Google often removes all hacked sites from its search results, and in rare cases where the website may still show up in results, it will be flagged with a message reading: “This website is hacked.”
So, how can you know that your site has been hacked? Read on to find out some of the telltale signs that your website has been hacked.
The Red Screen of Death
You need to be worried if web browsers warn people against visiting your site. Typically, web browsers are the first to alert site owners that their website has been compromised. The browser will bring up the red screen of death whenever someone tries to access your site indicating that the site contains malware.
Sometimes, your website may disappear, and only a white screen pops up when you try accessing it. If you get a white screen and your web designer is not in the process of modifying the site, it could be hacked.
Strange Content
You must have put in a lot of effort in creating great content for your website. The content closely follows your content marketing strategy to keep your target audience engaged.
If you notice some strange content on your site that you did not upload, it could be a sign of hacking. If you inspect this bizarre content closely, you will discover that it contains links to other sites that sell strange products such as Viagra.
You need to contact an experienced web security professional as soon as possible since your site is not only hacked but also co-opted in the hacker’s network.
Broken Code
Are you noticing a sudden increase in the number of errors relating to web form submissions on your site? Do your web pages load but lack most of their content? If your answer is yes, you should be worried and try to figure out how you will clean your hacked website as soon as possible. When hackers gain unauthorized access to your site, they can intentionally or unintentionally break the code leading to numerous errors.
Your Hosting Company Brings Down Your Website
Web hosting companies regularly scan their servers for any malicious code and will automatically disable hacked sites to make sure that the infection does not spread to other sites on that server.
Some of the reasons why your web hosting company may bring down your website include; malicious code found on your server, high CPU usage as a result of malicious code running on your site, or spam/phishing emails sent from your server.
Your Emails Are Sent to the SPAM Folder
In most cases, hackers use malware on hacked sites to send numerous spam emails to a huge number of people. Due to the spammy nature of these emails, email servers around the world may have blacklisted your server and its IP address.
As a result of this blacklisting, even legitimate emails that you may send to people will end up in their spam folder. Keep in mind that every email that ends up in the spam folder is a great loss of business and online reputation.