The SC Scoop

There are two sets of username/passwords that every user on our system should know. The first is the login for our billing site (http://www.schostpro.com), the second is your login for your DirectAdmin hosting panel (http://www.your_domain.com:2222). Nearly 99% of our systems are automated, so if you forget your password, you are still able to retrieve it.

If you forget your login to our billing site, you can use our online retrieval system located here. As long as you can remember what your username, email or domain name is, our system can reset your password. Just make sure your email is always up to date on our system so we can send you the reset option.

Now if you forget your username to your DirectAdmin hosting panel, there is a link to reset your password as well. Just head over to the login page for your domain’s hosting panel and click on the link to reset the password. You will be asked for your username. Again, your email will need to be up to date so our system can send you the email without delay.

If all this still boggles the mind, you can always send us an email and we can guide you through the process.

If we were paid a nickle for each spam message we receive, many of us would be millionaires. Reality then sets in and most of us realize that only the spammers are getting rich, at our expense. So to fight this, we have a couple of tricks up our sleeves. Aside from offering our users access to Spamassassin, an open source spam filter, we also utilize real-time blackhole lists or simply, RBLs. Let’s run through what both of these mean to the end user.

Running Spamasassin on an account allows our servers to scan each email that comes in and pick out what it thinks is spam. By default, there is a spam level number of 5.0 that must be reached before Spamassassin will ‘do it’s thing’. Each email is scanned for it’s content and depending on what type of message it contains, it tallies everything and sees if it breaks the 5.0 spam level. Different message bodies will trigger different scores. Through the use of our DirectAdmin hosting panel, users are able to raise or lower this spam score level, as well as determine what they want Spamassassin to do with the email once that level is reached. You can tag the subject with a special notation so you can filter it locally on your email client, or just have the system delete the email. All this is available through our hosting panel.

Now keep in mind, Spamassassin is NOT enabled by default. You must log into the hosting panel and enable it on your account. We do this mainly because we want to give the option of filtering to the end user. When you sign up for an account, you expect us to deliver your email. By enabling Spamassassin by default, we are altering that email delivery. So this option will always be disabled by default. To enable it, just go into the hosting panel and click on the ‘Save’ button for Spamassassin. This will activate it for your account.

Our other aid in fighting spam is the use of RBLs. What this does is it checks publicaly available lists of known spammers. If the originating server that the email was sent from is on these lists, they will be bounced back stating which list they are guilty of being on. No email is scanned, if it matches the RBL, it gets rejected immediately. This cuts down on our operating load on our servers, which is a great thing. Sometimes, false positives occur. We will happily whitelist anyone who can prove they are not supposed to be on the RBL(s). The usage of RBLs is not an end user adjustable option. The benefits have far outweighed any inconveniences these RBLs have caused. For more information about the blacklists, visit our spam page that explains how to get yourself whitelisted and what lists we use.

So there you have it, a slight insight into how we do it here.

If you logged in this morning, there was a special offer in your Registerfly.com account. Either RF’s site got hacked or an employee there just got really fed up and decided to take it out in the special offers section.

It’s done, ICANN has finally pulled RegisterFly.com’s Registration Accreditation Agreement. From this point on, RF is not to use any reference to themselves as an ICANN accreditated registrar.

ICANN today issued a formal notice of termination of RegisterFly.com’s Registration Accreditation Agreement (RAA).

ICANN has issued a letter to RegisterFly [PDF, 902K] indicating that it will cease operating as an ICANN-Accredited Registrar on March 31, 2007. Under the terms of the Registrar Accreditation Agreement (RAA), ICANN must provide 15 days written notice to RegisterFly of its intention to terminate.

Effective immediately ICANN has terminated RegisterFly’s right to use the ICANN Accredited Registrar logo on its website.

Between now and 31 March RegisterFly is required to unlock and provide all necessary Authinfo codes to allow domain name transfers to occur. Any and all registrants wishing to transfer away from RegisterFly during this period should be allowed to do so efficiently and expeditiously.

“Terminating accreditation is the strongest measure ICANN is able to take against RegisterFly under its powers,” Dr. Paul Twomey, President and CEO of ICANN said today.

That’s great that ICANN finally sees what thousands of customers have been complaining about. However, there are still many registrants who have lost domains or who do not have access to their current ones (me). How ICANN is going to support this issue has yet to be seen. I just want my domain away from Registerfly!

Google will be changing the way it stores it’s logs in the coming months. They will now start anonymizing the way it stores searches by it’s users. Unless forced to by law enforcement, they will not store data that can narrow down what an individual searched for. From the Google blog:

When you search on Google, we collect information about your search, such as the query itself, IP addresses and cookie details. Previously, we kept this data for as long as it was useful. Today we’re pleased to report a change in our privacy policy: Unless we’re legally required to retain log data for longer, we will anonymize our server logs after a limited period of time. When we implement this policy change in the coming months, we will continue to keep server log data (so that we can improve Google’s services and protect them from security and other abuses)—but will make this data much more anonymous, so that it can no longer be identified with individual users, after 18-24 months.

I suppose Viacom finally realized how much they were losing in copyrighted material that’s floating on Youtube. If you don’t know, Viacom is the parent company to MTV, Comedy Central, and Cartoon Network to name a few.

“If the case goes to trial it is likely to test the limits the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DCMA) of 1998. Google claims ’safe harbor’ status for YouTube, which is a DMCA protection designed for search engines, web hosts and ISPs to shield them against liability for third party copyright infringements. Similar protections exist in European laws.

The safe harbor was designed to protect such companies from having to monitor the activity of every internet user, something which was recognised as impractical. These companies do not have to prevent illegal use of their services pro-actively, but when properly notified that they host infringing material they must “expeditiously” remove or disable access to that material. There is presently no clear judicial authority on the speed of reaction that qualifies as expeditious under the DMCA.”

The above was reported by The Register.

I’ve only uploaded one video to Youtube, which was promptly taken down because Oprah didn’t like it. It was a clip of a doctor that was on her show that had a freudian slip where he said ‘orgasm’ instead of ‘organs’. Oprah didn’t catch it and neither did the audience, which is very eerie.

If you haven’t heard by now, the domain registrar Registerfly.com is having some issues. I’m not one to put more oil onto the fire, but I’m actually a customer of theirs from a long time ago. To this date, I still have one domain registered with them. This domain had many years added on when it was registered, so I never really bothered with it. That is, not until recently.

From all the reports I’ve read on RegisterFlies, it seems that two of the owners, John Naruszewicz and Kevin Medina, were in a relationship that had a falling out. Due to this, one owner tried to oust the other one in regards to company ownership. Accusations were thrown out stating how Kevin mis-used company funds for his personal vices. So customers were paying for domain renewals, but RegisterFly did not renew them. Instead, the money was pocketed and used by Kevin Medina. Now bear in mind, these are all just accusations. So far, no real evidence has been revealed except for the public court documents.

And speaking of court documents, the judge in NJ has recently ruled in favor of Kevin Medina. This means the company is back in his hands. As you can imagine, many of Registerfly’s customers are furious and frustrated at the current situation. Many have lost domains to cyber squatters due to this.

RegisterFly has two more days to answer to ICANN’s (Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers) request to ’shape’ up. My one domain there has an incorrect whois. I am not able to edit it and RegisterFly will not fix it. Thankfully this domain is not set to expire for another two months. If you are a customer, I would suggest you transfer your domains OUT of RegisterFly immediately. If you are having trouble obtaining a authorization code or if your whois is incorrect like mine, contact ICANN immediately at transfer-questions@icann.org. In your email, please put the following information in:

1. all domain names affected
2. your registerfly account name
3. the email address associated with your registerfly account
4. a brief explanation of the specific problem (in other words, say “I can’t get auth codes from the control panel,” or “I can’t unlock my domain name in the control panel,” or “I can’t log into my control panel” etc.).
5. the date when you last attempted to do the thing you can’t do

The above email will most likely go to Mike Zupke at ICANN who is working on this matter with RegisterFly. Good luck to everyone affected. Hopefully none of our customers have to go through this debacle created by RegisterFly.

Update (2007-03-14): I just got an email from Sara M. Stohl from ICANN. She has forwarded my case over to Registerfly. She said if I don’t see results in two days to let her know. Awesome!

Update (2007-03-19): After the help from ICANN, I finally have ALL my domains away from Registerfly!

This is my first post here on the SCHostpro.com blog. Since everyone is doing it, I thought I’d open up a little and let folks know what’s behind the doors of SC Web Services. Feel free to comment and poke around. I’ll keep updates here on daily basis as best I can. Please pardon the simple theme, I’m a minimalist by nature.

Please note that comments are open, but you must have a prior comment that was approved. This is to prevent spammers from ruining the party.

If you  have a blog, feel free to let me know and I will add you to the Blogroll (links).