We recently had a user ask us if an email forward is the same as an email alias, so are they? Well no, but they are similar.

An email alias goes to another email address that is in the same domain.

An example of this would be emails that are sent to yourname@example.com, could also go to yourname-something@example.com. You could give an email like this out if you want to easily filter email, filter email lists you have signed up for, or other purposes.

yourname-something@example.com is an alias of yourname@example.com

An email forward is when you setup email from one domain to forward to another domain. So, if you have a Gmail, Yahoo, or other free mail account, you could have those emails forwarded to your work email, or an email on a domain you own. This would essentially consolidate all of your email accounts into one, eliminating the need to check numerous accounts a day.

yourname@gmail.com could forward to yourname@yourdomain.com

We offer both services with our POP3/IMAP service. Starting at only $9.95 a year, you can easily setup email for your very own domain name.

Do you have email aliases or forwards setup? How do you use them? Do you find them helpful? Let us know in the comments and share this if you enjoyed it.

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We are a connected society, email, cloud, photo sites, social media, everything we do seems to be on the internet these days. So, what happens when all of your important data is online in the “cloud” and one of those services goes down? I myself, rely heavily on Google. Google Docs, Gmail, Youtube, Picasa, Blogger, etc, if something were to happen to my account, say someone hacked into it and sent a bunch of spam emails or something, they could easily shut down access to all of my accounts, in one fell swoop. 

What can you do to safeguard yourself and your accounts against this though?

1. Backup your important online data once a week. If it’s important to you, back it up! Considering installing a NAS storage device on your home network for easy backups, wirelessly. Having two copies is even better in case something happens to the first copy.

2. Make sure your passwords and security questions are strong.

3. Diversify your cloud solution. If you rely heavily on one solution and it goes down, your kind of screwed. Be sure to note who your provider is using for backups too, most rely on a major provider that seems to have issues from time to time…

4. Backup your emails. You can back them up using Thunderbird, iMail, or any other mail application.

5. Finally, test your backups by trying to restore a file. This will let you know how easy (or hard) it will be to recover a file. It will also ensure that you have everything set up properly.

Have you ever lost important documents or accounts online? What did you do to resolve the situation? Do you currently have a data backup solution? What is it? Leave your comments below and as always, be sure to share this if you liked it!

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Last week, our web developer learned a hard lesson, 3 times. He was away on vacation, and one of our favorite things to do at No-IP is to play pranks on our fellow co-workers when they are out of the office for an extended period of time. We brainstormed ideas and finally decided to mess with his computer a bit. The only issue

was that his computer was locked and we didn’t have the password, until we looked at his password hint and realized it was the actual password. UH REALLY?! Anyways, we took it easy on him and decided to only update his DNS host, so when he tried to visit Reddit, it went to Digg, and when he tried to go to Google, it went to Bing. He came back from vacation and quickly realized something was arry. Lesson learned right? WRONG.

Later that day, we decided to move all of the developers into the conference room for a few days so they could easily discuss and hash away at a big project. Jokes had been made about password security and network security, and everyone thought that he would wisen up and make the nessecery changes. Turns out, he didn’t. His password was still the same one that we had hacked the day before. All jokes aside, we told him it was very important to choose a strong password and to keep it to himself.

He headed home for the night and we decided to see if we could hack his password again. After he assured us all that quote “we would never guess it”. We checked out his password hint and our brains instantly started turning. 10 minutes later, we had hacked his password. It was the same exact one, with a more subtle hint. We all stood in shock as we realized that we had just hacked his computer for the 3rd time and that he was too lazy to change his password!

The next day he changed his password and admits that it was stupid to be so blase about it. Strong passwords are very important to network security, online account security and so much more! We haven’t tried to hack his computer lately, but hopefully he has learned his lesson. What are your tips for creating strong passwords? Check out these 10 tips for choosing strong passwords.

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What was the most expensive domain name sold in 2012? What was it and when was it sold? 

The answer was investing.com and it sold for 2.45 million dollars on December 14, 2012. Correction: the answer is actually giftcard.com sold in October 2012 for $4 million.

1. Dawn Herrick
2. William Winter
3. Dennis Lau

The following are also winners due to our incorrect answer…

1. Ryan
2. Thomas
3. Epi Camacho

Congrats!

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The question can be found by finding the txt record of christmas.no-ip.com and leaving the answer to the question in the following form!

Need a bit of help finding the Text Record? Check out this Dig Tutorial or Options Can Ya Dig It?

The question was “The real St. Nicholas was born in what modern-day country?” and the answer was “Turkey”

Congratulations to our winners!

1. Robert B.
2. Grant W.
3. Rob F.
4. Anthony P.
5. Ryan

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