I was very pleased with my post of last week, about how my friend Ed Rogoff could possibly self-publish a book about health called “Scary Diagnosis” better than it would be delivered to the public by a professional publisher.

I put it up. My subscribers got it by email. And then Google put a big bright red WARNING screen on my site saying “malware here, don’t go!”

So my team went into action. The first several scans executed by the experts at Oxford Mediaworks found no evidence of malware. But then the hosting outfit we employ under their direction, WP Engine, did a number of additional scans and, lo and behold, one found that Google was absolutely right. Somehow malware had creeped into my site. So we rooted it out.

It took Google a little over a day after being told the fix was done for them to withdraw the warning. Meanwhile, Oxford Mediaworks installed some additional layers of security. So now idealog.com is all clear and ready to receive visitors again.

I’m glad to welcome site visitors back and even more glad that this disruption isn’t to a site I depend on for a living. I still don’t know what happened or how, and why it would have evaded the many professional precautions we take to prevent it, and then require what we had to go through to actually find the details. These will remain mysteries of the Internet. But I do know that, thanks to the caution of my friends at Oxford Mediaworks, nobody’s subscriber data has been compromised. That mailing list is maintained on a system separate from the website.

Looking forward to receiving comments on the original post now.