Email down?

[Tacitus]

Still down for me at 10:03am.  The status page tells us we have a good service......

[Baz]

Yep......got that deja vu feeling again 

[Steve]

Certainly I have no connection to any of my IDNet email accounts, the rest of my email accounts on other servers are working fine! I have dropped support an email.

[SSK]

I always understood it was not good to rely on your ISP's mail service which is like any freebee,

I dispute the assertion that it's a freebee. It's part of the package that I signed up for, just like all the other terms and conditions such as 100Gb per month, etc. If it hadn't been in the package I wouldn't have signed up with IDNet but with some other ISP, so it's part of the contract.

Having said that, I wouldn't and don't rely on it for something as crucial my business, for which I have my own domain etc.

The fact that it's been down for chunks of time on two consecutive days is, however, inconvenient for my personal communications and not something I would expect of the usually high-standard IDNet service.

[Ray]

Just received this via the RSS feed: -

Service: Announcement
Updated: 2013-08-14 10:21:34
State: Sub-Optimal Service
Message: We are currently experiencing intermittent problems with the server @idnet.com email is on. our engineering team are working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Email on this server will be intermittently accessible during this time.

[Steve]

Thanks Ray, Just looked myself which gave me an excuse to update FireFox again.

[Simon]

The fact that it's been down for chunks of time on two consecutive days is, however, inconvenient for my personal communications and not something I would expect of the usually high-standard IDNet service.

Agreed, but in their defence, any ISP could have occasional server issues.  Hopefully IDNet can get on top of this today.   

[Simon]

Please see Simon from IDNet's announcement here:

http://www.idnetters.co.uk/forums/index.php/topic,31113

[Baz]

so does that info in the announcement mean thats why it seems folders in some of my accounts have gone when accessing via webmail?

[Simon]

Quite possibly. 

[mervl]

I dispute the assertion that it's a freebee. It's part of the package that I signed up for, just like all the other terms and conditions

It's an interesting moot point, I wondered about. The t&cs describe the contractual services as those described on the homepage, and the only e-mail references are to the paid for services. 

Nonetheless I take the point about what we expect; but that's the trouble with the broadband (and whole IT) world. The contracts are not usually what you expect. (I used to write a few, and read rather more, of them). None of them guarantee continuous service.

[Bill]

I never felt a thing!   

This time it was me who never felt a thing, I've had no leccy all day due to work at the local substation. Nice timing, Southern Electric

[Steve]

A test to my idnet.com email address has been received, previous messages don't appear to have been restored though yet.

[Bill]

I don't think any haven't been delivered yet, but can't be 100% sure obviously.

I did get a couple of very old (several weeks) emails (from the tbb "reply notifications") so something odd there- they should have been deleted from the server a week after being read the first time. But that's happened before when the server has thrown a wobbly.

May or may not be connected- my RSS usage feed has gone AWOL again. That's also happened before, usually I can get it back by deleting and re-creating it- I'll check that out later when the brain cell is satisfied with its caffeine levels.

That particular feed seems a bit delicate for some reason

[Gary]

I don't thinkmy RSS usage feed has gone AWOL again. That's also happened before, usually I can get it back by deleting and re-creating it- I'll check that out later when the brain cell is satisfied with its caffeine levels.

That particular feed seems a bit delicate for some reason

My feed (just usage) seems to have stopped on the 13th August. Hopeing it will catch up sooner rather than later.

[Bill]

Hopeing it will catch up sooner rather than later.

My own experience is that it doesn't restart on its own, you have to kick it.

It may be because (afaik) it's the only feed I use that has any degree of security involved- I have to be logged in to my account page to get the url, and on a couple of occasions it's given an error of "you do not have permission to access this account", or some such twaddle. Re-creating it a second time has always fixed it (so far...)

[Bill]

There's a comment in the announcement saying:

We are now actively considering hosting this service in the cloud in order to eliminate the potential for any similar failure in future.

Could someone explain to me how this would eliminate the possibility of it happening again?

Cloud or no cloud, it's still on a server somewhere, and that server can fail...

[Glenn]

But IDNet's raid card wouldn't fail if the server is not in use, hence eliminate the failure. 

[Bill]

IOW, make it someone else's responsibility

I don't have a problem with that if there's a good solid SLA in place.

[Tacitus]

Alternatively the mail server could be mirrored to the cloud with automatic fail over, assuming that is possible.

[cavillas]

I use Gmail and MS Outlook mail, never had a problem in the past 8 years since I started them.  I know Google gather info ut so do all other organizations, but they have nothing of real importance from me. I also use Idnet mail for certain things but everything is collected via Google mail, not had any nasty spam, ever wither.

[Gary]

I use Gmail and MS Outlook mail, never had a problem in the past 8 years since I started them.  I know Google gather info ut so do all other organizations, but they have nothing of real importance from me.

That not the point, it does not matter what the importance is, its the fact they do it in the first place, its a breach of your privacy. 

[Gary]

Cloud backups are not the greatest things for privacy (see googles recent statement) using cloud backups seems like passing the buck a bit, but I can see why I guess...it still and worries me that there may be even less control of the privacy of email from idnet now. Not tha privacy seems to exist any more tbh 

[Tacitus]

Cloud backups are not the greatest things for privacy (see googles recent statement) using cloud backups seems like passing the buck a bit, but I can see why I guess...it still and worries me that there may be even less control of the privacy of email from idnet now. Not tha privacy seems to exist any more tbh 

Cloud backup does not necessarily mean AWS, DropBox, Skydrive or any other US based service that falls within the NSA's ambit.  It could just as easily be a UK based one, or for that matter one based in (say) Sweden, Switzerland wherever.

Given the current feelings towards US based cloud services and the threat to privacy, there have be loads of business opportunities for UK based providers who can offer the right product.  I know Timico are currently making a big thing about 'private clouds'.

Whether any of this would protect you from either the NSA or GCHQ is a moot point, unless of course the service was encrypted with you alone holding the key.  Even then a Court order could compel you to release the key. 

Nothing like encryption to get the spooks attention.   

http://www.salon.com/2013/06/21/how_to_get_the_nsas_attention/

[cavillas]

That not the point, it does not matter what the importance is, its the fact they do it in the first place, its a breach of your privacy. 

But they never get anything of any importance from my emails as all important ones to certain people I have to contact are encrypted and can only be unencrypted at the destination because they have the password.  All other3rd party messages are usually sent straight to spam and have no personal details.  I don't see how anyone can breach my privacy that is of any consequence when they have no important details to see.  This breaching of privacy statement is quite misleading in many cases as nothing happens with the nonsensical information they might get.