Crap - I missed this since I am currently just infrequently here!
This is a problem, and what happened to you I've seen happening several times before. I had warned people about this many years ago. Exactly like yours, a female artist friend had her site turn into a Chinese Porn site as well. Not the only one, it seems they like to hijack artists sites.
My own websites (I have several) are hosted on Weebly, and they would send me warnings before something like this happens, because just recently it happened to me that I had a outdated credit card on there. But my payment options with that host include PayPal, so to forestall any such problems, I now switched it to PayPal, which is connected to two of my bank accounts (and one credit card), so no expiry problems there. I always have money in there (plus OD protection, just in case). There is no way, if set up properly, that you could miss a payment with PayPal. It goes down the list from your preferred option to next if the first one doesn't work, though I would not be too thrilled if it came out of the credit card because of the horrendous interest rates if you don't pay it off.
Btw, PayPal will also let you know if a credit card you listed with them has expired.
On top of all that, I have passwords on my PayPal accounts (I got 2 separate ones) that were generated by my Norton Security, and the estimate it would take several million years to crack them. Of course if you have passwords like that, you got to keep them in a safe, since they are impossible to remember (much like your keys here on Hive).
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I will be more careful from now on and maybe keep an eye open for if the .com one comes back up for buying through the usual channels. I am sure it costs them something to keep it and when they see that I am not willing to buy they will probably let it go. I don't mind playing the long game.
I do see that I lack an SSL cert. Of course that is an optional extra that I need to purchase. I thought it came free before.
Thanks for the reply.
I publish my websites on Weebly, got a pro account, so the SSL comes with it for free (but you actually must enable it, not automatic). I think it is free on Wix also, but not sure.
btw - you ought to get SSL for your website http://fleetingsculpture.ie/ - it is a standard these days. Search engines would downrate a site without a security certificate.