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 awry. Did lesson learn 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 necessary 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.

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

Try version 4.0 beta of our Dynamic Update Client! This version is currently only available for Windows.

New features of Version 4.0 Include: 

• Windows 8 support
• Fixed run on startup/run as system service issues with older versions of windows.
• Ability to pick an internal network interface
• Easier to manage update interval (Plus/Enhanced), users
• Ability to create hosts from the client (Plus/Enhanced) users

We are committed to constant improvement and your feedback plays a large role in our updates and product development. Please contact us at duc@no-ip.com or leave your comment on this post to leave feedback. Download the new DUC today!

Last week, the social media giant Facebook suffered some unnecessary downtime that they are now blaming on an error that occurred when a change was made to their DNS infrastructure.

“Earlier today we made a change to our DNS infrastructure and that change resulted in some people being temporarily unable to reach the site. We detected and resolved the issue quickly, and we are now back to 100 percent. We apologize for any inconvenience.”

DNS is the core or backbone of the Internet, without it, the Internet would be a much different place; harder to navigate and browse. We talk all the time about how much downtime caused by mother nature, traffic overloads, and other issues can cost your website, but what about user error?

What can you do to safeguard your website against unnecessary downtime due to user error? Simple, out into practice this 5 tips for DNS management.

1. Only allow authorized and knowledgeable people access to DNS accounts
2. Triple check any updates and changes
3. Monitor your DNS. Make sure it is always running and that it is resolving to the proper address. We suggest using Nagios or Pingdom.
4. Don’t let your domain name expire on accident. Register it for a few years at a time, or let it auto-renew.
5. Make sure your DNS Servers are patched and if available, updated to their latest version to avoid vulnerabilities

Who manages your websites DNS? Have you ever had downtime due to errors in DNS updates? What do you do to safeguard your website against downtime?

Are you thinking of launching a new product, service, or have an awesome idea for a new invention or product? Don’t forget the most important part of the process: registering the domain. If you forget, it could cost you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars down the road.

Also, are you thinking of a name for your new product, service, idea? Don’t forget to see if the name is already a registered domain. Although it may be okay if you have to choose another TLD if the .com version isn’t available, it may confuse your customers, in the long run, costing you unnecessary time and money.

Check out this other helpful posts:

6 Tips for Choosing the Right Domain Name
Best Practices: The Top 4 Ways to Protect your Domain Name