PAII Newsletter November 2015

HACKED: How Innkeepers Become Sitting Ducks…
This post is designed to educate all Innkeepers about the HACKING of Bed and Breakfast Websites throughout the US
and Canada. Acorn Internet Services Hosted Websites are NOT AFFECTED by this current incident.
A short story, if I may …. Once Upon a Time… In a land not so far away, I met a representative of the Oregon Bed and Breakfast Association at the
2015 PAII conference in New Orleans. This representative invited me to speak at the OBBG conference in March 2015, and there I met a variety of
Innkeepers.
At that time, a few of these Innkeepers had hired a vendor in our industry to build them new WordPress web sites. During my session, and in oneon-one
meetings at the OBBG conference, I cautioned Innkeepers that they needed to be very, very careful about their hosting company, and to
make sure that any and all WordPress security patches and Plug-In patches their webmaster had programmed into their websites were being made in
a timely manner.
Fast forward to today. My crystal ball was working overtime, because as you can see on
the map, Oregon Inns, many of which attended my sessions at the OBBG conference in
March, are in the count of those having been Hacked, along with many other inns across
the US and Canada that are all using the same hosting company with the same IP address.
So, how do you know if you’ve been hacked?
1) Check your Google Console (assuming it’s been installed) you might have a message.
2) Use Google’s parameter Site: to see if you have any infected pages.
3) Look for a Blue Line Error message on your Google results “This site may be
hacked.”
4) Look for a Blue Line Error message in your Google results “This site may harm your
computer.”
5) Contact a reputable industry provider, and pay for consulting assistance.
Why should you care if you’ve been hacked?
If Google detects that you are not repairing your
HACKED website, over time they will ultimately remove
you from their SERPS (Search Engine Result
Pages). Of course, you will still be accessible from your
Directory listings, but as that Google is your number 1
Search Engine provider, and is typically in the Top 3 of
all your referrers, losing that amount of Google traffic
will ultimately cause a loss of income.
Also keep in mind that once Google displays the “This
site may be hacked.” message on your Google listing,
your guests are going to see this message and become
Very Leery of clicking on your website. If you have
been Hacked, they will likely not to want to have anything
to do with booking a room on your web site. If
you are lucky, you might get a phone call instead, but
either way, you are going to be losing business due to
the guest’s perception regarding the safety of clicking
on your web site, when it says in Google “This site may
be hacked.”