Increased password strength

To protect your Runbox account, and any other online account you may have, it’s crucial to choose a good password. Your password needs to be unique enough to prevent others from guessing it or computers from cracking it.

This is becoming increasingly important since attackers can use powerful password cracking software and attacks are happening more often.

We see that many users choose passwords that are too simple, perhaps thinking that no one will try to gain access to their account, or that they don’t have anything to hide anyway.

The importance of strong passwords

However, if someone did gain access to your account unauthorized they could potentially use the contents to break into other accounts you may have, since email often contains login information to other services.

An intruder could also hijack an account in order to send large amounts of spam, which would  hurt not only the recipients of the messages, but also the account owner (due to returned, undeliverable messages). Furthermore, it could negatively impact Runbox as a whole, since it could get our service blocked by other email services.

Creating a good password

In Runbox 6, you can create a longer and more complex password using many different special characters.

Your password must be between 6 and 64 characters long, and can contain the letters a-z and A-Z, the numbers 0-9, and the following special characters:

+?=()&,.:;-_/*@!#~`#$%^&[]{}|\'”<>

We know, creating and remembering a long and complex password sounds like a big hassle. But it’s actually very simple, and could even be fun!

Just see our Tips for choosing and protecting passwords for a quick how-to.

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Runbox 6 launched

Over the past year and a half we have spent a great deal of time behind the scenes upgrading the Runbox Webmail code. We have also upgraded all the underlying software that powers Runbox, and much of the hardware it runs on.

The Runbox 6 platform

This is the 6th generation of Runbox, and while it may appear similar to Runbox 5 it provides a solid and updated platform for further development of new features. In addition, we have created a software building and deployment system that will enable us to develop new code faster and more securely.

We have already put some new features into Runbox 6 — some minor ones you will discover as you use it, and a few bigger ones:

New Features in Runbox 6

1. Tags: These let you label messages across folders, and will allow you to organize and find messages more easily. To add a tag, open an email, select [New Tag] from the Tags field near the top, enter a tag name, and click “Add tag”. You can now sort messages by your tags in the message list.

2. Improved Account overview: You can now get a full overview of your account’s Data Usage on the Account screen.

3. Sub-account management: You will now be able to manage any sub-accounts you might have in a similar way to the main account and also see detailed information about the usage of the account. Just click the sub-account address in the list after going to Sub-accounts. Note: Sub-account owners can now change the passwords of their sub-accounts and therefore potentially access them.

4. Color themes: You can now choose between 4 color themes by going to Webmail: Preferences and selecting an option from the “Theme” menu. We have also removed they gray background color from all pages to brighten things up a bit.

Try Runbox 6 now

You can start using Runbox 6 now by going to the following link: https://beta.runbox.com/mail?activate_rmm6=YES

This will take you to https://runbox.com, which is also where you will be redirected automatically next time you log in.

We hope you will enjoy the new Runbox! If you have any questions, please add a comment below or open a support ticket at https://support.runbox.com.

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More details about last night’s DDoS attack

In the early hours of 25th January the Runbox network was subject to a Distributed Denial of Service attack. This sort of attack uses multiple computers around the world to flood our servers with requests and this makes it difficult, if not impossible, for legitimate access by our customers.

Response and consequences

We were quick to respond to this problem, but it can take some time to identify the multiple sources of the attack and then block the traffic to our servers. As a result of the attack many of you would not be able to access our services during the time it was taking place.

The attack was carried out by a group who had previously failed to get access to some of our customers accounts that do not belong to them. They had threatened to carry out the attack if we did not comply with their wishes.

No data was compromised

We would like to assure our customers that no customer data was compromised before, during or after the attack, and that we would never give way to such threats. If you have any concerns about this incident, please open a support ticket at https://support.runbox.com

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[Resolved] Email services down because of DDoS

Our email services are inaccessible and we’re working to find out where the problem is.

We’ll keep you posted and apologize for the service interruption.

UPDATE 00:45 CET: We seem to be under a DDoS attack (Distributed Denial of Service) attack, flooding our servers with requests and preventing legitimate logins to our services. We’re working to block the attackers now, so stay tuned.

UPDATE 01:45 CET: We’re still working to block the attackers on several levels of our network and we expect to be back up soon.

UPDATE 03:45 CET: The attackers changed tactics but we’re regaining control over our network now, and our services should be accessible again.

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