February News

Starting this month, we have decided that at the end of every month, a monthly round-up of news and information will be posted on our website. We feel that this will keep users informed of issues, changes and updates that have occurred during the month or will be occurring in future.

As you are probably aware, a number of our servers were hit by DDoS attacks during this month (Info Here). This resulted in almost all of our servers being offline for long periods and has resulted in a few ongoing problems. At present, the main IP of Strawberry still appears to be null-routed and cannot be fixed until the host remove this null-route. Due to this being a long term problem at the moment, we have devised a temporary work around (Info Here).

Since the end of the month, our Apple server has been offline. We believe this is due to an issue with paypal and the host. There is currently no need to request replacement accounts as it is expected that this issue will be resolved relatively soon.

We have recently received an email from the hosting provider of Melon stating that they are changing their IP pool. This mean’s that our server will be allocated new addresses and the old ones will no longer work. There will be a brief downtime when we change to the new addresses and a possible further downtime for some users while the DNS updates.

Due to a large backlog of requests and lack of support presence during January & February, we have hired a new staff member ChasedSpade from the United States. We feel that this will reduce the number of requests left pending for long periods of time and provide quicker support for those in the United States as well as some users in Europe.

We would also like to remind users about our email request and support systems which have been active since the start of 2015. There are now 2 official emails which we can be contacted on. They are as follows:

• request – This is the email you use to privately request a bouncer (Info Here)
• support – This is the email you can use to contact us for support and server changes

* All emails are suffixed @bnc4free.com

Don’t forget that you can also follow us on Facebook, Twitter and Google+. Almost all of the global messages we send to IRC channels are also posted on social media so it’s definitely worth following and checking in case you have missed something.

Inactive and Unused Account Deletion

Any inactive accounts on all of our servers will be deleted on Sunday 1st March 2015. Your account will only be deleted if the following criteria is met:

• Your account has not been accessed for 60 days or more
• Your account was accepted more than 7 days ago and has never been accessed
• Your account is on DALNet, QuakeNet, Undernet, FocoGaming, Rizon, EFNet, ICQ, Mindforge, Espernet or Freenode and has not been used for 30 days
• Your account was suspended and you have not appealed it in the last 7 Days

These accounts will be deleted by 23:00 GMT+0 on Sunday 1st March 2015. If your account matches one of the above criteria, you will either need to login to avoid deletion or if in the event that your account is suspended, contact us on IRC to resolve the issue. Thanks.

An Update on Strawberry

As you are probably aware, a number of our servers were hit by DDoS attacks about a week ago (Info Here). Since these attacks, the main ip of strawberry has been nullrouted which has meant that the server cannot function correctly and has not been connectable.

We have some good news for most users.. We have managed to setup a temporary work around that will allow you to connect to strawberry. What you will need to do until the main IP is fixed is connect to 37.247.48.137 on port 1337 (or 1339 for SSL). Please note that if your bouncer was binded to the main IP to connect to IRC, it still will not work until the main IP is fixed. If your bouncer is fortunate to be using one of our other IPv4 addresses or IPv6, you should find that your bouncer has reconnected to IRC as normal.

We apologise that resolving this problem has/is taking so long. The host has been contacted regarding the nullroute and with any luck, they will remove the nullroute by the end of this week (23/02/15 at latest). Please also note that there is still no need at this time to re-request new accounts. We will post an update later this week to update you on this situation.

Multiple Servers Offline due to DDoS

During the early hours of this morning (GMT time), Numerous servers were attacked by DDoS attacks. As a result of these attacks, numerous servers were nullrouted and others have been taken offline to reduce excess bandwidth costs. While there is not yet a feasible solutions to prevent such attacks in future damaging our infrastructure in the same nature that these attacks have, we are actively seeking solutions to combat the problem.

More information surrounding this issue and the status of our servers will be posted in due course

Apple and Strawberry Currently Offline

During the start of this week, Apple and Strawberry servers both mysteriously have gone offline. The cause of the downtime has unfortunately not yet been confirmed and investigations are under way to establish what the problem is. There is currently no need to request a new bouncer at this time. We will be making a decision and posting a further update on this situation on Wednesday 28th January 2015 when we will hopefully have more information. In the event that we have still not received a reason and/or resolution for the downtime, we will consider allowing users to re-request and/or replacing the servers.

We appologise for the inconvenience this has caused to affected users.

Inactive and Unused Account Deletion

Any inactive accounts on all of our servers will be deleted on Sunday 1st February 2015. Your account will only be deleted if the following criteria is met:

• Your account has not been accessed for 60 days or more
• Your account was accepted more than 7 days ago and has never been accessed
• Your account is on DALNet, QuakeNet, Undernet, FocoGaming, Rizon, EFNet, ICQ, Mindforge, Espernet or Freenode and has not been used for 30 days
• Your account was suspended and you have not appealed it in the last 7 Days

These accounts will be deleted by 17:00 GMT+0 on Sunday 1st February 2015. If your account matches one of the above criteria, you will either need to login to avoid deletion or if in the event that your account is suspended, contact us on IRC to resolve the issue. Thanks.

Happy New Year!

Hello!

Firstly I’d like to start by wishing everyone a very happy and prosperous new year. This year BNC4FREE will have been in service for 7 year’s and behind the scene’s we are working very hard towards modernising our service with the latest software and features. This year is likely to see many changes to our service, such as the new bouncer software and modules which will allow you to control your bouncer even more and even have more than one network. Along with our new software, we will be updating the service bot so that you are able to control certain aspects of your account without the need for staff intervention. It is likely that during the course of this year, we may change a number of our server providers in order to tackle the growing denial of service problem’s that we and many other services are faced with and to increase our IP pool in order to be able to provide our service to even more users.

Some of you may have noticed that in December 2014 we lost our grape server and still have not yet replaced it. The server will eventually be replaced with a much better and more reliable server that is more geared to tackle DDoS and other related incidents. Users that were on grape however are urged to request a replacement account as the backup from old grape will not be restored when the new server arrives. In order to do this, all you need to do is request normally as outlined at https://bnc4free.com/?page_id=385.

We would also like to inform you that as of January we have cleaned up our ban list, blacklist and altered our terms of service slightly. Previously blacklisted and suspended networks, some of which had been for years have been removed from the blacklist and suspend list on a trial basis. If these networks are found to be a problem again, they will of course be re-added to the list. With our terms of service, the only alteration is that previously we reserved the right to pass on your information to other bouncer service providers in order to tackle abuse. Over the 6 month period that this was trialled, it was found to be rather ineffective and also raised considerable doubt about the security of the information we were providing. With that in mind, information is no longer shared to other providers due to security concerns and after all, you have the right to have personal information such as email addresses and IP’s protected, and we respect that. We have however left in the clause that still allows us to provide information to IRC networks on request however how this is done has been revised so that secure and official channels are used in order to prevent the information getting into the wrong hands.

Lastly, we would like to thank everyone who is using BNC4FREE and has stuck by the service in difficult times. Without you, there wouldn’t be a service! We look forward to continue providing a free of charge service to all users for the foreseeable future.

Inactive and Unused Account Deletion

Any inactive accounts on all of our servers will be deleted on Sunday 28th December 2014. Your account will only be deleted if the following criteria is met:

• Your account has not been accessed for 60 days or more
• Your account was accepted more than 7 days ago and has never been accessed
• Your account is on DALNet, QuakeNet, Undernet, FocoGaming, Rizon, EFNet, ICQ, Mindforge, Espernet or Freenode and has not been used for 30 days
• Your account was suspended and you have not appealed it in the last 7 Days

These accounts will be deleted by 23:00 GMT+0 on Sunday 28th December 2014. If your account matches one of the above criteria, you will either need to login to avoid deletion or if in the event that your account is suspended, contact us on IRC to resolve the issue. Thanks.

Christmas/New Year Information

Christmas and New Year are both major events coming up this week and next week so with this in mind, it is highly likely that some of our staff may be unavailable and have other commitments during the Christmas period. Owing to this, it may take us slightly longer to process requests than usual and deal with any reports/support queries.

Unlike previous years, there is no specific date or time when requests will be caught up on but all requests over the Christmas period will hopefully have been processed by the beginning of January or before.

Regarding the status of Grape, we are currently deciding whether or not to replace the server. As many of you know, BNC4FREE is an entirely free service which is funded by it’s staff and the decision on whether to replace the server will come down to whether it is felt necessary or is feasible to spend money on a new server. More information on this will be available when a decision has been reached.

We hope that you all have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We are recruiting!

Hello!

BNC4FREE is currently looking for Support Staff to process requests and assist users of our service with general tasks such as password resets, connection issues and other related tasks. More information on what the Support Staff role entails is available on our Staff Page

If you are interested in applying for this role, Please complete our recruitment process by visiting https://bnc4free.com/apply. Please note that this recruitment exercise may take up to 60 minutes depending on the amount of information you provide. The closing date for this recruitment process is Friday 28th November 2014

All applicants for this role will be notified by email by Sunday 30th November 2014 as to whether they have been successful at this stage of the recruitment process or not

We wish you the best of luck!