Okay, I need some serious advice...

[Ecumenist]

about building was FUBAR and although I insisted on using a template for the second, the fucker started to question me about everything I wanted him to do. I was paying this son of a bitch cash because he gets disability and I did this so that it didn't mess up that.

I finally had to fire the bastard on the 15th of December after I found myself being questioned about why I incorporated in another state. I viewed the second site which was just about completed early morning, around 2 am on the 16th. I sent him a formal letter later that morning, wishing his ass well around 9 am. The only two people who had the passwords were this fucker and me. I asked him to return everything, passwords etc, for the new COMPETENT designer.

She was given the passwords and usernames later on that evening, (which is very important to note). She started work, which I when I found out how incompetent he was. I will have to have the first site COMPLETELY rebuilt FROM SCRATCH.... the second site was okay so far as I knew. Fast forward to today. I finally got my SSL certificate and asked my new web designer when I would go live. She told me I already was. when I went to look at it, EVERYTHING but the actual shopping cart, ie, store with the items was gone. She didn't realise that it was missing and I didn't either UNTIL today. She did a search and told me that it looked like it had been deleted.

I went to look at the stats for December and the one IP address that appeared most on the site for that month, which would have been him, made one last visit on December 16th 2009 @ 1:42 pm! That's approximately 4 hours after I sent him the letter and asked him for all the passwords. Looking back, I should have changed my passwords immediately but as stupid as this might sound, I didn't think I had to and it never crossed my mind in the whirl of the holiday preparations. My husband works in IT area of a very well known HUGE telecom. He did a preliminary search on that particular IP and found that it resolves to a DSL CO in the area that serves his neighborhood.

What should I do, beyond the obvious and is there any way to trace that IP to his actual physical address?

[madokie]

1. I don't have any answers for you

but I do have a kick and a rec to help get this out there.
Good luck

[Ecumenist]

2. thank you Madokie....

:hug:

[ProdigalJunkMail]

3. well, you have a criminal act that has been committed

in the destruction or theft of the data for the sites. The only way to track a physical address would be to go through his ISP and find the MAC address associated to the IP (that of his DSL/cable modem). I don't know what would be involved in obtaining that information outside of a warrant which would mean going to the police.

Sorry for your troubles. I hope you find a way at the very least to recover the data...

sP

[ShamelessHussy]

4. 2 things to consider: 1. try to recover your data from backup 2. report to the police

that your business site was hacked. (they can point you to right authorities)

the other thing is that even though you learnt it the hard way (don't we all), you now have 2 very important lessons in running a business online that won't be forgotten or taken lightly going forward..

1. backup
2. security

As a web pro, I also recommend considering amazon's web services (AWS - EC2, EBS, etc) as they are very cheap considering the enterprise class of services provided... however you need an expert to help you get started, with them as it is mostly DIY.

best wishes :toast:

[Ecumenist]

5. Thank you Shameless For the valuable information.

Unfortuantely, because of the time that had passed by the time that I found out, the logs were gone and because he more than likely, purposely deleted it, there were no backups. The logs don't back that far, as well as the raw access logs, aren't available, according to them. However, I still have the suspicious IP and I have filed a police report as well as contacted a cyber detective who seems to feel that it is a STRONG case.

Thanks for everything and a belated welcome to DU!! Right glad tameetcha!! :hi: