I’m becoming an expert on another “growing” area of internet use (or more appropriately “misuse”)… phishing schemes. Over the past year, four times dulcimers.com has been hijacked by phishing scheme hackers. I think I’ve finally eliminated the problem but it’s been a nightmare! I believe the source of the problem (which became a backdoor access for hackers) was the other blog I had on my website (for Rochelle DeAnda). The script I used for her blog was called pMachine. pMachine had been closed to further development (unlike this program called WordPress which continues to have “updates” to close areas of weakness when they are discovered.) In September 2005, I used pMachine to create Rochelle’s blog, and there was no way to move her contributions to another script without starting over.

The phishing scheme hackers got in to my site and sent thousands of emails to unsuspecting folks. Those email recipients were told they’d lose their Bank of America account unless they verified their account information. It happened in May 2006, July 4th, 2006, April 2007 and on May 9th, 2007.

The last time, approximately four hundred folks followed the instructions and tried to get into the fake website.

Finally I think I have figured it out, and the hole has been plugged. The pMachine script has been eliminated.

Whew!