Has Your Website Been Hacked? Check For These 4 Telltale Signs!

As experts in web development in Surrey, the team at Thunderbolt Digital are no strangers when it comes to identifying and fending off hacking attempts. Of course, not everyone has the same levels of knowledge and expertise and us, and the idea can be quite scary to your average website owner. It’s important to keep yourself safe and to regularly monitor your site for any of these signs. These red flags are geared towards WordPress sites, but other CMS users are likely to experience similar alerts. Remember to watch out for:

 

Account Problems

If you notice new and suspicious accounts in the user/admin areas, it may be possible that your site has been hacked into and false accounts created, which can often be difficult to remove if they have given themselves admin permissions. Of course, these accounts can also be legitimate colleagues or simply spam, so do check before taking action!

Of course, if you are unable to log in to your admin account at all, then that may be a sign that your account has been removed by hackers. Remember, this will look different to simply forgetting your password and will show as an invalid username or email.

Sudden Drops In Web Traffic

If you notice sudden large and unexplained drops in traffic to your site (using tools like Google Analytics) then it is possible that hackers have installed redirects to hijack your site’s traffic! Google may also have picked up on the hacking before you have, and may have blacklisted your site, meaning that warnings appear when users attempt to access your site.

Sluggish Loading times

As experts at web development in Surrey, we know how important it is that your website has a fast loading time! If your normally speedy website is taking an age to load, or is unusually unresponsive (and it’s not either your internet connection or computer) it’s possible that your site could be suffering from a DOS (denial of service) attack, whereby your server is overloaded by requests from hackers.

Inconsistencies in Content

The most obvious signs of hacking are inconsistencies in content on your website – does your home screen look different? Has content been deleted, or strange scripts added? Hackers usually try and remain hidden for as long as possible, so it’s important to check your site regularly for any giveaways such as these.

If you want to learn more about web development, then why not read our “Three Web Development Mistakes That Are Losing You Traffic” blog. As a company that excels in web development in Surrey, Thunderbolt Digital endeavour to keep all sites we host protected from hacking attempts, and so far have been pretty successful – just ask any of our satisfied clients! Call us today on 01252 413 757 to discuss how we can help improve and maintain your site, or drop us an email at howdy@wearethunderbolt.com with your query and we’ll get back to you ASAP.