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NOTICE: What Happened, How It Was Resolved and Moving Forward


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www.soapoperanetwork.com

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Saturday, April 13, 2019

 

 

Dear Readers,

 

Anyone who has frequently visited or has become a registered member of this website/message board at any point in its nearly 20-year existence will know that I hate the dreaded "offline" situations that have plagued this place. What you may not have known is that unlike some of the other websites/message boards out there covering soaps for as long as we've been online, or even recently...I have singlehandedly been this site's primary writer, editor, technician, coder, graphics designer, publicist, organizer, interviewer, and a whole list of other job titles that would generally make up the entire workforce of a Fortune 500 company.

 

While you could rightfully ask why I haven't hired people to take control of any of the aforementioned areas to better grow this site to become what I've always dreamed it to become, there's just no easy answer to that question. So I can't provide you with one, at least not right now. Not at this moment. That's not what this post is about.

 

Over the last 48 hours, the Soap Opera Network website and SON Community message boards were abruptly taken offline and remained offline for the entire duration in order to address an issue that had impacted an estimated 160,000 other websites on the world wide web. We just happened to be one of those lucky thousands.

 

Due to a security breach in a third-party provider's plugin, which was used on the SON website for a long time without issue,  our site was re-directing visitors to phishing sites that could have posed harm should someone click on any of the links it was providing. This matter began just before midnight eastern time on Thursday, April 11, 2019. Almost as soon as the issue began impacting the site, I was working diligently with our hosting provider to figure out what was causing this problem and quickly remove the issue. Unfortunately, while our host was very generous with some of the assistance they could provide, considering their policy on certain matters, I was left to fix the issue on my own.

 

While it took nearly two days to correct, a time frame that I wish was a lot smaller...I am happy to report that the problem has been fixed and all traces of it have been cleaned out of our systems. I have also passed on evidence of what occurred to the appropriate authorities to hopefully help prevent other website owners and developers from going through what we went through. Additionally, I have implemented additional security precautions that will work in tandem with our previous security monitors to help address any future matters and tackle them immediately.

 

Although the SON Community is on its own subdomain and should not have been impacted by the above issue, there was an issue of 404 error notifications which indicated pages not being found when clicking on any active links. This issue is no longer occurring after fixing the core problem.

 

I can not tell you enough how sorry I am that this happened. I only ask that you understand the issue, know that it was resolved and that further precautions have been put in place to prevent a future occurrence.

 

Thank you for listening and happy posting on the SON Community!

 

Sincerely,

 

 

Errol Lewis

Editor-in-Chief, Soap Opera Network

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I appreciate everyone's kind words. It means a lot to me, and is the reason this place remains online despite so many other places either closing their doors or turning their backs on the genre because "it's dead."

 

We all know that's not true.

 

Like everything else, we transition with the times and I'm happy that no matter if it's the good times, the bad times, or the in-between times, you all have stuck around and helped keep SON thriving. There may be imitators. There may be haters. But they'll never take away what makes this place special. You.

 

Thank you from the bottom of my heart!

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