An apology is in order.  Earlier this week Swcamborne was hacked and a phishing page was illegally inserted into the front of my blog.  I was finally able to get it removed by the hosting company Bluehost and all is well again now except for my and your confidence.

Thank you to all of the readers who emailed to alert me.  I did lose a few posts from the blog including the brilliant NIMBY post which I will try to recreate.

It turns out that there is no jurisdiction actively pursuing and prosecuting hackers and phishers.  The phishing site replicated a Bluehost page yet Pedro,the rep I spoke to, said “We are not part of the problem.”

I have hired a company to make my sites less vulnerable.  But ultimately it is up to all of us as users to be careful to never enter our confidential data without confirming who is asking for it.  I urge you to read the phishing definition on wikipedia.  As citizens we also need to urge politicians to get rules in place that better define virtual property and then enforce property rights law against violators.  I’ll be doing more posts on this issue now that it has gotten my attention.