Update December 11

[dan_s]

Our website was hacked for the second time in four months on Monday, December 8. I decided that our website hosting company did not have the proper security and/or procedures in place to block hackers. Therefore, we have switched to a new web hosting company. We've also added some other security features and over the next few weeks we will upgrade the website to a new software package (way above my pay grade).

Part of this "mess" is that we had to go back to a November 26 back-up file, causing us to loose a lot of posts. It sucks but we will all get over it.

Tomorrow, I am going to make sure all the profiles and forecast models on the website are current. Please give me a couple days.

We are sorry for any inconvenience and we will do our best to make sure this does not happen again.

I have been told that we were hacked by someone in Europe who just does it for fun. There are some very sick people in this world.

[mikelp]

Dan, thanks for update. Can we assume our payment info/ credit card numbers are secure?

[dan_s]

Yes, we found no evidence of them doing anything to the website itself or getting into the files. All they really did was put up that picture of a mask when you logged on.

[dan_s]

Actually the credit card numbers are encrypted on the website. After we enter them, we can't even get to them again. All we see in the database are the last four numbers.