Opinion : Spiders, Crawlers and Web Bots target Vinton Today

This week has been crazy! With the schedule picking up, I am getting a reminder of just how busy life can be when things are normal!

Then someone had the great idea that THIS would be the perfect time to launch a new website. Many of you have been emailing, or calling, or texting concerning the site, wondering were we were, did we know we were down, where's my email and so I think it would just be easier to pass along an update from our tech guy. 

Apparently a couple of weeks ago, unbeknownst to us, a new group of "bots" have located our website. When I read "bots" for some reason I'm picturing a swarm of roaches or ants. See there's another reason I love my tech guy. He knows how to speak English and explain what's going on. 

Before you all saw the new site, we had it parked at another web address while we played with it, tested it and made sure it was ready to roll out. It was running smoothly, we had no issues so we drove it off the showroom and BAM!

A combination of the huge traffic that the site gets, as well as all of these "bad guy bots" that are targeting the website have been crashing it. Like a bunch of pesky mosquitos, once you swat one and kill it, 10 more pop up. I think this is a first for our site, at least with this design. Apparently, the folks that work with us to deliver the information to you, were aware of the problem and have been swatting these bots down as fast as they can weeding out who our real readers are and who is trying to cripple us.

Apparently "bots" try to gain information from websites, like banking information, passwords, or any other personal information. In the past, we've seen these geniuses coming at us in large numbers from India, Russia and numerous other countries, but those first two were always seemed to have the largest number of basement dwellers. I'm not sure if this is still the case, but it is probably so.

After a quick google of "bots" apparently they try to infiltrate websites and post fake warnings trying to get you to give them your information. If you EVER log into Vinton Today and get a message like that, know it's some loser trying to trick you into giving them your bank information and I was going to jokingly say, and your firstborn, but as creepy as this world is, I wouldn't doubt that either.

I know, I know, first-world problems. 

Originally, we thought the issues were the normal growing pains of a website. It's always a guessing game when you launch a new site design. You have to take a guess at figuring how much storage we need for the content and how much bandwidth we need for traffic, so while that might be going on a little bit, that's normal for this site. It usually takes a few weeks to figure out so we weren't too panicked, we've done this before. 

So our apologies for the glitches that are happening, but I wanted to tell you that there really are people living in mama's basement with nothing better to do than to try to infiltrate and crash websites. The rest of us are normal folks. We go to work, we take care of our families and for the most part, we're good people.

While you read and enjoy the site, the tech guy is putting a huge order in to Amazon for a few cases of Raid to wipe these nasty pests out! 

So read, enjoy, and if we disappear for a few hours, say a prayer for our tech guy and his team as they squish these rodent bots.