We continue through the last steps of the restoral process across the network, including restoring the newly located additional pocket of data. Once again, the restoration process continues to propagate throughout all servers in our system. Your particular board may not have seen data restored as yet.
We will provide a full and detailed report on network status tomorrow, including information on next steps following completion of the restoral process.
Thank you again for your patience and we hope that our daily communications are helping clarify the status of the network.
Sincerely,
Rob
Robert Labatt
CEO
ezboard, Inc.
The face of nature reflects all of life's ups and downs.
After nearly three weeks of night and day work by your tech staff here at ezboard, we can tell you that by end of day today all content/threads/posts/data that is available to be restored will have been restored.
We are truly sorry for any content that is missing and while our words will not bring back that content, please be assured that we have changed our systems and implemented new technology to ensure that Gold Board content is backed up. For security reasons we are not divulging the changes we have implemented.
In addition to the back-up and restore improvements, we have also implemented new security measures designed to protect the site and your communities from future attacks. Some of these measures will result in slight changes to the way some boards operate. Most of you should see no changes whatsoever.
For some boards, posts were restored chronologically out of order. We will be sorting posts into chronological order tomorrow and Wednesday. We will be monitoring this activity to ensure that it does not create slowness on the boards. If there is slowness on the boards we will have to adjust the process and the sorting process may take more time as a result.
With the restore process completed, we are now turning our attention to the reinstatement of lapsed Gold Community subscriptions and Community Chest funds. The reinstatement of subscriptions and Community Chest funds will take at least a week or two. We will have determined plans for compensation to ezboard Gold communities this week.
Thank you especially to the thousands of ezboarders who took the time to e-mail their support to the team here. I want to share a few quotes from some of you: “We are extremely appreciative of what was restored and we can rebuild what was lost with what was saved.”
And (with apologies to Star Wars fans) one final note from someone who had an idea who the attacker may have been: “Best of luck in catching the criminal (and we both know that's what he/she is). Perhaps check your local cinemas and scan the theatre screening Star Wars. I'd interrogate anyone in costumes first – Storm Troopers and especially Chewbacca.”
We appreciate this ezboarder’s sense of humor. We also understand that the attack should not be taken lightly and that we all want to see the perpetrator caught and convicted.
On that note, we met again with the FBI today and are pursuing several leads. If you have any information that may lead to the conviction of an individual please e-mail it to: legal@ezboard.com. Please refrain from sending us conspiracy theories. The best information is IP addresses of the source of strange activities on your board and pointers to places where someone is bragging about taking down ezboard.
Thank you all again. We deeply regret the attack and the impact it has had you and your peers and we are very grateful for your patience and support through these trying times. We will be continuing our daily updates for the next while.
Sincerely,
Rob
Robert Labatt
CEO
ezboard, Inc.
The face of nature reflects all of life's ups and downs.
Our update today has one important change from yesterday. We have decided to undertake one more global forum and topic reload tonight. Following that reload, all content/threads/posts/data that can be brought restored will have been restored.
We will be following the reload with sorting posts into chronological order tomorrow and Thursday. This activity will be monitored to ensure that it does not create slowness on the boards. If there is slowness on the boards we will have to adjust the process and the sorting process may take more time as a result.
We are now turning our attention to the reinstatement of lapsed Gold Community subscriptions and Community Chest funds. The reinstatement of subscriptions and Community Chest funds will take at least a week or two. We still expect to announce plans for compensation to ezboard Gold communities, and answer other economic questions, this week. Until after those announcements have been made, we will not be responding to emails or posts with questions or demands related to particular communities.
We met again yesterday with the FBI and are identifying and providing additional data for the investigation. If you have any information that may lead to the conviction of an individual please e-mail it to: legal@ezboard.com. Once again, please refrain from sending us conspiracy theories. The best information is IP addresses of the source of strange activities on your board and pointers to places where someone is bragging about taking down ezboard.
Thank you all again. We deeply regret the attack and the impact it has had you and your peers and we are very grateful for your patience and support.
Sincerely,
Rob
Robert Labatt
CEO
ezboard, Inc.
The face of nature reflects all of life's ups and downs.
The final forum and topic reload is continuing to run. Following that reload, all content/threads/posts/data that can be restored will have been restored.
We will be following the reload with sorting posts into chronological order – the sorting will begin this evening. This activity will be monitored to ensure that it does not create slowness on the boards. If there is slowness on the boards we will have to adjust the process and the sorting process may take more time as a result.
We still expect to announce plans for compensation to ezboard Gold communities, and answer other economic questions, this week. Until after those announcements have been made, we will not be responding to emails or posts with compensation questions or demands related to particular communities.
Thank you all again. We deeply regret the attack and the impact it has had on you and your peers and we are very grateful for your patience and support.
Sincerely,
Rob
Robert Labatt
CEO
ezboard, Inc.
The face of nature reflects all of life's ups and downs.
ezBoard Attack Updates
Posted: 6/23/05 14:26
Gold Community Compensation and Economic Questions
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Hello everyone,
Throughout the past few weeks we have been thinking about compensation for the effects of the vicious attack made on all of us. In our review we considered many factors including: how many of the services we provide were impacted, how those services were impacted, and the final outcome of the attack. Through this review we have determined that save for a few hours, all of ezboard’s services were available to users in the last three weeks. Communities were able to post and read as normal. What were not available were the historical posts. Other than the continuity of a thread’s train of thought, the disappearance of historical content did not affect the delivery of services.
With the above in mind, we have tried to balance a number of competing demands: the impact of the data loss and the agreements made between the site and our users in the Terms of Use everyone has agreed to, to name two. Based on this review our conclusions are:
1. Every current Gold Community, and every Gold Community subscription that lapsed since the attack, will receive six weeks of additional subscription credit.
2. Refunds will not be provided for paid subscriptions or unused Community Chest contributions
3. Unused Community Chest contributions may be transferred by the contributor to other ezboard communities, or used for ezSupporter subscriptions.
4. All credits will be applied at the conclusion of the payment data restoration, which we expect to take between 1 and 2 weeks
5. We will consider individual requests for special consideration, and will provide you with a special e-mail address to submit your requests at the conclusion of the payment data restoration. Requests submitted through other means (CS or e-mailing me or other staff directly) will not be responded to.
How did we get to our decision? We have based this policy on three principles. The first is the agreement we have with our users about our responsibility for services. This is clearly defined in the Terms of Use (www.ezboard.com/content/view/40 ) that you agreed to when you registered, and again when you ordered subscription services and or made a payment to a Community Chest. The Terms of Use read
- You understand and agree that the Service is provided "AS-IS" and that ezboard assumes no responsibility or liability for, among other things, (1) any service outages or interruptions (2) the unavailability of particular boards, features or services, (3) the inability to access the Service, (4) the failure or inability to post materials to the Service, (4) the deletion of materials posted to the Service or (5) the failure to store materials posted to the service. (see paragraph 3)
Ezboard makes no warranty that … (ii) the service will be uninterrupted, timely, secure or error-free. (see paragraph 14)
Under the TOU we provide an “as is” service, and you and we have agreed specifically that we are not responsible for the outcome of the attack.
Second, we should all remember that the ezboard service is comprised of many elements, which have been consistently provided over time. Those elements include the service and its attributes (posting, reading, customization etc.), hosting and bandwidth, use and maintenance of the application, provision of customer service. And yes, preparation of backups. Those services were, and are, being provided. The hacker was able to damage one aspect of the service – the deployment of backups -- but that does not take away from what we have provided, and continue to provide, for our users and communities.
Third, in the TOU there is a very clear and consistent policy on all funds paid for our subscription programs:
- Any fees due or paid by you under the CSC program are non-refundable in part or in whole (see paragraph 9)
Regardless of whether they are in Community Chest or a subscription, all funds paid to ezboard have only one use – to pay for ezboard services. We intend to provide the services of your choice for the money you’ve paid. If your community has a positive Community Chest balance, that balance may be used to purchase ezboard services only. The attack does not change our long-standing policy of not providing refunds. This was agreed to by every user each time a service order was placed or payment made.
We realize that for some of you this is not the answer you are seeking. Please keep in mind that the hacker has done damage to everyone in the ezboard universe – the communities, admins, users, and the company. We are all sharing that pain.
We believe that we are making a fair and significant effort to compensate for that damage.
We are moving ahead, to a new beginning. The first step has been the completion of the board restoral process. The next step is the release of a new community engine. We invite you to try it out and we will send invitations in the coming weeks. You should know that the new community engine has solved many of the issues that you have experienced on ezboard in the last year. It is faster, more reliable, offers automated back-up to your home computer, fast restorals, the features you love and new features you’ll want like RSS, blogging and more.
We appreciate your patience and support through this difficult period and look forward to your continued support.
Sincerely,
Robert Labatt
CEO
The face of nature reflects all of life's ups and downs.
The final forum and topic reload has been completed, and we began sorting posts into chronological order last night. We have stopped the resorting process temporarily in the interest of maintaining speed and consistency of service, and will resume the resorting process during off-peak hours.
Our policy on compensation to ezboard Gold communities, and answers to other economic questions, has been posted as a separate Important Announcement at p079.ezboard.com/fezboard...=527.topic
Thank you all again. We appreciate your support and patience during the recovery from the attack, and look forward to working together to both complete the recovery and move ahead with your communities and the network.
Sincerely,
Rob
Robert Labatt
CEO
ezboard, Inc.
The face of nature reflects all of life's ups and downs.
We have one operational update for today. We continue to experience performance issues related to the topic resorting. As a result, we have stopped the process and will proceed with testing on limited servers until we can determine the best way to proceed. In the interest of maintaining speed and consistency of service, we will continue testing during off-peak hours.
We’d also like to clarify a point of apparent confusion with respect to our policy on compensation to ezboard Gold communities, and answers to other economic questions. All Community Chest balances and funds will be restored – we are beginning that process now, as the content restoral process concludes.
Thank you all again. We appreciate your support and patience during the recovery from the attack, and look forward to working together to both complete the recovery and move ahead with your communities and the network.
Sincerely,
Rob
Robert Labatt
CEO
ezboard, Inc.
The face of nature reflects all of life's ups and downs.
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