FictCo does NOT have any virus scanners installed on incoming email (often your Internet Provider will have such protections installed.)
Recent spam has contained the following footer:
*-*-* Mail_Scanner: No Virus
*-*-* FICTCO- Anti_Virus Service
*-*-* http://www.fictco.com
The site listed may be your own, rather than FictCo's. Needless to say, this is NOT a legit scan, do NOT open any attachments.
Posted by JVG at 11.23.2004As most of you know, all sites and email accounts hosted on FictCo were inaccessible from approximately 1:30pm until 7pm on Wednesday, November 17th. We'd like to thank you all for your patience and understanding during this downtime, fill you in on what went wrong, and tell you what we're going to do about it. To wit:
WHAT HAPPENED?
According to our Server Farm, "MCI-owned and operated OC-48 and OC-12 fiber strands, including a trunk terminating in our primary datacenter, were accidentally cut by VA Department of Transportation (VDOT)."
WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Basically, a cable on MCI's network got sliced, so the Farm lost its connection to the internet.
IS MY DATA OKAY?
Yes. The servers were not affected, just the ability to access them.
WHAT ABOUT MY EMAIL? WAS IT LOST?
Mail sent to you during the network downtime should be rolling your way slowly but surely. Mail will have been queued up at the sender's location and will eventually be delivered to you.
SHOULDN'T THE SERVER FARM HAVE MULTIPLE CONNECTIONS TO PREVENT THIS VERY OCCURRENCE?
Yes, it should. Apparently, their business has been expanding rapidly, and the outage was more then the current backup can handle. They assure us that they had already ordered new connectivity before this incident to handle their current load.
WHAT IS FICTCO DOING TO MAKE SURE IT DOESN'T HAPPEN AGAIN?
We're keeping a close eye on the Server Farm to make sure they follow through on the solutions they've proposed. So far, they've been straightforward with us, and we have no reason to disbelieve them. And (until today) we've been fairly happy with their reliability. So we're giving them a chance to get things right, and if we're not happy with the way things are going, we'll look at other options.
HOW CAN I GET UPDATES IN THE FUTURE?
We will always email our customers when there is a problem with the network, but in the event that you do not hear from us, we've set up (because of this incident) a new support site at http://www.fictco.info. This URL will always point to a status page that will give you an update on information as we get it, even if the main servers are — knock on wood — down. If you have an email address at a non-FictCo site, send it to us. We'll be sure to keep you updated via that as well.
HOW SORRY IS FICTCO?
Very sorry. We know what a pain it is to lose your website and email for more than half your working day. We also appreciate your patience and understanding, which is why we're issuing everyone a credit on your next bill; for every hour of downtime today, we're giving you a credit of one day.
If you have any other questions, please do email us.
Thanks again for bearing with us. We'll do our best to make sure this doesn't happen again.
Posted by JVG at 11.17.2004