Server replacements and scheduled downtime

December 19, 2012 Leave a comment

In order to complete improvements to our email services we are scheduling the following downtime:

*** Thursday, December 20 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 work takes 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 other servers and will be delivered once the 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 Thursday.

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 completing work started last week, switching to new and powerful database servers. This replacement will improve both the performance and reliability of our email services.

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!

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[Postponed] Scheduled database replacement and downtime underway

December 15, 2012 2 Comments

We’re getting ready to stop all email services in order to switch to the new database servers.

We will redirect www.runbox.com and beta.runbox.com to this blog so you will be able to follow our updates.

Once we have stopped the services we will import into the new database the records that have been added/changed since the full import we did last night,

Then we will move the database service address to the new servers, and start them up. If all goes well, the email interfaces will be started shortly thereafter.

UPDATE 07:10 AM CET: IMAP and POP services stopped. Stopping database services.

UPDATE 07:19 AM CET: Starting import of database records that have been changed since last night’s full import.

UPDATE 08:09 AM CET: During the import we discovered records that will need to be converted to another format. The safest solution is to revert to the old server and reschedule the switch once the conversion is done. We will inform everyone when this will occur.

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Server upgrades and scheduled downtime

December 5, 2012 Leave a comment

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.

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IMAP improvements

November 14, 2012 5 Comments

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!

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Runbox listed by backscatterer.org

October 10, 2012 Leave a comment

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.

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Phishing alert 18.09.2012

September 18, 2012 Leave a comment

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.

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Beware of phishing attempt

September 2, 2012 1 Comment

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.

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Regarding usage of Google Analytics

August 31, 2012 4 Comments

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.

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