If you have been watching the news the past few days you’ve probably heard about something about ‘Heartbleed’.

Heartbleed is not a ‘virus’ but rather a vulnerability found in the code of sites that use SSL Certificates to encrypt web pages. If that term does not ring any bells, it probably does not affect you as a site owner. However, since almost everyone uses sites that do use SSL, this problem affects almost everyone who uses the Internet in any way, other via computer, phone or other device.

An SSL Certificate is primarily used by sites that offer e-commerce (including many WebSAFE and Ollie sites), but it is increasingly being used by many popular sites (such as Facebook and Google) to provide encryption for all communications on the site.

We want you to know that if you are using any e-commerce product we offer, we have already checked your site for vulnerability and contacted you if we have detected that your hosting service has corrected this issue. Put another way: if you have not heard from us, your site is currently not vulnerable.

That said, we recommend that all site owners who have an SSL Certificate, whether currently vulnerable or not, change their passwords immediately.

Also, as a user of the Internet, we also strongly recommend that everyone (and we do mean everyone) change all their key personal passwords (on-line banking, etc.) immediately. There is no way to know if or when your accounts have been compromised. We realise that may seem extreme, but this is a serious vulnerability. It is like a peep hole into potentially every secure site and there is currently no way to know who has been peeking so the best policy is to be proactive.

As always, if you have questions or further concerns, please contact us.