VFEmail.net down again

communicant · 26 Nov 2015, 06:18 AM

VFEmail.net and Openmail.cc are down, as confirmed by isup.me

Things were just getting back to normal after the DDoS attack. What now?

Rick has been strangely silent for a long time, even in his own VFEmail forum.

What's going on? VFEmail is one of the few services on which I truly rely. During the attack I had to re-route a lot of things and concoct numerous workarounds. Things were finally settling down and now another outage.

I normally go straight to webmail, so I may have missed some sort of maintenance announcement or other explanation on the home page. Did anyone else happen to see such a thing? And if not, what on earth has happened now??

Berenburger · 26 Nov 2015, 07:23 AM

On Twitter @vfemail.net: DDOS again.

communicant · 27 Nov 2015, 01:13 AM

Latest on the VFEmail twitter feed --

______________________________________________________

VFEmail.net ‏@VFEmail 20m20 minutes ago

It looks like we didn't have a DDOS issue, but an upstream peer seems to be blocking our anti-DDOS GRE tunnel. Waiting on ticket response.
______________________________________________________

communicant · 28 Nov 2015, 01:14 AM

When I check the VFEmail twitter feed, I see the following notice above the list of tweets:

____________________________

@VFEmail is blocked
Are you sure you want to view these Tweets? Viewing Tweets won't unblock @VFEmail.
____________________________

This notice has been there for quite a long time, since well before the original DDoS attack, and it does not seem to be correlated with the recent troubles. New tweets from Rick continue to appear, so what does it mean that @VFEmail is 'blocked'? I am puzzled by this. Can anyone enlighten me?

communicant · 28 Nov 2015, 07:25 AM

Since I checked earlier today, a new tweet has appeared --
____________________________

VFEmail.net ‏@VFEmail 5 hours ago

If you're still having SMTP issues, try using port 465 instead of 587. The proxy doesn't seem to be handling TLS as well as it could.
____________________________

No doubt this information is of some practical use to some users, but I wish that Rick Romero would say clearly, somewhere or other -- on Twitter? on this forum? in his own forum? -- when webmail will be up and running again. As of a few seconds before this post, it was still down. This situation is becoming crippling for many users. Rick, we know you've got a lot on your plate right now, but please, let us hear from you regarding what we can expect in the near future and beyond.

communicant · 29 Nov 2015, 12:35 AM

There have been no Twitter updates for the past twenty-two hours.

The most recent Tweet seems to indicate that the new problem is not a DDoS attack.

If that is indeed the case, it is fair to assume that it ought to be easier to deal with than a renewed DDoS attack would have been, but the service is still down and there is no word from Rick anywhere. Where is he? The silence is growing both ominous and frustrating.

I know there are users of VFEmail.net and Openmail.cc here at EMD, and threads on the subject used to attract interest and activity, but this time there has been very little of either. I wonder why.

lgnki · 29 Nov 2015, 08:05 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by communicant

There have been no Twitter updates for the past twenty-two hours.

The most recent Tweet seems to indicate that the new problem is not a DDoS attack.

If that is indeed the case, it is fair to assume that it ought to be easier to deal with than a renewed DDoS attack would have been, but the service is still down and there is no word from Rick anywhere. Where is he? The silence is growing both ominous and frustrating.

I know there are users of VFEmail.net and Openmail.cc here at EMD, and threads on the subject used to attract interest and activity, but this time there has been very little of either. I wonder why.

I mean - fair criticism but it is Thanksgiving weekend in the United States where VFEmail is located. I know it's not really an excuse to paying users, but it could be an explanation.

Wilt · 29 Nov 2015, 08:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by communicant

When I check the VFEmail twitter feed, I see the following notice above the list of tweets:

____________________________

@VFEmail is blocked
Are you sure you want to view these Tweets? Viewing Tweets won't unblock @VFEmail.
____________________________

This notice has been there for quite a long time, since well before the original DDoS attack, and it does not seem to be correlated with the recent troubles. New tweets from Rick continue to appear, so what does it mean that @VFEmail is 'blocked'? I am puzzled by this. Can anyone enlighten me?

It looks like you have blocked @VFEmail on Twitter.

communicant · 29 Nov 2015, 10:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Wilt

It looks like you have blocked @VFEmail on Twitter.

Not possible. I am not a user of Twitter. Indeed, I have never once logged onto Twitter, ever. I have only visited the site to check the status of VFEmail (which can be done without creating an account or logging on). Anyway, if I had somehow blocked Rick's feed without knowing that I'd done it, then the latest tweets (such as they are) wouldn't still continue to appear, would they?

So, back to the drawing board. What does that 'blocked' message mean? I just saw it there when I first visited the site, and it has been there whenever I return.

FredOnline · 30 Nov 2015, 03:11 AM

Just logged in to my openmail.cc account, via the vfemail.net web portal.

No recent update posts on Twitter @VFEmail or @Havokmon, and Rick's personal web site is currently down.

communicant · 30 Nov 2015, 05:30 AM

As soon as I read Fred's post I tried VFEmail.net and Openmail.cc and both are still down as of thirty seconds ago, as confirmed by isup.me. I wonder whether some intermittent repair effort may be happening which allowed Fred to log on but then shut down again by the time I got there. I wish Rick would give a status report to users, somewhere.

communicant · 2 Dec 2015, 10:52 PM

VFEmail.net is still down.

There have been no new tweets on the VFEmail twitter feed since November 27.

However. . .

Rick has continued to tweet on his other Twitter feed (Havokmon), posting what seem like fairly lighthearted comments on this and that over the past several days, as recently as yesterday, with no mention whatever of VFEmail or anything related to the ongoing problem.

His own VFEmail forum shows no post more recent than November 12.

The only place I haven't checked is Facebook, to which I have no access (by choice). Has anyone here at the forum looked on Facebook to see if any information can been gleaned regarding the fate of VFEmail.net/Openmail.cc?

Does Rick care? Has he bailed? If the latter, then why hasn't he at least informed his unfortunate users, both paid and unpaid?

It has been a week now since he tweeted that what was at first thought to be a renewed DDoS attack was in fact a technical issue of some sort. (He tweeted that 'It looks like we didn't have a DDOS issue, but an upstream peer seems to be blocking our anti-DDOS GRE tunnel. Waiting on ticket response.')

Has he given up? Is he working on the problem? Is he still 'waiting for a ticket response' from heaven knows whom? What is going on?

This is getting bizarre. Does anyone have an address or any other way of reaching him other than at VFEmail? Does anyone here have any suggestions, thoughts, comments?

George_B · 2 Dec 2015, 11:29 PM

This may seem silly, but maybe he's unaware of the problem ?

As far as I can tell for example, their non-web services ( SMTP, IMAP ) work just fine:

telnet mail.vfemail.net 143
Trying 12.31.100.157...
Connected to mail.vfemail.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN] VFEmail.net 96 ready.

telnet mail.vfemail.net 25
Trying 12.31.100.157...
Connected to mail.vfemail.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx133.vfemail.net ESMTP

communicant · 2 Dec 2015, 11:42 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by George_B

This may seem silly, but maybe he's unaware of the problem ?

As far as I can tell for example, their non-web services ( SMTP, IMAP ) work just fine:

telnet mail.vfemail.net 143
Trying 12.31.100.157...
Connected to mail.vfemail.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
* OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN] VFEmail.net 96 ready.

telnet mail.vfemail.net 25
Trying 12.31.100.157...
Connected to mail.vfemail.net.
Escape character is '^]'.
220 mx133.vfemail.net ESMTP

Thanks for the thought, and nothing would surprise me.

However, his service's home page is down and all of his web-based services are unavailable. Could an IT-oriented guy like Rick really be unaware of such a situation for such a long time?

Also, he's a member of this forum and used to drop in from time to time. In the aftermath of the DDoS attack (not to mention whatever the latest problem may be), wouldn't it be logical for him to see what is being posted here, and to offer an update? And why is he ignoring his own VFEmail forum for two weeks, including failing to approve new posts?

He has always been a concerned and responsible owner of a serious small service, and he has successfully weathered other serious problems in the past. This is just not like him.

George_B · 3 Dec 2015, 02:47 AM

It's quite possible he's having troubles with the current upstream provider and can't get them to co-operate.

However, you can still access the website through this link:

http://mail.vfemail.net

You get a certificate error but that's only because the certificate is for www.vfemail.net. You should still be good to go.

26 Nov 2015, 06:18 AM	#1
communicant Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 879	VFEmail.net down again VFEmail.net and Openmail.cc are down, as confirmed by isup.me Things were just getting back to normal after the DDoS attack. What now? Rick has been strangely silent for a long time, even in his own VFEmail forum. What's going on? VFEmail is one of the few services on which I truly rely. During the attack I had to re-route a lot of things and concoct numerous workarounds. Things were finally settling down and now another outage. I normally go straight to webmail, so I may have missed some sort of maintenance announcement or other explanation on the home page. Did anyone else happen to see such a thing? And if not, what on earth has happened now??

28 Nov 2015, 01:14 AM	#4
communicant Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 879	Can anyone tell me what this means? When I check the VFEmail twitter feed, I see the following notice above the list of tweets: ____________________________ @VFEmail is blocked Are you sure you want to view these Tweets? Viewing Tweets won't unblock @VFEmail. ____________________________ This notice has been there for quite a long time, since well before the original DDoS attack, and it does not seem to be correlated with the recent troubles. New tweets from Rick continue to appear, so what does it mean that @VFEmail is 'blocked'? I am puzzled by this. Can anyone enlighten me?

29 Nov 2015, 12:35 AM	#6
communicant Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 879	silence There have been no Twitter updates for the past twenty-two hours. The most recent Tweet seems to indicate that the new problem is not a DDoS attack. If that is indeed the case, it is fair to assume that it ought to be easier to deal with than a renewed DDoS attack would have been, but the service is still down and there is no word from Rick anywhere. Where is he? The silence is growing both ominous and frustrating. I know there are users of VFEmail.net and Openmail.cc here at EMD, and threads on the subject used to attract interest and activity, but this time there has been very little of either. I wonder why.

30 Nov 2015, 05:30 AM	#11
communicant Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 879	everything still down for me As soon as I read Fred's post I tried VFEmail.net and Openmail.cc and both are still down as of thirty seconds ago, as confirmed by isup.me. I wonder whether some intermittent repair effort may be happening which allowed Fred to log on but then shut down again by the time I got there. I wish Rick would give a status report to users, somewhere.

2 Dec 2015, 10:52 PM	#12
communicant Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 879	What in the world is Rick doing? VFEmail.net is still down. There have been no new tweets on the VFEmail twitter feed since November 27. However. . . Rick has continued to tweet on his other Twitter feed (Havokmon), posting what seem like fairly lighthearted comments on this and that over the past several days, as recently as yesterday, with no mention whatever of VFEmail or anything related to the ongoing problem. His own VFEmail forum shows no post more recent than November 12. The only place I haven't checked is Facebook, to which I have no access (by choice). Has anyone here at the forum looked on Facebook to see if any information can been gleaned regarding the fate of VFEmail.net/Openmail.cc? Does Rick care? Has he bailed? If the latter, then why hasn't he at least informed his unfortunate users, both paid and unpaid? It has been a week now since he tweeted that what was at first thought to be a renewed DDoS attack was in fact a technical issue of some sort. (He tweeted that 'It looks like we didn't have a DDOS issue, but an upstream peer seems to be blocking our anti-DDOS GRE tunnel. Waiting on ticket response.') Has he given up? Is he working on the problem? Is he still 'waiting for a ticket response' from heaven knows whom? What is going on? This is getting bizarre. Does anyone have an address or any other way of reaching him other than at VFEmail? Does anyone here have any suggestions, thoughts, comments?

26 Nov 2015, 07:23 AM	#2
Berenburger The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Sep 2004 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 2,908	On Twitter @vfemail.net: DDOS again.

27 Nov 2015, 01:13 AM	#3
communicant Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 879	Latest on the VFEmail twitter feed -- ______________________________________________________ VFEmail.net ‏@VFEmail 20m20 minutes ago It looks like we didn't have a DDOS issue, but an upstream peer seems to be blocking our anti-DDOS GRE tunnel. Waiting on ticket response. ______________________________________________________

28 Nov 2015, 07:25 AM	#5
communicant Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 879	Since I checked earlier today, a new tweet has appeared -- ____________________________ VFEmail.net ‏@VFEmail 5 hours ago If you're still having SMTP issues, try using port 465 instead of 587. The proxy doesn't seem to be handling TLS as well as it could. ____________________________ No doubt this information is of some practical use to some users, but I wish that Rick Romero would say clearly, somewhere or other -- on Twitter? on this forum? in his own forum? -- when webmail will be up and running again. As of a few seconds before this post, it was still down. This situation is becoming crippling for many users. Rick, we know you've got a lot on your plate right now, but please, let us hear from you regarding what we can expect in the near future and beyond.

30 Nov 2015, 03:11 AM	#10
FredOnline The "e" in e-mail Join Date: Apr 2011 Location: Manchester UK Posts: 2,616	Just logged in to my openmail.cc account, via the vfemail.net web portal. No recent update posts on Twitter @VFEmail or @Havokmon, and Rick's personal web site is currently down.

2 Dec 2015, 11:29 PM	#13
George_B Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 704 Representative of: PolarisMail.com	This may seem silly, but maybe he's unaware of the problem ? As far as I can tell for example, their non-web services ( SMTP, IMAP ) work just fine: telnet mail.vfemail.net 143 Trying 12.31.100.157... Connected to mail.vfemail.net. Escape character is '^]'. * OK [CAPABILITY IMAP4rev1 LITERAL+ SASL-IR LOGIN-REFERRALS ID ENABLE IDLE STARTTLS AUTH=PLAIN] VFEmail.net 96 ready. telnet mail.vfemail.net 25 Trying 12.31.100.157... Connected to mail.vfemail.net. Escape character is '^]'. 220 mx133.vfemail.net ESMTP

3 Dec 2015, 02:47 AM	#15
George_B Cornerstone of the Community Join Date: Jan 2008 Posts: 704 Representative of: PolarisMail.com	It's quite possible he's having troubles with the current upstream provider and can't get them to co-operate. However, you can still access the website through this link: http://mail.vfemail.net You get a certificate error but that's only because the certificate is for www.vfemail.net. You should still be good to go.