We will come back with more information.
In order to improve our email services we will perform server replacements with the scheduled downtime:
*** Wednesday, December 12 at 6:30 AM to 8:30 AM CET ***
(5:30-7:30 GMT / 12:30-2:30 AM EST / 9:30-11:30 PM Dec 11 PST)
This means that the Runbox email services to be unavailable for up to 2 hours while the replacement take place.
The downtime should be outside business hours for most of our customers, but we know you depend on your Runbox email and we will work as efficiently as possible.
Incoming email will be queued on our servers and will be delivered once our system is fully operational again.
What you can do
If you usually check your email during this time, please log on either well before or after that interval on Wednesday.
To keep updated you can check our Blog at http://blog.runbox.com and Twitter at https://twitter.com/Runbox.
What we are doing
We are switching to two much more powerful database servers which will improve both performance and reliability of our email services, since the second server can take over in case the first one goes down.
This server replacement is one of the last on our system that will need extended downtime.
Why it is being done
This is part of our server upgrade plan in which most of our servers are being replaced and/or virtualized.
By replacing or virtualizing our servers we greatly improve the reliability of our email services since we will not only be running better hardware, but will be able to move services across our servers much more easily.
We apologize if the upgrade causes any inconvenience for you and appreciate your understanding!
Thank you,
The Runbox Team
UPDATE 12.12.2012 7 AM CET: Please go to the main page at http://blog.runbox.com for updates.
We are currently tweaking the IMAP configuration on our servers to allow more concurrent logins, which should improve responsiveness for email clients such as Thunderbird, Apple Mail, Outlook, and smart phones.
We appreciate feedback on how we are doing!
Some users may have had mails bounce recently with an error referring to a blacklist called ips.backscatterer.org, or no clear error at all. This is caused by the sole blacklist runbox’ mailserver IP address is on, which is a list which only blacklists mail servers for handling mail bounces in certain ways. Many other mail servers does it in the same way we do, but our large volume and problems with the IMAP bandwidth quota (now solved) have probably caused us to be on this list on and off for years.
This is NOT a spammer blacklist in other words, and it is irresponsible and uninformed to bounce mails based on any single IP blacklist, but especially this one. And recently, it seems that far more services use this list in such a manner. If your mails have bounced from a domain where you have contacts, we recommend sending them the following link:
http://www.backscatterer.org/?target=usage
We may become delisted as of Oct 12, and will update this post then if so.
UPDATE: We are currently delisted, but will update this post if we are re-listed.
We’ve recently moved some of our Webmail services to a new virtual server, which we will now upgrade.
For a few minutes, www.runbox.com, secure.runbox.com, and mobile.runbox.com will be inaccessible.
If you receive a message with the following characteristics, please delete the message:
- Subject: “IP Change Alert.” or “Runbox Classified“
- From: “Runbox.com” or “TSRT“
We are deleting all the instances of this message we can find in Runbox accounts, but we might miss some.
The message is not sent from Runbox staff and is an attempt to trick Runbox customers into entering their login information at a malicious website.
For more information about phishing, please see the Phishing section of this article.
If you receive a message with the subject “IP Change Alert.” that appears to have been sent from help@nullrunbox.com, please delete the message. We are deleting all the instances of this message we can find in Runbox accounts, but we might miss some.
The message is not sent from Runbox staff and is an attempt to trick Runbox customers into entering their login information at a malicious website.
For more information about phishing, please see the Phishing section of this article.
Recently the Norwegian Data Protection Authority concluded that usage of Google Analytics might be illegal in Norway.
As Runbox is based in and operates from Norway, a number of our users has expressed concerns regarding whether Runbox does use Google Analytics and how.
Runbox users do not need to worry. We have stopped using any type of Analytics and you can read about it here.
Runbox does indeed use Google Analytics on public pages, such as www.runbox.com to gain statistical information about where visitors come from, how much time they spend reading various public pages, e.g. about our pricing plans etc. However, Runbox does not use Google Analytics on logged-in pages.
Norway gives strong protection to personal data and Runbox has a strict privacy policy. Runbox does not allow third parties to access your information. Therefore, once a user reached the pages which require authentication, neither Google Analytics nor any other third party service is allowed to monitor their activity, as theoretically such third party could obtain information about user’s private information, such as their contacts and email contents. At Runbox we guard users’ privacy and such leak of information would be non-acceptable.
We are having problems with a central database server and all services are inaccessible while we work to resolve the problem.
We apologize for the inconvenience and will update as soon as we know more.
Follow us on Twitter for instant updates: https://twitter.com/Runbox
Update 23:02 CET:
The main database server is overloaded and we are working on several theories including hardware failures and NFS (network file system) problems.
We are working to regain some access via web meanwhile.
Update 23:09 CET:
We are restarting the main database server now and expect to be online in a few minutes.
Update 23:33 CET:
We have started web services and will soon follow with POP and IMAP and finally email delivery.
Email sent to Runbox during the downtime has been queued on our MX servers and will be delivered shortly.
We will continue investigating what caused the problem and already have new database servers on the way.
Update: 00:10 CET:
All systems are working as they should. We will continue to look into this to make sure it does not happen again.
We are currently experiencing a distributed attack from a large number of IP addresses, which is intermittently denying service to our customers and users.
We appreciate your patience while we work to resolve this, and ask that you use https://beta.runbox.com meanwhile.
UPDATE: We have put in place counter-measures that seem to take care of this problem.