DecaTech Solutions News

Server Outage – apology and explanation

March 3, 2010 – 2:06 am
At approximately 2:00PM MT on Tuesday, March 1st... our server stopped being able to respond to requests for all domains that are hosted on it. Basically, the DNS service was down so access to domains for web and mail requests was down. The root cause was an unexpected reboot of the server by our network access provider at 1:53PM. The server had not been (nor had it needed to be) rebooted in over 4 months, so the behavior of the DNS service crashing on the server restart was an unexpected issue. Thru some automated scripts I have running, I was notified of the problem and temporarily resolved the problem around 2:45. After a few quick tests, the server appeared to be fully functional again. Unfortunately, the issue returned and the DNS service was down again, providing the same access issues as before. Our primary support was unable to look into the ...

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HitMonitor 2.0 – updated reporting for your domain

January 4, 2010 – 12:40 am
A new version of the weekly HitMonitor report is coming to your Inbox this week. New Features: * More accurate tracking * Monitor your entire website via one report * More detailed information

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WordPress 2.9 Upgrade

December 22, 2009 – 10:13 pm
All DecaTech Solutions hosting clients with WordPress blogs have been updated to the newest release of WordPress. To find out more about this release, and its new features, check out: WordPress version 2.9 "Carmen" If you don’t already have a WordPress blog, but are interested in blogging for your website or business – please contact DecaTech Sales to see if your current hosting plan includes free WordPress installation. If you have any questions about this new version, please contact DecaTech Support.

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WARNING: Phishing/Malware Attack via Email

October 27, 2009 – 6:16 pm
It has come to our attention that some DecaTech Clients are receiving the following message via email this week: Subject: Attention - Mail Server Upgrade Attention! On October 30, 2009 server upgrade will take place. Due to this the system may be offline for approximately half an hour. The changes will concern security, reliability and performance of mail service and the system as a whole. For compatibility of your browsers and mail clients with upgraded server software you should run SSl certificates update procedure. This procedure is quite simple. All you have to do is just to click the link provided, to save the patch file and then to run it from your computer location. That's all. http://updates.yourdomain.com.secure.mail-admins.net/mail/id=717904896791-email@yourdomain.com-patch882.aspx Thank you in advance for your attention to this matter and sorry for possible inconveniences. System Administrator Please note that this message is definitely NOT from DecaTech Solutions, and most likely contains malware that can harm your computer. If you ever receive a ...

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Outgoing Email Issue – RESOLVED

January 29, 2009 – 7:21 am
The issue with outgoing email has been resolved. Here's a full disclosure on what happened: At 4:46AM on Tuesday, January 27th, our upstream network provider started rejecting all outgoing email at their relay server During the course of the day, a few clients notified DecaTech Support and expressed a concern that some outgoing emails were not being received DecaTech Support confirmed the issue in the late afternoon and determined that it was unable to resolve the issue on the server At 9:30PM the network provider was notified of the issue. For the next 3-4 hours DecaTech Support continued to research the issue and provided the network provider with very specific details at 11:30AM on Wednesday, January 28th, email stopped being rejected by the relay server and started going out Through-out the course of that day, the large queue of email was sent out. Outgoing email returned to real-time at approximately 5:00PM. DecaTech Support was notified by the ...

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Outgoing Email Issue – Update

January 28, 2009 – 1:08 am
After spending large parts of the past several hours on the phone with DecaTech's network provider, I've determined that the issue lies in the connection with the email relay server that our network provider funnels all email thru. I've given as much info as I can provide from my end, and now I have to wait for a response from the network provider's 2nd tier support. I hope to hear back good news and have the issue resolved in the next 5-7 hours. All outgoing email is safely in the queue on the server, it has just been stuck there all day since the problem first arose. As soon as the network provider can resolve the connectivity issue, email should start flowing out. As a side note, and during the efforts to get this resolved, I noticed that the server had not been rebooted in 554 days - that's a lot of ...

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Outgoing Email Issue

January 27, 2009 – 10:44 pm
At this time, an unknown issue is causing outgoing DecaTech email to not be received by the intended recipient(s). Internal email (sent to other DecaTech clients, or DecaTech itself) is unaffected, along with incoming email. We are working to resolve the problem, and will report status and when it has been successfully resolved via this blog.

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Dealing with Spam, how DecaTech can help

January 7, 2009 – 8:12 am
We've been contacted many times by DecaTech clients over the years on how to deal with the ever growing battle with SPAM. The short answer is that it is nearly impossible to filter out all SPAM and still receive your legitimate email at the same time. It's a never ending battle with diminishing returns. However, there are some things that you can do, that can at least reduce the incoming SPAM to a tolerable level. Part of the solution depends on what you use for your email client. We find that Outlook’s built-in spam filter works pretty well as a first line of defense. You also have SPAM protection from DecaTech on all of your email accounts with us. Here's what a  "marked" SPAM message will look like from DecaTech: The email being marked as SPAM by DecaTech’s server will look like this on the Subject Line: *****SPAM***** (12.0) The only formula for men ...

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WARNING: Emails appear to be from Network Solutions

December 15, 2008 – 1:32 am
Phishing is a type of deception on the internet designed to steal your valuable personal data, such as credit card numbers, passwords, and account data. Phishing as a type of online scam has been around for a few years. Unfortunately, the scammers have continued to get more sophisticated, making it tougher to determine when an email is real and when it is a phishing attempt. Several clients have received email messages with subjects like "Please, renew your domain" and "Inaccurate whois information" or even the urgent sounding "Your domains will be deleted soon" that appear to be from Network Solutions or some other well known domain registrar. The From Address looks valid, the email appears to have a legitimate request, and the link in it appears to go directly to www.networksolutions.com. Don't be fooled! In a phishing email, the scammer can easily use HTML to make a link appear to be valid when the ...

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WordPress 2.7 Upgrade

December 12, 2008 – 1:38 am
WordPress 2.7 has been released to the world. This new version is a major interface design, aimed at making it easier than ever to write new posts for your blog. You can read more about it here: WordPress 2.7 "Coltrane" released DecaTech Solutions clients with a WordPress blog will automatically be upgraded to this new version in the next couple of day. If you don't already have a WordPress blog, but are interested in blogging for your website or business - please contact DecaTech Sales to see if your current hosting plan includes free WordPress installation. If you have any questions about this new version, please contact DecaTech Support.

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