A recent batch of malware has been targeted at users of the Skype VOIP phone service. Apparently the malware made use of a No-IP hostname (nsdf.no-ip.biz). No-IP received notification of this early on the 18th and promptly disabled the account and DNS host of the user that developed the malware. All logs related to this users account have been preserved and will be handed over to law enforcement for prosecution. More information regarding this Skype virus can be read at The Register and over at F-Secure and Symantec.

Please note that you should never click on suspicious links or run executables (.exe files) from unknown sources. Also, please be sure to update your virus scanning software frequently and run it often.

Earlier today ordb.org announced that it is discontinuing the Open Relay Database. The maintainers have moved on noting that blocking open relays just isn’t what it used to be. For No-IP Anti-spam Policies, this was a default list for the Aggressive, Strong, and Moderate presets. It has been removed from these as well as domains that had it as a customized selection. We are sorry to see ORDB go, but we look forward to what new enterprises their loosed time shall beget.

The success of the Anti-spam Policies addition has been staggering. Spam and spam scores are down an almost inconceivable amount. Customer’s inboxes are cleaner and so are ours! Reflector and Backup MX users should see better relay times when they have been offline for awhile due to the smaller queues (70% smaller!). We are currently blocking over one MEEHLLIAHN spam messages per day on mail1.no-ip.com alone, and that doesn’t even include what is filtered with greylisting. This has been a win for everyone, so thanks for putting up with our dust during the transition!

As time goes on we’ll be adding more options to the policies list. To get the ball rolling we’ve added the NJABL. This is an excellent list that is used in part by the Spamhaus XBL. It provides further protection with over 115MB of IP addresses! It is now part of the default for Aggressive and Strong presets. And for those pop3 users who do not enable NJABL, we’ve added custom spam scoring to this new list. The added score should help flag any spam that makes it through the Anti-spam Policies system and aids your local filters in keeping the bad messages out of your way. So read about the NJABL and start using it!

Spam is up, big time. Market reporters say spam has increased as much as 59% in the past two months and 120% from last year. We’ve noticed and we are sure you have too. So we put our heads together and came up with a solution to protect all of our email services, from Backup MX to POP3, included at no extra charge. It’s called Anti-spam Policies and this is how it works.

Log into No-IP.com and click on Mail in the left-hand navigation. Then click Modify for your domain, followed by Anti-spam Policies. You will be presented with a grid of policies on the left and presets across the top. To start, everyone has the “Minimal” setting, equivalent to our previous protection. This includes the No-IP.com custom blacklist, SpamCop, sender validation, and now greylisting(!). Other policies include the venerable Spamhaus.org SBL-XBL, SORBS, dsbl, ORDB and the Bogus MX list from RFC-Ignorant.org.

Probably the most exciting addition is greylisting. Basically, greylisting perform tests to make sure the message is coming from a real mail server and not an infected machine or spam operation. You can read more about greylisting in our guides. Currently, greylisting is in a training mode. On December 4th we will turn it on for all policies that use it.

We recommend you step up your protection to “Moderate.” I personally have been using the “Moderate” setting for three weeks on my account and have seen my amount of spam cut by 75%. Previously I was receiving about 65 spam emails per day. Now I get around 15 per day. And I haven’t had a single complaint from my friends, family, or business associates! When greylisting goes full-bore, I expect to have days where not a single spam message reaches my inbox.

And remember, this is for ALL email services, Forwarding and POP3, Reflector and Backup MX. So take a look, even if you don’t plan on changing anything. Someday you may need to!

Around 10:00 AM PST, No-IP we reached 4 million signups.  That means that we have had one million additional new users join our site in the last ten months.  We attribute this growth to the ever demanding need for Dynamic DNS services that we provide.  In the last year we have made improvements to our site and added support for multiple languages.

This tremendous growth wouldn’t be possible without the support of our loyal customers who recommend us to their co-workers, friends, and family: Thanks for making us 4 million strong!

Oh and don’t forget our referral program! Refer three friends to our paid services and get a free year of Managed DNS.

Today No-IP was officially accredited by the Internet Corporation For Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN). Our official ICANN registrar name is “Vitalwerks Internet Solutions, LLC DBA No-IP”.

What does this mean? Currently, No-IP resells domain registrations through SRSPlus. Now that we have our ICANN accreditation we have the ability to directly sell domains through the various registries such as .com,.net, and .org.

Why does it matter? Being able to interface directly with the registries means we will have more control over the domain registration process. There will be less delay in processing inbound zone transfers, faster lookups while searching for available domains, and overall a better end-user experience from support to managing your domains.

When is this going to happen? We anticipate development to begin on the new registry system within the next month. If all goes as planned No-IP will begin using its own registrar API in the first part of 2007. As we progress we will keep everyone posted as to where we are in the process.

How will this affect my service? This change will be pretty much transparent. Once implemented all new domain registrations and transfers will go through the new No-IP registrar system. Existing domain names will be transferred over from SRSPlus to No-IP when they are up for renewal. This process will be detailed in an email when you renew your domain name.

This is a big step for No-IP and we look forward to being your one stop shop for managing your domain name.

The FAQ is now available in Portuguese!

We hope that this will help our Portuguese speaking customers receive a higher level or support and understanding of our services. We will continue to add support for other languages to our FAQ and to the rest of site in the near future.

Well, until now, you weren’t able to get that information from our site so if something changed and you needed to change it back we couldn’t provide that information in your management interface. Of course since I’m writing about it, something must have happened 😉

Starting June 8th and going forward, you can access up to 90 days of historical IP address information for a hostname from within your Plus Managed DNS account. Whether those updates were submitted by one of our software clients or through the management interface on the website, you can see them now.

In order to look at the update history for a hostname, start by logging into your account then click to modify a host under a Plus domain. Next to the IP Address field there is now a link to “Update History”. Clicking that shows all the updates that were submitted either by the update client or via the website in the last 90 days.

This service upgrade is only available as part of our No-IP Plus Managed DNS service at this time.

SPAM is no fun for anyone and we at No-IP are on the frontlines of the battle day in and day out. We filter or discard almost 5,000,000 (that’s five MILLION with an M) unsolicited or SPAM emails daily. 5,000,000 a day, every day.What does this mean to you? Why funny you should ask…

You can take advantage of our hard work and drastically reduce the amount of unwanted email in your inbox by using one of our filtered mail services. Each of our inbound Managed Mail offerings includes SPAM and virus filtering.

Our complete managed solution, POP3 Mail, is for you if you don’t want the hassle of running your own server. Incoming mail can be read with a standard Internet mail reader such as Outlook Express, Netscape Mail or Eudora. You can also use No-IP’s webmail service, in which case you need no mail client at all, just a browser. No-IP POP3 mail offers UNLIMITED email accounts, a “catchall” account, extensive anti-spam options, and virus protection. Unlike some lo-budget email services, No-IP does NOT attach advertising to your mail.

No-IP’s Mail Reflector service allows you to run your own mail server, even if your ISP blocks port 25, the standard port number reserved for Internet mail. No-IP Mail Reflector allows us to be the primary mail exchanger for your domain: When mail destined for your domain arrives at our servers, we forward it on to your inbound mail server, which can be on a different (and unblocked) port of your choosing. Mail Reflector also provides all the features of Backup MX, including virus scanning and RBL lists, so that even if your mail server is temporarily unavailable, mail will not be lost.

For a very low price Backup MX will give you mail redundancy on exclusive networks and our professional mail server admins monitoring the system 24/7. Not only that, but No-IP’s Backup MX servers filter viruses and employ RBL lists to help keep the junk from reaching your inbox. No-IP also allows you to provide a valid user list so that bad mail can be stopped at the SMTP level, saving connections and resources on your server.

So you see, there is a way to tame the unsolicited mail bound for your organization and No-IP can help. 5,000,000 junk emails a day are proof of that. 🙂

In the never-ending quest to make the No-IP site easier to use and navigate, our main support page has a brand new look.

New features include links to the most popular support guides and also the most popular entries from our list of frequently asked questions (complete with answers 😉 ). We’ve included links to our popular online tools that let you check if the specific ports you need are open at your location, see your current IP address, check your email server for open relays, etc.

We hope that the new design of our support page makes it easier for you to find the help you need.