Over the festive period I’ve seen a dramatic increase in the number of attempts to hack into my websites.

How do I know this?

Because I have a plugin called Wordfence installed on all of my Wordpress websites which blocks these malicious scumbags and sends me a notification (like the one in the image above) every time.

I've seen over 1000 of these messages some days....

So if you have Wordpress websites I highly recommend you instal at least the basic free version of Wordfence ASAP.

Also - seriously do take a little time to create complicated passwords for all your online stuff.

Most of the “blunt force” hacking attempts that are on the increase are done by software which tries simple and obvious passwords first. 

So don’t use passwords like: Admin, your website's name, or anything really obvious. 

You can always use a secure password storing app such as Roboform to keep all of your complicated and hard to remember passwords so that you only need to remember one  

Hackers do what they do for various reasons - none of them good so just take a few simple precautions to thwart their dastardly deeds! 

Cheers!