A few weeks ago we attended ISC East in New York City. It was a great experience for us as first time attendees of the trade show and we garnered some great insight into the security world. We spent the majority of the trade show at our booth discussing our current product offerings and launching our newest
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Tis the Season for online shopping and ECommerce sites are preparing for the onslaught of heavy web traffic. So how do you make sure your website doesn’t experience slow upload speeds, downtime or loss of customers? It’s simple! Follow these three holiday rules to ensure you are ready for whatever happens this year! Beware of
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At No-IP, our biggest concern has always been providing the best, most reliable service possible. Over the years we have worked hard to mitigate the numerous risks posed by malicious actors on the internet, from collocating multiple DNS nodes throughout the world to purchasing advanced server technology to guard against threats. We work hard to
Continue ReadingA message from our CEO
As you certainly know by now, on Monday control of our most popular domain names were seized. As a result, millions of hostnames have gone dark and millions of our users have been put out of service.
We have been throwing everything we have at getting you back online with the least possible delay. For legal reasons, we have been restricted from reaching out to you, but we simply cannot stay quiet any longer. We are very close to a resolution and we will update you with more information as soon as we can.
We hear your overwhelming support on social media and would like you to know that we share your frustration. Thank you so much for your support! #FreeNoIP
Dan Durrer
Owner and CEO
Why is this happening?
You can also read our formal response on our blog to comment and share on Facebook and Twitter.
If you do not want to wait for the domains to come back online, you can use this solution to resolve the issues. You can create a new hostname on a domain that has not been seized by Microsoft. The following domains are free and working:
ddns.net
webhop.me
serveminecraft.net
ddnsking.com
onthewifi.com
To create a new hostname, login to your No-IP account and click on the Hosts/Redirects tab. Click “Add a Host”. Type in your hostname and choose one of the working domains.
Have any questions or comments? Please do not hesitate to open a Support Ticket or give us a call at 775.853.1883, but please understand that we are under heavy call/ticket volume and it may take more time than usual to get back to you.
We want to update all our loyal customers about the service outages caused by the Microsoft takedown yesterday. No-IP and Microsoft have reached a settlement, and Microsoft will issue a statement acknowledging its errors. Earlier today, Microsoft filed papers in the Nevada case asking the judge to eliminate the injunction as to No-IP and return the hijacked domains to No-IP’s control. We expect that by tomorrow, No-IP’s operations will begin returning to normal. Other provisions of the settlement are confidential, but we can say that we are very pleased and consider ourselves fully vindicated.
There will be no changes in the operation of No-IP.
We were shocked that Microsoft did not contact No-IP to discuss its malware concerns prior to creating such havoc for innocent users. No-IP has a long history of proactively working with other companies when cases of alleged malicious activity have been reported to us. Unfortunately, Microsoft never contacted us or asked us to block any of these subdomains, even though we have an open line of communication with Microsoft corporate executives.
If you do not want to wait for the domains to come back online, you can use this solution to resolve the issues. You can create a new hostname on a domain that has not been seized by Microsoft. The following domains are free and working:
ddns.net
webhop.me
serveminecraft.net
ddnsking.com
onthewifi.com
To create a new hostname, login to your No-IP account and click on the Hosts/Redirects tab, click “Add a Host”. Type in your hostname and choose one of the working domains.
Because of this incident we have put a preventative measure in place that will allow hosts to failover to new domains, if a domain were ever to be seized from our control again.
Have any questions or comments? Please do not hesitate to open a Support Ticket or give us a call at 775.853.1883, but please understand that we are under heavy call/ticket volume and it may take more time than usual to get back to you
We want to update all our loyal customers about the service outages that many of you are experiencing today. It is not a technical issue. This morning, Microsoft served a federal court order and seized 22 of our most commonly used domains because they claimed that some of the subdomains have been abused by creators of malware. We were very surprised by this. We have a long history of proactively working with other companies when cases of alleged malicious activity have been reported to us. Unfortunately, Microsoft never contacted us or asked us to block any subdomains, even though we have an open line of communication with Microsoft corporate executives.
We have been in contact with Microsoft today. They claim that their intent is to only filter out the known bad hostnames in each seized domain, while continuing to allow the good hostnames to resolve. However, this is not happening. Apparently, the Microsoft infrastructure is not able to handle the billions of queries from our customers. Millions of innocent users are experiencing outages to their services because of Microsoft’s attempt to remediate hostnames associated with a few bad actors.
Had Microsoft contacted us, we could and would have taken immediate action. Microsoft now claims that it just wants to get us to clean up our act, but its draconian actions have affected millions of innocent Internet users.
Vitalwerks and No-IP have a very strict abuse policy. Our abuse team is constantly working to keep the No-IP system domains free of spam and malicious activity. We use sophisticated filters and we scan our network daily for signs of malicious activity. Even with such precautions, our free dynamic DNS service does occasionally fall prey to cyber scammers, spammers, and malware distributors. But this heavy-handed action by Microsoft benefits no one. We will do our best to resolve this problem quickly.
The list of domains that were affected by this takedown are the following:
3utilities.com
bounceme.net
hopto.org
myftp.biz
myftp.org
myvnc.com
noip.me
no-ip.biz
no-ip.info
no-ip.org
redirectme.net
servebeer.com
serveblog.net
servecounterstrike.com
serveftp.com
servegame.com
servehalflife.com
servehttp.com
servemp3.com
servepics.com
servequake.com
sytes.net
zapto.org
About No-IP
For over 14 years, No-IP has been offering the best and most affordable Dynamic and Managed DNS solutions. Our robust Anycast Network with points of presence in 18 different worldclass facilities across the globe guarantees our 100% Uptime, because let’s face it, there are no upsides to downtime. NoIP is the preferred choice for users on the Internet for dynamic DNS compared to smaller, less reliable alternatives. Our DNS Experts will ensure that your website is fast, reliable and always available.
Contact
Natalie Goguen
Marketing Manager
5905 South Virginia Street, Suite 200
Reno, NV 89502
press@no-ip.com
Support requests will not be answered via email. Please open a support ticket if you need assistance.
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You have probably heard the discussions surrounding the end of Net Neutrality and the Internet as we know it.
What is Net Neutrality? Net Neutrality, according to Wikipedia, is defined as “the principle that Internet service providers and governments should treat all data on the Internet equally, not discriminating or charging differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.”
This allows all users on the Internet the ability to find and search for all content that they wish (as long as it’s legal).
So, what does the proposed end of Net Neutrality mean?
Internet Service Providers are arguing that in order for them to grow and expand access to the Internet, they should be able to charge more to certain content providers. Particularly ones that are a heavy burden on their networks, i.e. Netflix, Hulu, etc. This means that there would be a fast lane, slow lane and maybe even a no lane. If a site wants their content to get to users, it would have to be in the fast lane, meaning they would have to pay extra for it to get into the fast lane, or risk it being filtered out in the slow lane, or even the no lane.
Consider how ridiculous it would be if other markets operated the way the FCC is proposing. Take water for instance, you pay the water company a certain amount of money for water. Once you pay and it’s in your house, you can do with it what you wish. The water company doesn’t get to decide that instead of building more water processing plants, it will lowers the water pressure in your house, and then makes you pay for an upgraded service to get full water pressure.
Would that make any sense? Water don’t work this way, and neither should the Internet.
This type of censorship by ISPs wouldn’t help them expand access to the Internet, it would greatly reduce it. In reality, the ISP’s will just gain the power to favor certain content and limit other content. This means that even though they will be building bigger and better infrastructure for the Internet, only some sites will benefit from it. An Internet that treats data equally is what we need always and forever.
Want it broken down in a very easy way to understand? Check out this video…
At No-IP, we have always been a strong advocate for an open and free Internet. We feel that putting an end to Net Neutrality would hurt consumers and Internet innovation. We are against the End of Net Neutrality.
What can you do to help the fight?
1. Sign this White House Petition before May 15th to make it clear that you will not accept Fast Lanes, Slow Lanes and No lanes.
2. Watch the FCC’s proposed rules that will be aired to the public on May 15th to see if they will consider the “reclassification”. Reclassification of ISPs as “telecommunications services,” would be one way to preserve the open internet that we have all loved and enjoyed for the last 20 years. Without reclassification, the FCC can no longer protect the us against the ISPs who seek to restructure and ruin the Internet that we have grown to love.
You can also check out this very interesting post about allowing the Internet to “demo” the slow lane to see what it would really be like.
A recent vulnerability on the EA Games website that was discovered by the internet security firm Netcraft, has left many users in shock.
Continue ReadingThere has been major buzz concerning the recent leak that the United States government has been spying on pretty much everyone. The top tech companies are denying involvement, but the damage has already been done.
An excerpt from a recent article on Computer World
Im not sure about you, but I use Google Reader a lot. Back in March, Google announced that Google Reader will be discontinued on July 1, 2013. Although it seems to have a large user base, it isn’t large enough for Google to keep developing and supporting it.