servers than Godaddy. I am not a fan of Godaddy’s hosting. I don’t recommend it anywhere to anybody and this is one more reason why. I’ve seen too many breaches that happened sequentially to multiple Godaddy clients that none of my other servers where the majority of all my sites are hosted.
The irony of it all is Godaddy really pushes extra services like security packages and domain security. Every call for support usually includes selling you something (most of which you don’t need.) Then when it comes down to needing security they don’t provide it. As you see I’m not a fan of Godaddy.
If you’re interested in finding another hosting option, feel free to reach out to me. I’ll give you some some servers that i really like and trust and use consistently so i have you know a few that i really like and had great success with.
Sot if you are a managed WordPress hosting client of Godaddy’s, you need to find that email or give them a call and you need to get all your passwords changed before you are locked out or worse.
Gary Wagnon is the Chief Ninja Officer for 800biz Ninja Marketing, a digital marketing agency that offers a balanced approach to your marketing needs, including web site design, SEO and social media marketing, coaching and training.