Firstly, Happy New Year 2016 to all my readers! Thank you for visiting my blog again after the unfortunate incident that started in November last year.
In case you did not know what happened to my blog and why I did not blog for more than a month, well, here's the story. Back in November 2015, I noticed that whenever I visited my own blog, a window would open and an ad about keeping my laptop safe appeared. As soon as I click the window close, it would automatically opened a new tab on my laptop and the ad would appear again on the separate tab.
At first, I did not think too much of it and simply just closed that tab. But when it kept happening every single time I visited my blog, I knew something was wrong. But I was simply too busy to care at that time.
Then in early December, right after I posted a new blog post, readers told me that they could no longer access my blog because all they saw on the screen was this!
Strangely, I could not see this red warning sign using my Safari browser on my Macbook. Neither did I see it via my mobile phone. So I could still read my own blog. But when I tried visiting my blog via Google Chrome browser, the red alert appeared. I was shocked.
I was advised to remove all widgets and ads, which I did. I took out Bidvertiser (which I suspected was the main source of my problem), and most of the widgets I deemed unsafe. But roughly three weeks after I did that, I checked and the red warning sign remained. I was frustrated! What else should I do?
I thought of getting help from experts out there although I knew it would not be cheap. I found Sucuri but the amount I got to pay them (US$199.92 per year) was too expensive considering that my blog is not really a money-making type of blog. It would not be worth paying that much, unless the income I derive from my blog is in the thousands!
I almost gave up and was even thinking of starting a second blog when the day after the New Year (i.e. Jan 2nd, 2016) I visited my blog one more time via Google Chrome browser and got a huge surprise! There was no more red alert warning! I could not believe my eyes!
I quickly texted a few friends and asked other bloggers to check if my blog was indeed cleared from virus and malware. The responses were in the affirmative. I was ecstatic. What great news! What an awesome New Year gift for me!
Thank you Google, even though it took you a month to remove me from the "Blacklisted" list.
A few days after that, traffic returned to my blog and there was in fact, a spike in traffic from Google.com. But of course, I did not read too much into that since the spike was from zero traffic. LOL! So yeah, I am back, everyone!! Happy New Year 2016! :)
