Eric Jones, hot sexy ladies and DoSsing Russians: keep calm & carry on

We regularly get the question: Who is Eric Jones? And whether we can block him to stop him from spamming contact forms. Unfortunately, Eric Jones is an almost unstoppable spammer. A kind of stubborn weed that rears its head everywhere, no matter what you do. Even the reCAPTCHA, a security measure for your contact forms that asks you to prove that you are not a bot, Eric manages to dodge. Our tip: ignore Eric and just throw away his email. Do not click on his links and do not confuse him for an important major donor.

The same goes for the sexy ladies who are looking for company. These are things you can worry about, but you don't have to. They are examples of evils on the internet that don't really do any harm. If you are curious about what happens when you do talk to spammers, check out this video.

Unfortunately, we do have to worry about some things. Hacking Russians for example. We are prepared for that as best we can.

Kentaa and security
Security is an important theme within our product development. And even if they aren't the "sexy" updates that make our customers cheer, they are essential in addition to the cool new features we add to our online fundraising platforms. This includes things like keeping our servers and third-party components up-to-date. But also restricting permissions, using two-factor authentication, implementing alarm bells for bugs or unexpected events… all measures that keep our platforms safe for our customers and their visitors.

You don't dismiss a cyber attack as easily as Eric Jones and his spam messages. Such attacks aim to bring down servers or businesses. Think of ransomware, in which a system is 'held hostage' and the attackers demand a ransom or a (D)DoS attack in which a system is overloaded. The Chamber of Commerce gives you six good tips to protect yourself against ramsomware.

In a recent DoS attack, our own database server was overloaded. A Russian hacker made more than 100,000 fake donations in a short period of time, causing important tasks of the Kentaa platform (such as sending emails and updating counters) to be temporarily queued. No customer donations or data were lost, but why were the Russians after us… Who knows?

A DoS attack can happen to anyone. You can prepare for it as best you can, but you can never be completely ahead of it. When our platform was attacked, we were immediately notified, and our development team took action, blocking the IP address of the Russian and solving the problem.

At the same time, companies can also learn from such attacks. At Kentaa, we also implemented additional security measures and accelerated processes to prevent server congestion and to detect attacks even faster. This way we are better prepared should it happen again.

What can you do yourself?
Pay attention. If you have a Kentaa platform: for an extra layer of security, enable two-factor authentication on your administrator account in your profile. Users (eg fundraisers) can also do this. And if you see something that you don't trust on your platform, report it as soon as possible.

Furthermore… keep calm & carry on.