MT Chat – never say never

I always said I’d never run a discussion forum. And, as many of you who know me are aware – here I am, running MT Desk’s discussion forums at MT Chat.

Both sites have been plagued with malware and viruses in the last several weeks. To my extreme dismay, MT Desk had an attack site warning from Google plastered all over it.

I say dismay because I remember when MT Desk was first started and I have participated in the forums since their inception. From the very beginning, MT Desk was the premiere reference source for medical transcriptionists. Up to that point, Arleen, Annie, Barb Grow and several others had posted their very helpful updates at the Usenet group for medical transcriptionists, sci.med.transcription (otherwise known as SMT). A web site was a better way to disseminate information and MT Desk always had the latest reference information.

So here I am, doing something I said I’d never do.

My first priority has been to clean up the viruses and remove the attack site warning on MT Desk. As of this morning, MT Desk is free of viruses, malware and the Google attack site warning. There’s also nothing there except a notice that the site is being redesigned and the forums are open – it was the easiest and fastest way to deal with the problem. MT Chat has been something more of a challenge, for a variety of reasons. I have been working with a web hosting company I’m not familiar with and their control panel (IMO) leaves a lot to be desired. So – I muddle through that. I also muddle through the control panel for the forum software, somewhat more successfully (I hope!). My largest frustration, however, has been that a handful of people continue to tell me they are getting viruses and/or virus warnings, even after I cleaned up the files and tested both Firefox and Internet Explorer and got no warnings. The strangest of these was someone saying they were getting a warning in the header – but I deleted everything in the header earlier in the week! Argh!

I’m now in a completely different place in my life and my work and so I’m actually looking forward to the challenges presented by this opportunity. So… stay tuned!

Offshore MT security issues blaze into headlines