Runbox Blog

There are currently network issues between Runbox and a number of locations in the US, Asia, and Europe:

http://www.host-tracker.com/InstantCheck/ResultComplete/9e7cfdaa-80b8-e411-80bf-00155d368c3c

We are working with our ISP to find out what this is caused by and will keep you updated.

If you receive a message with the subject “Dear Runbox User” or “RUNBOX.COM” (or similar) which asks you for your Runbox username and password, or asks you to click on a suspicious link, then please delete the message. We are deleting all the instances of this message we can find in Runbox accounts, but we might miss some.

These messages are not sent from Runbox staff and is an attempt to trick Runbox customers into entering their login information at a malicious website.

When Runbox contacts you we will always address you by your name, and we will never ask you for your login details.

For more information about phishing, please see the Phishing section of this article.

Today we disabled SSL 3.0 for POPS (Secure POP) and changed how we terminate POP connections to make it more secure.

Some Apple Mail users are using the server address apop.runbox.com and/or the authentication setting: Authenticated POP (APOP) in Apple Mail.

To change the account settings, please follow these instructions:

1. Mail => Preferences to open the Accounts dialog.
2. Select your Runbox account in the left pane.
3. In “Incoming Mail Server”, enter: secure.runbox.com
4. Click the Advanced button.
5. Make sure the port is set to: 995
6. Under “Authentication”, select: Password (Previously Authenticated POP)
7. Click the red button in the top left corner to close Accounts.
8. Click Save.

We added a Apple Mail compatible setup on the 13th of February 2013 after an update to Mail from Apple broke authentication for many users.

The new settings is a more secure way of using POP and will make sure your connection with our servers always use TLS (Transport Layer Security) or it will fail.

For security reasons we have turned off SSLv3 on POP connections (port 995) today. That means we now only allow TLS 1.0, TLS 1.1 and TLS 1.2 on POP connections.

As a Runbox user you should not have to do anything — your email program should already support TLS and use it automatically. If not, please make sure your email program is up-to-date.

Apple Mail users: Please see our notice regarding APOP.

If you do experience any problems, please contact Runbox Support.

To celebrate a great year and to further the cause of secure and private communication, we would like to give all our customers:

A Runbox account is a great gift to someone you know who cares about secure and private communication — and of course a fully featured, professional email service.

And make sure you lock in our current great prices by taking advantage of our 3 years for the price of 2 offer on the Medium subscription plan!

Please contact us after you have completed your payment to let us know you want to take advantage of this offer so that we can add the sub-account slot to your main account.

You will then be able to set up the sub-account by going to Account > Sub-Accounts.

Note that whenever you renew your main account the additional time will simply be added to the end of your subscription, so you won’t lose any subscription time by renewing early.

Happy Holidays from everyone at Runbox, with our best wishes for the new year!

We have worked hard on upgrading our email server park to accommodate all our new customers — and things will only get better: Based on our recent success, our shareholders decided to invest fresh capital to start several new projects that will take Runbox to the next level.

To boost IMAP performance and improve the experience especially for iPhone and iPad users we will soon deploy new Dovecot-based IMAP software.

We have started implementing an SSD (Solid-state Drive) based storage strategy to dramatically improve the performance of our email storage units. SSDs are up to 100 times faster than regular, rotating disks, so this will improve the speed of our IMAP services.

We are also expanding our server park with new servers and upgrades to continue improving reliability and overall performance.

Projects planned for 2015

We will continue working hard to ensure the privacy and security of your data, and have the following projects lined up for next year:

• Implementation of two-factor authentication for improved login security.
• Integration of PGP email encryption with our Webmail in order to make PGP easier to use with Runbox (note that you can already use PGP in your email client).
• Improvements and upgrades to our spam servers and software to keep up with the ever-present spam challenge.
• Implementation of a CalDAV server for calendar synchronization.

We look forward to continue providing great email services in the year to come.

2014 has been an exciting year for Runbox and we’ve seen a substantial increase in popularity and growth. This has really boosted our progress — we now have several major upgrades in the pipeline, and we are very happy to be launching a new Webmail design!

We’ve called the new design Runbox Aero because it’s lighter, airier, and simpler — and it makes using email a breeze!

Runbox Aero is inspired by modern, state-of-the-art design, and we have listened carefully to feedback from you in order to make it both aesthetically pleasing and user-friendly.

You can try the new design now by going to
Webmail > Preferences and selecting Runbox Aero from the drop-down menu. Make sure you click Save Settings afterwards!

You will quickly notice some of the improvements, but the following changes are worth mentioning:

Modernized look

• The font face has been replaced with a larger, lighter, and more modern font. A bolder font face is available in an alternative design.
• The header has been shrunk to make more room for your email.
• All the icons have been redesigned and optimized for retina (high resolution) displays.
• All buttons have been enlarged and are now dark blue to make them easier to see.

Better menu navigation

• The sub-menus have been enlarged to make them easier to navigate.
• The Compose button has been moved to the far left and made more prominent.
• The Folder Management button has been removed — just click Folders at the top of the folder list or the Folder Management link underneath it to access the Folders screen.
• The Read, Unread, Flag, and Unflag buttons can now be accessed by hovering the cursor over the new Mark button.

Simplified Compose screen

• The Compose screen has been simplified to only show the most important fields. To see the BCC, Attachments, Tags, and Nicknames fields, just click “Show all fields”.

We hope you like the new design, and please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions!

Today we have upgraded the remaining Runbox 5 users to the latest version of the Runbox webmail interface. We introduced Runbox 6 in January 2013 and gradually most of our customers have moved over to this.

This latest interface has a number of new features, and is built on programming that is more stable and allows us to add new features more easily.

You can read more about the features in the original blog post about Runbox 6.

The change to the latest webmail version also allows those customers previously using Runbox 5 to access the new webmail design called Runbox Aero. This is a modern and more user-friendly design, with graphics that are compatible with the newer high resolution screens featured on laptop and desktop computers.

If you have any questions about this change, please get in touch with us at Runbox Support or email support@nullrunbox.com

We’d like to let you know that we’ll migrate all Runbox Web Hosting accounts currently residing on bigdog.runbox.net on:

Sunday, 28th and Monday 29th of December 2014

The accounts will be moved to a new server named host02.runbox.net, with better performance and increased reliability.

Please continue reading for important information about how this affects your website.

NEW SERVER: host02.runbox.net

Our new US based web hosting server Host02 is equipped with a Xeon E5 processor, 48 GB memory, and 2 * 500 GB SSD (Solid-State Drive) for super fast response times. Performance monitoring and backup of stored data is of course included.

Note: Runbox also offers Norwegian web hosting — please contact us for more information.

Upgraded software packages

This migration will also include some software upgrades:

• MySQL will be upgraded from MySQL 5.0.96 to Percona Server 5.5.37.
• Default PHP version will be upgraded from 5.3.15 to 5.5.16.

CHANGE OF IP ADDRESS FOR YOUR DOMAIN

When we migrate to the new server, all accounts must change their DNS (Domain Name System) record to point their domain to the new server’s IP address.

You either have your domain’s DNS records hosted on Runbox’ servers or with an external domain registrar. If you don’t know where your DNS is hosted you can look it up for instance at http://intodns.com

• If the Name Server field is ns1.runbox.net and ns2.runbox.net, your DNS is hosted with Runbox.
  If you have DNS hosted with Runbox, you don’t have to do anything as we will update your DNS settings to point to the new server’s IP address.
• If you are using an external DNS service such as GoDaddy or Enom, the IPs your domain(s) are resolving to won’t auto-update. You will have to manually change all occurrences of the old IP address 209.217.235.179 to the new IP address: 69.73.177.202.

DOWNTIME DURING MIGRATION

During the account migration and for up to a few hours, your domain name might still be pointing to the old server because it takes time for the DNS updates to propagate through the Internet. This depends on your domain’s DNS settings and the ISP you’re using.

Accessing your account during migration

Once the migration of the data in your account has been performed, and before the new DNS settings have propagated, you may see a page on your website noting that ‘This account has been moved.’ Don’t fret! You can access your cPanel and your files immediately on the new server by going to https://host02.runbox.net/cpanel and logging in with your Web Hosting username.

If you use an FTP client to manage your files on the server and you’re using bigdog.runbox.net as FTP host instead of your domain name, you will have to change to host02.runbox.net after migration.

If you have a dedicated IP address, you can also find the new IP address for your domain by logging in to https://host02.runbox.net/cpanel.

If you want to contact us about this migration, please open a support ticket here https://support.runbox.com or use the contact form: https://runbox.com/contact/

UPDATE 31.12.2014 18:15 CET: The migration is taking longer than expected due to the large number of accounts. The sysadmins are working as quickly as possible, but note that there might be some downtime for your website during this process.

UPDATE 01.01.2015 12:00 CET: The migration has completed and all websites should be running normally again. The new server is performing very well with plenty of capacity to spare, so all websites should be responding quickly and reliably.

Due to network maintenance there will be some periods of downtime on 2014-10-06, between 00:01 and 07:59 CET.

This maintenance will require rebooting routers, which will cause about 10 minutes of downtime for
each router.

We apologize for any inconvenience caused.