Internet Privacy May Soon be a Thing of the Past

  • August 15, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

Have you heard about H.R. 1981: The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011? If not, listen up, because this is a very important bill that is quietly making it’s way through approval as I type. With a name like that, who would possibly oppose, everyone wants to keep children safe. The only problem is that this act encompasses much more than child pornography, it encompasses everyone’s ENTIRE internet privacy.

Under this act, every ISP would be required to track everyone’s online activity including your name, address, phone number, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and  temporarily-assigned IP addresses, and save it for a minimum of 18 months. So basically, the government would be assuming that everyone is a criminal and they are just waiting for you to break the law. The equivalent of this bill is the government having someone follow you everywhere, everyday of you life and record it just in case one day you decide to rob a bank, or kill someone.  Could you imagine???

California Rep. Zoe Lofgren’s recently proposed to rename the act “Keep Every American’s Digital Data for Submission to the Federal Government Without a Warrant Act of 2011.”

Why rename it that? Well Rep. Lofgren’s new title explains it all, once the ISP has your entire online footprint saved, all it takes for that information to be subpoenaed is an inkling that you have done something wrong.  You don’t have to be under investigation for child pornography charges, simply being suspected is enough.

Which brings up another skeptical situation, what if you are undergoing a child custody battle, or a divorce, or anything?! Yup, your history can be subpenaed and you know how? No warrant is necessary, all they have to do is ASK.  No probable cause is necessary, nice.

This act has successfully made its way through the House Judiciary Committee and it’s next stop is a vote by the House. You can track the status of the act here.

What can you do? If you oppose this legislation, you can go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation and fill out an easy form to contact your state representative.

So, do you agree or disagree with the legislation? Leave your comments below!

10 Tips for Choosing a Safe Password

  • August 12, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

Choosing a password is easy, choosing a password that is safe is a different story. Follow these 10 tips for choosing a safe password to safeguard all of your accounts from fraud.

1. Choose a password with mixed-case letters, numbers and symbols (example: !, $, #, %).
2. Choose a password that is NOT related to anything that has special meaning to you, ie: your pets name, birthday, address, family members names, etc.
3. Use a different password for every account that you have. This one is tough, I know, but it will definitely come in handy if one of your accounts get compromised. Multiple passwords will ensure that your other accounts remain safe.
4. Change your passwords frequently (every 3 months or so) and when you change your password, don’t choose a new one that is similar to the old one.
5. Don’t use a word that is found in the dictionary.
6. Make your password 8 characters or longer.
7. Use a virtual keyboard when entering passwords. A virtual keyboard won’t let a keylogger program capture your keystrokes.
8. Use a string of words.
9. Pick a word that you can type quickly and easily remember without having to look it up.
10. Make sure you can easily remember it! Yesterday, I changed my email password, and twenty minutes later I had already forgotten it. I had to go through 10 steps to recover my account (my recovery email was old and outdated, so that didn’t help me either). Not very fun. So, save yourself the headaches and use a password manager to securely store all of your passwords. Also, keep your account information up-to-date. So, if you do forget your password, it’s just a click away to a different email address.

What are your top tips for choosing a safe password? Add yours below!

DNS, What???

  • July 15, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

More often than not, when I tell people what the company that I work for does, they look at me with a blank stare and a trivial look on their face and say DNS, What… They still seem utterly confused after I try to explain what DNS is and how they are most likely using it everyday.  These people usually just pretend like they get it and walk away, but do they really get it and what’s so hard to “get”?

We have touched on what DNS is quite a few times, but we still get the inevitable comments on surveys and blog posts that people are still very confused.  One person actually compared DNS to buying a bottle of air, open it and there is nothing inside, but that couldn’t be further from the truth!

DNS redirects an IP address, to a static domain name.  So if you want to visit www.no-ip.com, you type the domain name into your browser, not the IP address.  If not for DNS, you would have to remember every IP address of every website! With over 300 million websites on the web, remembering every IP address would be utterly impossible, well unless maybe you’re Kim Peek: The Real Rain Man.

In addition, the transition to IPv6 will make remembering IP addresses even harder! IPv6 addresses are 128 bits long compared to 32 bits of Ipv4 addresses.

They look something like this: 2001:db8:0:1234:0:567:8:1. That’s a lot if numbers to remember! (I can barely remember my phone number!)

So, next time someone asks you, WHAT the heck is DNS?! You can tell them that it is indeed more than just bottle air.  It makes visiting websites by a domain name, possible!

Have you ever had someone look at you confused when you mention DNS? Also, if you like this article, be sure to share it with your friends via Facebook and Twitter!

What is the Difference Between a CNAME Record, A Record, and Redirect?

  • July 11, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

An A record is the actual record. The name is resolved to the corresponding IP address.

An example of this is www.no-ip.com resolves to 204.16.252.112

CNAME records (short for short for canonical name) map your hostname to another hostname. It is useful for pointing many hosts to the same place and updating them easily.

An example of this is:

www.no-ip.com to www.noip.com

This is a CNAME record because even though the domains are different, they still go to exactly the same place and follow the same rules that are in place.

Redirects are like CNAME records in a way, but different.  Use a redirect if you want one domain to redirect to another.

An example of this is:

www.yourwebsite.com redirects to yourblog.blog.com

Have questions or comments about CNAME records, A records or redirects? Leave them below.

Want to know more about No-IP’s services? Check out our website to learn more.

No-IP Upgrades

  • July 7, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

No-IP engineers have been working hard making tons of No-IP upgrades!

Over the past few months, we have upgraded our network hardware and servers and have added more load balancers to balance traffic more efficiently.  This quarter of a million dollar expansion will bring a quicker, more reliable  service to you that is able to transmit and handle a much higher load of capacity!

To our 11 million users,  thanks again for choosing us!!! We hope you like all of the No-IP Upgrades!

Unlimited gTLDs?

  • June 30, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) recently approved the future use of unlimited gTLDs (Generic Top Level Domain’s).  There are a total of 22 gTLDs. These domains range from: .com to .org to .net, but starting in January 2012, that list of 22 domains, will soon expand to a limitless number! Anything you can dream up will be able to be a gTLD.

So, what do unlimited gTLDs for businesses with websites online? It means that things may get a bit interesting and expensive… The top advice that owners of businesses with an online presence hear is protect your domain(s) from possible cyber squatters.  So, if you own yourbusiness.com, you should probably own yourbusiness.net, .org, .biz, and any common misspellings of your domain name, and every possible variation (within your budget) so your customers don’t mistype your web address and end up at a website that is not owned by you.  So, with limitless TLDs when would you know to stop buying domains? Until you go broke, I guess….

Which brings me to my next point, Will everyone be able to register any top level domain?

Yes, but at a very, very HIGH price.  The application fee for the domain will be $185,000 and the yearly domain fee will be $25,000.  For major online players, that is chump change, but for small online businesses, that is an astronomical price for a domain.  So, will everyone have a custom domain? No, but just knowing that you can is pretty cool.

No-IP’s IPv6 Implementation Progress Report

  • June 14, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

A few days after World IPv6 Day (June 8th) proved that the internet is ready for IPv6 integration, we would like to give you an update as to where we are in our implementation progress here at No-IP.

Our engineers have been working hard on implementation and the process is moving right along. We have already implemented an interface for our Plus customers to add AAAA records (quad-A records) to their domain and one of our name servers is currently answering IPv6 requests.

We plan to have more implemented later in the year and we will continue to focus on making IPv6 more integrated with our services. We had planned on participating in World IPv6 Day, but unfortunately, we ran into some issues with a data center migration and peering with the proper bandwidth providers. These set backs further reiterate how many hurdles there are in order to have true IPv6 connectivity.

Thanks again for choosing No-IP!

Questions or comments about IPv6 connectivity? Leave them below!

Go Phish! Top Tips on Protecting Yourself From Phishing

  • June 8, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

Phishing scams are everywhere and are growing at an astounding pace. According to Webopedia.com the definition of phishing is “the act of sending an e-mail to a user falsely claiming to be an established legitimate enterprise in an attempt to scam the user into surrendering private information that will be used for identity theft.”

The most common form of phishing is an email that requests for you to verify, update or confirm something for an account. Oftentimes, the email is accompanied by an official logo of a company with all links contained in the email looking like they are from the official company.

The email will request for information like your login name, password or even your social security number.  Emails with such requests should never be taken seriously, companies and financial institutions would never request such information via email.

So, how do you distinguish an email from an illegitimate source from an email from a verified, official source?

1.Let’s face it, sometimes scammers aren’t the “brightest crayons in the box,” therefore spelling and grammar errors often occur in phishing emails.

2. If an email asks for usernames, passwords or other sensitive information, chances are, the email is phishing.  Companies will never ask for sensitive information like this via email.

3. Check the links in the email. Scroll your mouse pointer of the links in the emails, but be careful not to click them.  Notice in the bottom gray bar of your browser that it will have a link.  This link is where the link will actually go to.  Just because the link says www.ourcompany.com does NOT mean it will be directed there.  You can also do the same thing for images that act like links, again, just be careful not to click on the before you know if the email is phishing or not. No matter how legit links look, ALWAYS type the link directly into your web browser.

4. After typing the link into your browser, if the page that requests for you to log in or enter other sensitive information, be sure that the page is a secure page.  You can verify this by confirming that the address in the address bar has an https, not just http.

In the unfortunate case that you happen to fall victim to a phishing scam and have given away your sensitive information, notify the companies that you have the accounts with ASAP. Also, even if you do not fall victim to a phishing email, contact the company immediately and let them know that you have received a fraudulent email.  Many companies have areas on their website where you can submit the claim to, or an email address that you can forward the email to.

No-IP Managed Mail offers superb protection against spam and phishing attempts with our acclaimed spam engine and extensive RBL lists. We even have our No-IP Anti-SPAM ECR which takes your spam protection one step further by requiring unauthorized senders of email to respond to an authorization email.

Questions or comments about phishing? Leave them below!

World IPv6 Day is June 8th, Are You Ready?

  • May 26, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

In an earlier post, we talked about the transition from IPv4 to IPv6 protocol.  This transition is a necessary one considering the pace that the internet has been growing at during the past 10 years.  When IPv4 was created, it was built to support 4 billion unique IP addresses, but with everyone (and their mom and grandma) owning a smart phone, iPad, computer or other internet ready device, (I read that even light bulbs will have an IP address in the future!) that is just simply not enough IP addresses.

IPv6 will support 2 to the 128th power or, wait for it…… approximately 340 undecillion addresses, UNDECILLION, really?! That’s a 1 followed by 36 zeroes. Hopefully, this will be enough IP addresses to hold us over for a few more years.

World IPv6 day, hosted by the Internet Society is a test flight day of IPv6 protocol. On June 8th, all participating organizations including Facebook, Google and Yahoo! will be hosting their content over IPv6 for 24 hours. The ultimate goal of the day is to motivate organizations to prepare for the transition to IPv6 as IPv4 is phased out.  Is your ISP ready for the transition to IPv6?

What do you have to do to make sure you are compliant? Nothing really, except stay current with operating system updates and maybe update the software on your router.

You can test your IPv6 compatibility here: or you can check out a cool diagram about IPv6 here.

Questions or Comments? Leave them below!

Got Game? How to Host Your Own Game Server with No-IP

  • May 19, 2011·
  • by Natalie Goguen·

For anyone who plays video games, you are aware of the advantages of running your own game server, (not to mention how cool it will make you among your friends) but you may not know how easy it actually is.  Hosting your own video game server isn’t as daunting of a task as it may sound.  Follow these simple instructions and get started today!

1. If you haven’t already, create and activate a No-IP account.
2. Add a Host to your account

Now you’re ready to fill in the details of your new hostname. Here are the steps to deal with the items on this screen:

3. Fill in the Hostname: box with a name of your choosing. It can be anything you like. If you choose a name that’s already in use, an error will be generated and you can then try a different hostname. Since hostnames are unique per domain, you can try using the same hostname and just select a different domain from the dropdown box below to see if that combination is available.

4. Select an available domain from the dropdown box. Note that certain domains are reserved for No-IP Enhanced customers only.

5. Choose the the Host Type. The default choice, DNS Host A, is usually the correct one. Do not choose any of the other host types unless you’re trying to solve a particular problem that a DNS A record won’t accommodate. If your ISP blocks Port 80 for example, and you’re trying to run a webserver or other service on port 80, then you can choose Port 80 Redirect (at that point you’ll be asked to specify the port to use for the redirection).

6. In the field marked IP Address: you should already see your current IP address. If you wish to set the IP address of the host to be somewhere other than your current location, you can enter that address now.

7. When you have filled in the information for your new hostname, simply click the “Create Host” button at the bottom of the page to save it.

8. Download the No-IP Dynamic Update Client. (If your ISP provides you with a static IP address, you can skip this step)

9. If you use a router to connect to the internet and/or have a firewall in place on your computer, you will need to make sure that it is configured to direct the appropriate traffic from the internet into the destination machine on your network. This is done using a router function called Port Forwarding. You can use any port or whatever is specified by the game software. Just be sure that the ports match at the firewall/router. You can visit PortForward.com for step-by-step guides on port forwarding for your specific router.

10. Next, verify that your router and firewall are setup correctly, you can visit our website at www.canyouseeme.org.

11. You’re Done! As long as the port is visible and your hostname resolves back to your network you should be ready to have your friends join you online to play your favorite video game!

It is important to note that depending on which game you are playing, it will either ask for the hostname and port separately, or it will just ask for the host. You may have to have your friends connect as host.domain.com:portnumber

If you run into trouble, be sure to check our Online Support Guides for helpful information, or leave your questions and comments below!

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