What happened to BugMeNot???

Discuss various technical topics not related to Mozilla.
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MechanicalMan
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Joined: June 16th, 2004, 11:29 pm
Location: Missouri

Post by MechanicalMan »

I really don't know anything about hosting, pricing, etc. But can't you look around at warez and porn sites to get some ideas? Example: http://www.exmasters.com/. I know sites like that one are hosting stuff a lot sketchier than bugmenot.
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Ron Ritzman
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Joined: December 2nd, 2003, 7:15 am

Post by Ron Ritzman »

bgm wrote:Our host pulled the plug. I reckon they were pressured. If anyone has got some secure, preferably offshore hosting in mind then please let us know so we can get the service back up as soon as possible.


Wer're you breaking any laws or your host's AUP? If not I don't see any grounds for them to pull your plug.
michaell522
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Post by michaell522 »

Ron Ritzman wrote:
bgm wrote:Our host pulled the plug. I reckon they were pressured. If anyone has got some secure, preferably offshore hosting in mind then please let us know so we can get the service back up as soon as possible.


Wer're you breaking any laws or your host's AUP? If not I don't see any grounds for them to pull your plug.

Depends on the host, but if it's cheap hosting, they usually reserve the right to pull the plug with or without grounds. I'm sure most hosts could find grounds in the security bits of their AUPs though - giving out passwords is giving out passwords, whether it's a password to get into the pentagon, someone's bank account, or an account for reading news stories. You're handing out something that allows people access to something they're not supposed to have access to without getting their own account.

To avoid that happening again (assuming it's going to be hosted centrally), it'd be best to find a host you can actually have a talk with to let them know what you're doing, and that they'll probably get complaints, before signing up.
sasquatch
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Joined: November 25th, 2003, 8:56 am

Post by sasquatch »

bgm wrote:To be honest the whole system is flawed in the fact that it is so centralized. It would be nice if someone came up with a plugin that could be fed from multiple sources. Each source could be a list of accounts maintained by anyone with basic technical ability.

The real power would come if the end-user could find and combine multiple lists and keep them up-to-date / synced easily.


Kind of like bittorrent?
sasquatch
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Joined: November 25th, 2003, 8:56 am

Post by sasquatch »

Does this mean I should uninstall the extension? I only just the other day installed it and haven't even had the chance to try it yet.
jacksmernov
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Post by jacksmernov »

the extension as it is now only works if the site is on the bugmenot.com domain. As soon as he can get some hosting and get the domain changed over the extension sould work. But for now you're SOL like everyone else.

It would not be hard to write the plugin to fed from multiple sources. I mean, that's nothing compared to what we've already writen. So how do you want to implement that. You could have multiple web sites sure. You could syinc between them at night or duing the day. or have some that are independent. You might have a file on each server with the current list of servers on it so that the plugin could automaticaly update itself. Enyone who can install a web server on ther puter and has a stable ip can part of the action

Id be rad if we could do this with some sourt of p2p. But all the p2p apps i'm femilior with are slow to initiate transfirs. it would take longer to get the password then it would be to register.
KB1GHC
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Joined: July 29th, 2004, 6:51 am

Post by KB1GHC »

well, until bugmenot i back, i'll need to use http://www.dodgeit.com
Lost User 2526
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Joined: December 31st, 1969, 5:00 pm

Post by Lost User 2526 »

I loved bugmenot, esp. with the extension. for the nytimes, you can still use the original http://www.majcher.com/nytview.html but it needs a little hacking:

Workaround, from another internet pal: "As an addendum to Adam Funk's contribution to your page, you might want to include that Mozilla and Firefox users don't actually have to edit text files to disable Referrer headers. They can type "about:config" in the Location bar to view advanced configuration elements, then scroll about 75% down the page to "network.http.sendRefererHeader", and double-click it to change the value to 0. (I believe it defaults to 2.)" So, there you go. Get a real browser, get a real solution.


so I guess one solution to the bugmenot problem is to hack the nytimes random generator to work with more sites.
compnski
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Joined: August 19th, 2004, 12:38 pm
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HavenCo is offshore, but costly

Post by compnski »

www.havenco.com has offshore hosting, but is rather pricey. Never used them, just thought they were interesting so kept them in mind.

True offshore hosting, located in sealand.
manero
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Joined: August 19th, 2004, 2:02 pm

Post by manero »

bgm,

how much traffic do you generally have per month, bandwidthwise? i know someone who might be be interested in helping.
bgm
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Joined: August 8th, 2004, 12:02 am

Post by bgm »

Thanks for the help everyone- I've found a host and should be back within 24-48 hours. I'd still like a more robust solution to the hosting problem if anyone can help.

At present the site is seeing 10,000 to 15,000 unique visitors per day. Needs around 250MB space including logs and everything and is chewing through 5GB-10GB bandwidth per month. I expect these figure to keep growing over time.

jacksmernov: what about a config screen where you can specify a list of urls to data sources (xml format?). Once a day or week or something the list of accounts is grabbed and cached locally. The plugin could try the local cache and if no go then use the current bugmenot popup method. I'd be happy to publish a list of sorts to get things going. One question though- is there a good way to stop target sites reading these lists too?
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papaoom
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robots.txt ??

Post by papaoom »

bgm..

It may be helpful to check out information on Web Robots/Spiders (like Google and others) and how to exclude them from your site ... just one way to prohibit conforming spiders from extracting info from you (like the pages you generate and the info within them)...


This will not prevent all attempts to retrieve your posted info but it could be a first-step preventive until you can come up with a more robust solution... With all the publicity you've been getting you really shouldn't worry about ending up in Google's or anyone else's databases...

Web Server Administrator's Guide to the Robots Exclusion Protocol
To exclude all robots from the entire server

User-agent: *
Disallow: /

"Web Robots are programs that traverse the Web automatically. Some people call them Web Wanderers, Crawlers, or Spiders." These pages have further information about these Web Robots:
The Web Robots Pages

And -- Good Luck!! Image

edistokitty
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Joined: August 19th, 2004, 8:40 pm

Post by edistokitty »

Hi! I heard about bugmenot being down from my hubby and I wondered why (horrible!!). When I read this thread I thought of SAFe-mail.net. I have a free e-mail account there and I remembered seeing that they were advertising offshore hosting (safe haven). They aren't very wordy in their plan description. I saw no mention of bandwidth anywhere (why do they make you ask?). I don't know how much your newly arranged hosting costs but here is what SAFe-mail says:

3. SAFe-haven Option
SAFe-haven provides all the functions and features of our Safe-mail for business service PLUS your own domain is hosted at one of our secure servers based at an OFFSHORE location.
To place an order for Safe-haven, click on the program that best suits your needs:
Program Max # of addresses Disk space Annual fee
Bronze 10 100Mb $410/year
Silver 25 250Mb $900/year
Gold 50 500Mb $1620/year

(from https://www.safe-mail.net/cgi-bin/SAFe- ... s_-M&start)


Of course, I didn't do any in-depth research into offshore hosting for a comparisson...
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Spewey
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Post by Spewey »

It's a sick, sad world when thousands of people turn to offshore hosting to solve the problems of the global network. Either it's legal or we go P2P to stay happy.

PS Hi bgm! Thanks for everything. Enjoy your 15 minutes. I'm proud to have the first cite on this board.
Kirkaiya
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Joined: August 19th, 2004, 10:02 pm
Location: Thailand
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Post by Kirkaiya »

bgm wrote:jacksmernov: what about a config screen where you can specify a list of urls to data sources (xml format?). Once a day or week or something the list of accounts is grabbed and cached locally. The plugin could try the local cache and if no go then use the current bugmenot popup method. I'd be happy to publish a list of sorts to get things going. One question though- is there a good way to stop target sites reading these lists too?


bgm - first "ARGH!!". I loved bugmenot, and only a bit of googling found this thread (even slashdot didn't have anything on it being down yet).

Would one interim solution be a web-service that's set up somewhere (the "central point of failure", ha ha) that would return an updated list of bugmenot mirrors to the plug-in ?

Then the plug-in could just iterate thru the list (hopefully the first would work) trying to pull the login/password from each mirror, in turn, until it manages to connect to one.

So the client-side (the Mozilla/Firefox extension) would be a 2-step process (pulling the list of current valid bugmenot mirrors, then hitting up a mirror for the actual login info). On the central server, which would just be a single web-service, you could have a simple app that periodically checks the status of the mirror sites, and if one goes down, removing it from the list, and also some way for people to add new mirrors to the list, of course).

If you do go this route, I'd be happy to host a mirror offshore - I'm living in Thailand for the next year, and could easily find a thai hosting provider who would neither know nor care what the NYT thinks.
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