LexiConn – January 2006 Newsletter

[AnonymousParticipant]

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LexiConn – January 2006 Newsletter
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In this month’s issue:
* Domain Name Scams / Tips
* Telnet service blocked on all servers
* phpBB2 forum software upgraded to latest version – 2.0.19

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Domain Name Scams / Tips

Take care when reviewing email messages or postal mail that you may receive warning you that your domain name will expire soon. If the message is coming from your registrar, then you should obviously pay it your full attention as you do not want to let a domain registration lapse. However, often times the origin of the message is from a competing registrar who is trying to entice you into renewing your domain through them. A large number of domain owners send money to these domain scammers without question, thinking that they are renewing their domain with their current registrar.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has tried to prevent misrepresentation by registrars in order to protect consumers, but unfortunately, the problem still exists. To learn more about one such case against the Domain Registry of America (DROA), visit the FTC’s website at:

http://www.ftc.gov/opa/2003/12/domainreg.htm

If you inadvertantly transferred your domain name away from your registrar, you can transfer it back 60 days after the original transfer date. If you wish to transfer your domain to the LexiConn Registry, this can be initiated at:

http://domains.lexiconn.com/transfer_your_domain.html

Our transfer rate is $25, and adds one year to your current expiration date.

Another important piece of advice regarding domains is to make sure that your domain record contains accurate contact information. In particular, the admin and billing email addresses should be valid, as this is what the registrar uses to contact you. If you are unsure if your contact information is accurate, you can do a WHOIS lookup at our website:

http://domains.lexiconn.com/whois.cgi

Lastly, if you have multiple domains with our registry, you can easily update all of their information by having them in the same profile. Information about merging multiple domains into a single profile can be found in our knowledgebase at:

http://support.lexiconn.com/kb/index.php?ToDo=view&questId=176&catId=49

As always, feel free to contact us with any questions that you may have.

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Telnet Service Blocked on all Servers…

Telnet service (telnet is a protocol to connect to your account via the command line / shell access) has been blocked on our entire network due to an attempted distributed denial of service (DDOS) attack on this port. We have blocked access to port 23 at the hardware firewall level.

Clients that have previously requested shell access to their hosting account and use telnet will have to switch to SSH in order to continue accessing the account via shell. SSH is a secure encrypted protocol used to gain shell access to your hosting account and will provide you the same functionality that you utilized in the past when connecting via telnet.

A popular, free SSH client that runs on the Windows operating system is called Putty, which can be downloaded at:
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/

For those interested in purchasing a more robust, commercial program, you may wish to try SecureCRT:
http://www.vandyke.com/products/securecrt/index.html

Please note that this change does not affect the hosting of your web site in any way.

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phpBB2 forum software upgraded to latest version – 2.0.19…

The phpBB2 forum software that is easily installed from the Account Manager has been upgraded to the latest version, 2.0.19. This minor release is mainly a bugfix version, addressing the issues below:

* added session keys table to backup
* delete session keys entries when deleting user
* changes to some of the admin files to improve efficiency and remove a potential error condition when building the menu
* change truncation of username length in usercp_register.php
* incorrect path to avatars in admin_users.php (Bug #667)
* fixed get_userdata to support correct sql escaping (non-mysql dbs)
* fixed captcha for those not having the zlib extension enabled
* Placed version information above who is online in admin panel for better visual presence
* fixed XSS issue (only valid for Internet Explorer) within the url bbcode
* fixed XSS issue (only valid for Internet Explorer) if html tags are allowed and enabled
* added configurable maximum login attempts to prevent dictionary attacks

Clients that have previous versions already installed should upgrade their forums manually if so desired.

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