Thank you for 2015 & status update

December 31, 2015 9 Comments

We’re about to start a new year and we’d like to take the opportunity to thank you for your business in 2015 and provide a quick status update.

We’ve spent much of the year steadily growing and improving our email services, mainly focusing on our new IMAP services and improving our server infrastructure.

Additionally, we have been developing 2FA support, working on a new spam filter, and implementing calendar services. These projects are now close to completion, and we expect them to be ready for beta testing early in the new year.

We have also had some other events worth mentioning, such as a new front page that sets Runbox apart from the crowd, a DDoS (Distributed Denial of Service) attack from a group that tried to extort USD 5000 from us but who later gave up and apologized, and being mentioned in The New York Times, Forbes, and The Washington Post as a service focusing on security and privacy.

Furthermore, we have improved our Terms of Service and Privacy Policy to better reflect how Runbox protects the privacy of our customers, and we have explained how our email services are powered by 100% certified renewable energy sources.

And, if you haven’t tried the Aero webmail theme yet, you are definitely missing out!

We plan to make next year even better than this one, so stay tuned…

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New IMAP Service Migration

November 27, 2015 1 Comment

There are two main ways that people access their Runbox email. The first is our webmail service available on our website, and the other is via some kind of email program that might be on a computer, laptop, smartphone or tablet. If you use an email program, you will be using either our IMAP or POP service to download your incoming mail. IMAP and POP are ways in which email programs communicate with our servers to collect your mail.

We officially launched our new Dovecot IMAP service on mail.runbox.com in August, and we have been pleased with the number of customers who are moving across to this better IMAP service.

However, feedback we’ve received shows that some customers would like more time to make the switch. Therefore we are going to keep the old Courier-based IMAP service running for the time being, and will decide upon on a new retirement date in the future.

Why should I switch to the new IMAP service?

The new IMAP service provides a faster and more reliable way of accessing your mail, and also fixes a number of issues that were reported with some email apps when using the old service.

Because we need to focus increasingly on the new service, starting in January 2016 we will recommend you switch to the new service instead of providing technical support for the old IMAP service. We will of course help you switch to the new service whenever you choose to do so.

NOTE: If you are using POP you don’t need to do anything. If you’re not sure whether you’re using IMAP or POP, please contact Runbox Support.

How do I make the switch?

Setting up your account as a fresh set up usually works best, but if you just wish to change your settings without setting up your account from the start, then we have instructions for our recommended email clients that show you how to do this.

The documentation for our recommended email programs was updated a while ago to show the new server details. If you are using IMAP and keep all of your mail on our servers, you can set up your account again from the start using the details in those instructions.

If you have any questions regarding switching to the new IMAP service, please contact Runbox Support.

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DDoS Attacks – Summary of Events

November 10, 2015 16 Comments

Between November 4-6, Runbox experienced powerful DDoS attacks by a group calling themselves “Armada Collective”. Other security oriented email services such as ProtonMail, Hushmail, and Neomailbox were also attacked, as recently reported by Forbes.

The initial threats and attacks that attempted to extort money were withdrawn by the attackers on Saturday morning, when they offered an apology.

During the attacks we were focused on coordinating with our partners, putting in place countermeasures, and providing our customers with necessary information. Since the situation was unclear and evolved quickly, we decided to not publish any details that could inform the attackers in any way.

The situation is now under control and we are publishing this summary of the events as it may help shed light on what transpired against both Runbox and the other services that were attacked.

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DDoS Attacks on Runbox

November 5, 2015 11 Comments

Yesterday and today Runbox was subject to Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks. This was initiated by a group that have threatened that if Runbox does not pay them a large amount of money, further attacks will take place in the coming days.

We were able to successfully mitigate against the effects of both incidents. During the initial attack we were down for around 15 minutes before we could put a solution in place. Today our customers should not have noticed any effects of the attack.

We think the attacks might be scaled up in the coming days.

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SPF Record Change

October 1, 2015 8 Comments

After careful consideration we have decided to adopt a stricter policy with regards to SPF (Sender Policy Framework) records for our own Runbox domains.

Note: This does not affect domains owned by our customers.

What are SPF records?

SPF records are used as a way to determine if email addresses are being spoofed in sent mail. They allow domain administrators (Runbox in this case) to specify which servers are allowed to send email for the domains they control.

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Runbox is running faster

August 29, 2015 6 Comments

After doing some tuning to our central database yesterday we have been able to increase the speed of all our email services significantly.

This is especially noticeable when using the Webmail, but email clients using IMAP and POP should also be faster.

This was made possible because Runbox is a database accelerated email system, where all basic message data is stored in a central database. This means that our various services don’t have to open any actual files on the storage units to display folder contents. Only when a message is opened do the services access the message files themselves.

We’d be interested in hearing if Runbox is running faster for you. Meanwhile we’ll continue working to improve the performance of our services!

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New IMAP Server Software

August 26, 2015 4 Comments

We are pleased to announce the official launch of our new IMAP server software.

We’ve been extensively testing and improving the new Dovecot-based software in an open beta phase for several months. We are now very happy with how it’s performing, and it resolves several issues with our current IMAP software (see below).

We will therefore be moving to the new software and will retire our existing Courier-based IMAP servers. Since the new software uses a more standardized configuration, all IMAP users will need to change their settings by December 1, 2015.

Note: If you have already changed your email client’s settings as part of the open beta phase you don’t need to do anything.

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New IMAP Server Software in Open Beta Test

June 16, 2015 Leave a comment

We are pleased to announce the start of the Open Beta Testing Phase of our new Dovecot IMAP servers.

We are introducing new IMAP servers to resolve errors that have been experienced by many customers, to simplify the set up in email clients and to improve IMAP performance.

We expect that customers using Apple Mail (OS X) and the native Mail app (iOS) on iPhones and iPads will see the most benefit from our new servers, but performance and reliability will be improved for all customers.

Problems we believe will be resolved are:

  • Read/Unread synchronisation issues
  • Moving messages from one folder to another resulted in a copy in the new and old locations
  • Error messages of the kind “Cannot connect to server”
  • With iOS the native Mail app would fail to update and would continue to show a date in the past

At some future date the current servers will be retired, and all customers will need to use the new IMAP servers.

If you would like to switch to the new servers now, and take part in our Beta testing phase, please see the information on the Open Beta Phase page (the previous link now directs to the official launch details). Please note that although the software is already thoroughly tested and performing well, changes and disruptions may occur as we continue improving it.

If you have any questions about these changes, please contact Runbox Support.

 

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