THE OFFENSIVE STRIKE. It’s not enough that you protect your blog on a defensive mode. You also have to be on offense. When dueling with hackers, you have to make sure that the ball is always on your court. Don’t wait for their attack. Attack when you have the chance because these hackers will do anything and everything just to have a hand of that ball. So before they even get a shot, steal the ball and secure it (haha basketball ba?). Some of the veteran bloggers already know this. Actually this is not new anymore. But for newbies out there, this would be beneficial especially to those who are going gaga on what to do with these spammers and hackers. So let us enumerate the simple ways on how to take offense when the security of your blog is under attack

1. Block the IP Address. IP address are those series of digits that appear on your comments dashboard beside the name of the commenter. But if the hacker is a lurker, and does not comment, you will never get their IP address. So the best thing is to always log into on your server control panel and look for the latest visitor log. There you would see a list of IP address who recently visited your site. Though sometimes the logs are inadequate so better sign up for web masters tool on the net to catch the culprit. So when you already have the IP Address, block them. Go find the IP deny manager tool on your control panel and deny them access. Sometimes hackers use robots and crawlers that invade your .httaccess. So to prevent this as early as you notice any change or unknown IP that hovers your blog, block them especially when they are accessing inside your blog.

2. Always check your error log. WP has always maintained its security but for some reasons, hackers are able to crack the code, hence Wordpress releases updates from time to time. Of course its already given that you have to update and upgrade your WP version for the latest security. Then when you are fully updated, always check your error logs. In error logs, you will see the exact IP address and the target link on your blog. This just means that a certain hacker, crawler or spam is trying to access the internal folders of your blog that is why the error is logged. Try to identify the IP and then block it before it succeeds its purpose. One reminder though, always check first in your comments area the IP you have to block because sometimes these hackers uses proxy IP address that mimics some of your commenter’s IP. You don’t want to block your regular reader from accessing your site right?

3. Report abuse. Some sploggers and spammers have their own site. And oftentimes, they steal your contents. When this happens, trace the link coming in your comments area and if it comes from blogspot, flag it. There is a feature in blogspot wherein you can flag the culprit. Flag just means that blogger.com will review the site and if they deemed it as a source of spam and splogs, they they will tore it down from their database.

These things maybe trivial, but it can somehow save the life of your blog. Remember that Big leaps start in small steps.

On Part 4 we will be talking about the use of WEAPONS of MASS DESTRUCTION haha to finally crush spams, hackers, crawlers, scrapers and sploggers.