Month: June 2019

June 18, 2019

Domain Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

When Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web nearly 20 years, it’s very likely that he had at least some envisioning of exactly how pivotal it would be in revolutionizing the world of information dissemination. Whether or not he foresaw just how integral it would be become to the worlds of business and commerce might not be so easy to assume, but of course here we are today in the middle of 2019 and it’s as clear as ever that businesses – any business – that doesn’t have a strong online presence is going to be at a MAJOR disadvantage. While we’re obviously in the business of being a reputable Canadian web hosting provider, here at 4GoodHosting just because we’re in ‘the biz’ doesn’t mean that we’re any less sensitive to the demands of what it takes to have good, strong Internet marketing. After all, nowadays well over half of all business is generated – either directly (online purchasing) or indirectly (direct referral) – via the web. That of course won’t come as a surprise to anyone, or it shouldn’t. It’s summertime now, so let’s say you’re in the market to buy an air conditioner for your often-too-hot condo. Do you start comparing products and prices with visits to retailers in person? Of course not, you may end up buying that product in person, but you’re going to do your researching and comparison online. We could go on further about all of this, but likely enough said. However, as if we didn’t need any more convincing of this – it appears that the first half of 2019 has seen more domain registrations overall worldwide than during the entire year 2018. Talk about an explosion! 351M+ & Counting That’s right, the number of domain name registrations for the first quarter of 2019 reached 351.8 million across all top-level domains (TLDs). All in comparison to the 4th quarter of 2018 which closed with a total of 348.7 million domain registrations for the entire year. For those not as swift with numbers in their head as others (myself included), that’s an increase of 3.1 million, and just so far this year. With the...

June 11, 2019

Domain Related, Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Many people lament the fact that the Internet can’t be an unimpeded digital information source and not have commercial interests to the extent it does. It would be nice if it was a fountain of knowledge that exists for everyone’s own information gathering exclusively, but living in the world we do when there’s a buck to be made somewhere the opportunity will be taken. It’s especially frustrating for people who aren’t big consumers and have never clicked on a link or purchased very little online. Google has recently moved to limit Chrome’s ad-blocking capabilities, and no doubt many of you using an ad-blocker will have already noticed this. Google also announced that this feature will not apply for Google’s paid G Suite Enterprise subscribers. Here at 4GoodHosting, we’re a Canadian web hosting provider who keeps our thumbs on the pulse of the digital world and the prospect of ad-free internet browsing only via paid web browsers would be a pretty big deal for nearly all of us who source information online. According to a recent study, as many as 40% of people browsing the web from laptops use an ad blocker. That’s a big group of people that aren’t viewing Google’s ads. So why’s this happening, and what’s the underlying current here? Beyond Blocked Blockers It’s been reported in the news how Chrome users - and developers of Chrome-friendly, ad-blocker extensions - are none too pleased with Google’s proposed changes to the Chrome Extensions platform. We have to go back to when Google announced Manifest V3, which constituted a set of proposed changes to Google Chrome’s Extensions platform. In it, specific changes to Chrome’s webRequest API were proposed with an eye to limiting the blocking version of it and this potentially would remove blocking options from most events and creating them as observational only. Content blockers would now use a different API instead, known as a ‘declarativeNetRequest.’ The Manifest concluded that this new API is “more performant and offers better privacy guarantees to users.” The reality is though that Google’s Manifest V3 changes will prevent Chrome’s ad-blocker extensions from using the webRequest API as it normally, but it will also...

June 3, 2019

Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

Just a few weeks back we were sharing with you how WhatsApp was recommending users reinstall their app because of it being hacked. Hopefully those of you that use it have already done so, and if you have then you’re probably good to go with instant messaging for the foreseeable future. It turns out however that the problem of hacks, infection, malware and more is a lot more extensive than just one app and one operating system. A quality Canadian web hosting provider is going to be one that appreciates the full extent of just how much digital connectiveness is important to people, and here at 4GoodHosting we have a front row seat to see the way mobile web browsing has pulled away from desktop in as far as being the means of choice for people. It all points to one well-understood reality; we’re turning to our mobile devices for more and more of everything that we do during the day. A good many of us (myself included) have Android phones, and that’s why recent news from Quick Heal Security Labs is really undeniable when it comes to highlighting the extent of the cyber-attack problem for Android users in nor. And that is that apparently over 3 million malware were detected on Android OS in 2018. Big Number, Big Problem We can paint a picture of the severity of this best by sharing some numbers: 3,059 malware infections per day, working out to 2 every minute across the country for Android devices 1,786 adware infections per day, equally 1 per minute 4,670 PUAs per day, and that’s 3 per minute Yes, there’s an awful lot of smartphones out there, and a good many of them are going to have an Android OS. Those numbers are still fairly staggering though, and it really does put the problem in some perspective. And what’s interesting is that despite the rapid rise in cyberattacks on mobile devices, cyber security experts say device owners aren’t taking this as seriously as they should be. Serious Business Experts state that there will be a significant rise in mobile-focused malware and banking trojans, and another major mobile-based threat...