Let's talk about the worst case scenario ... being hacked. We spoke recently about whether or not you need to keep your website up to date. And something I didn't focus on was what can happen if you don't keep your website up to date. I try not to scare monger when it comes to clients and I try not to make you know the worst case scenario sound like a likely scenario because it really isn't. But it does happen. It just happened over the weekend to one of my clients. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the worst case scenario so that you know exactly why you need to do those updates.

How bad would it be for your business if not only did your website go down, but your emails started being blocked?

Pretty bad, right? Please prioritise updating your website, it is your first line of defence and very necessary.

Links to things mentioned in this podcast:

• Get the free Website Care Plan guide to get information about how to update your website ... https://www.1daywebs.com/website-care-plan/
• Sign-up for a Website Care Plan here ... https://www.1daywebs.com/website-care-plan-start/

Hi, this is Chantal from one day webs. And this is your shamelessly quick check podcast. Let's talk about the worst case scenario - being hacked. We spoke recently about whether or not you need to keep your website up to date. And something I didn't focus on was what can happen if you don't keep your website up to date. I try not to scare monger when it comes to clients and I try not to make the worst case scenario sound like a likely scenario because it really isn't. But it does happen. It just happened over the weekend to one of my clients. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the worst case scenario so that you know exactly why you need to do those updates. Why you need to prioritize that. And if you don't have the time or the skill to prioritize it, why you need to outsource it. So this is a a scenario, I wouldn't say it's a likely scenario. Again, it's not something that's guaranteed to happen if you don't keep your website up to date. I'm not here to scare monger you. But it is a possible outcome. So worst case scenario, you haven't been keeping your website up to date, and what happens, you get hacked. You may not even know you've been hacked until it happens a few weeks later. And what can happen is your website can go down or it can start redirecting to some random website selling some sort of medical whatever. Basically, it can just do some really undesirable things. Now imagine if you've got a membership site, you've got people logging into your website, and they can't access the content that they're paying you for. This is an awful, awful outcome. This is what happened to one of my clients this weekend. So you really, really need to keep your website up to date. And most especially if you have an e commerce store or you have a membership website, or you have a website, you're blogging on often.

What can happen if your website is hacked? Well, you can lose it. If it's a bad enough hack and it can't be cleaned. You can lose your website - all those months, weeks years of work can go away. If your hack can’t be cleaned. That would be an awful outcome. What else can go wrong? Your domain can be blacklisted because Google pics up that there are all sorts of untoward malware, etc. on your website, and you get blacklisted. They are loads and loads of blacklisting companies and one by one, they add your website to it. Okay, so your website goes down because it's blacklisted. What's the big deal? Well, this affects your email as well, because now your whole domain is blacklisted. So suddenly you emails on going through to clients, becau