There is currently a distributed denial of service attack (DDOS) by “competitors” against the women’s oil category, and the 3 new URLs we were in the middle of soft launching.
We have a long history of being attacked on every launch. We wish they had forgotten to do so, or even just grown up, but apparently not. Corrupt people and businesses don’t seem to change their stripes anymore than leopards.
I like to be a positive person, but some of these organizations and the people behind them moral fortitude of presidential candidates or online mafia “wannabes”. Playing fair is not what they do. Research & development is not what they do. Unfortunately, things like this are exactly what they do. A really cool industry in so many ways, but not always the easiest to participate in.
Distrubuted Denial of Service attacks simply overwhelm a website, or a part thereof. The idea is that many thousands of computers come and quickly reload pages of a site in order to suck up as many resources as possible. Slowing the website to a crawl, or even bringing it down. Denying access to legitimate users.
A DDOS is literally what the acronym says: “Denial of Service”. It is not penetration or hacking in the same way that occurred to Ashley Madison, or the consumer store Target. No data is exposed. It’s “only” a massive nuisance.
The site is technically safe to order from, if you can get through. (as some people have – thank you!)
Aside from the new women’s category and the products inside, no other categories or products seem to be affected. Other categories and products seem to be just about as zippy as ever, except for the ExperiMone category, which always tends to load a bit slow due to it’s size and complexity.
However, please be aware this is interfering with our staggered oil products launch this week, as we ourselves are unable to easily edit and update the products. What you see live right now is not everything that will be coming out. Nor, in some cases, are you seeing the final prices or copy.
Both Cloudflare and our site administrator’s are working on solutions.
The products themselves were originally not going to ship until Wednesday. However, they will now not also not be ready to ship until Thursday or Friday, due to the unwanted distraction of the DDOS attack. If the attack continues the way it has been, shipping may push this further out to next Monday or slightly beyond.
But fear not. We won’t let it continue to affect you or other clients. If they continue to block our customers, we’ll switch to a more DDOS resistant platform. We’re excited about the new products and the launch of our low scent stealth package (“Nude” in womens), and will do whatever is necessary to get them to you in a timely manner.
2016, almost 2017, is a very different year than previous ones in which we were on the receiving end of similar attacks. Better technology is more accessible than ever. Although many customers have grown attached to our classic looking systems, a denial of service attack may just be the impetus try out something newer and more robust.
Thank you for your understanding. I sincerley apologize if this causes any inconvenience.
Here are two articles for clarification:
Beware of DDoS Attacks on Ecommerce Sites | Practical Ecommerce
Although I feel the above two articles are more to the point for the average pheromone user, here are two videos explaining how DDOS attacks work for the more technical crowd:
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