Category: Domain Related

December 29, 2014

Domain Related, Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 1 minutes

... the Pentagon has quietly built a multibillion-dollar cyberwarfare capability and trained its commanders to integrate these weapons into their battlefield plans. U.S. Cyber Command was officially stood up in 2010, based at Fort Meade in the Maryland suburbs of the nation’s capital, consolidating intelligence and cyberwarfare capabilities of the Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines under one house. Soon, billions of dollars were being invested in the concept that cyberattackers targeting America should be prepared to sustain their own damage. Little has been discussed in public about U.S. Cyber Command’s specific capabilities since, though budget documents detail a growing commitment to this form of warfare. The Pentagon’s cyberwarfare budget has grown from $3.9 billion in 2013 to $4.7 billion in 2014 and an estimated $5.1 billion in 2015. More at: original Washington Times December 22nd Article Link For an additional layer of internet security from many forms of spying and hacking, see information about our SSL certificates .

December 22, 2014

Domain Related, Hosting Related, SEO Related

Reading Time: 5 minutes

With the release of the Web Index Rankings, that measure economic, social and political benefits from countries across the world on December 11, there are some interesting results. The United Kingdom, as well as the Scandinavian countries continue to lead the index, and Canada ranks sixteenth. The World Wide Web Foundation began to produce this index in 2012. The Foundation utilizes a wide variety of data that measure the web's contribution to the world in the areas of social, political and economic progress. The report furthers that the web has allowed a level-playing field with unprecedented access to information as allowed by Sir Time Berners-Lee and CERN when they choose not to patent the creation of the web. The report states, “Today, armed with little more than a smart phone, anyone-- regardless of where they were born and or how much they earn-- can start a business, record a music video, crowd fund an invention, take courses with Nobel Prize- winning professors, or even launch a successful campaign for office.” In this new index, some chilling statistics have come back to the Foundation. Up thirty two percent from last years numbers, political censorship has increased to forty percent. This included the blocking of political or socially sensitive content. In the news lately has been the issue of net neutrality both here in Canada and the United States, and there is a lack of net neutrality in seventy four percent of countries. It should be noted that according to the Sunlight Foundation, only one percent of the US public is opposed to net neutrality, and this is after a plea from late night show host John Oliver on Last Week Tonight. Even with an estimated 1.8 billion internet users still with little to no right for privacy nor freedom of expression, the governmental control of the web continues to this day. read_more The bad news continues, with an increase of governments bypassing legal frameworks that are in position to protect citizens from government snooping, mainly on our communications, up to eighty four percent. It was at sixty three percent in the last index, and actions like British emergency legislation that was...

December 15, 2014

Domain Related, Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 15 minutes

What are we talking about in this creative original blog post? How about a freshly deployed “blank content” completely-isolated-new-private-virtual-internet-environment; just like a starter internet on a different planet. In other words, imagine being on an internet where you and your friends are the only inhabitants of Mars but you are all connected through a common (and private) internet on the surface of that distant planet. We think you should be able to deploy and command your own completely isolated Virtual Private Internet (VPI) or perhaps better marketing name Virtual Private Planet (VPP); just add users! ) In this new age of omnipresent internet surveillance/spying/intrusions/ddos attacks, etc and creeping and shadowy “Orwellian” state takeovers, we here at 4GoodHosting thought thinking-up a new service offering, as private and secure as possible, could be a big value-add overall for our customers. So does the idea of a Virtual Private Server(VPS) still sound impressive? Well, try this instead... Virtual Private Internet(VPI) - or Virtual Private Planet (VPP - as private and secure as you and your friends and family living on another extremely distant planet and interacting over your own private internet). "Imagine" a virtual instance of an entirely other pre-configured "encapsulated internet" with almost no content stored in it, maybe just a couple of images and some started 'hello world!' webpages and templates and web builder programs. What if all “content” and logfiles were deleted from this internet, with just open-source webservers and virtualization software (vps - virtual private servers, instead of physical ones) and applications, programming languages, and scripts left on it? And then compiled and condensed into a VPI/VPP container with extra starter terabytes of storage (deeply encrypted by the VPP container) available only to itself and using its own entirely unique ip address protocol? As the whole container is encrypted other than its login sevice, so ,you would need to authenticate into, to get onto, that virtual private internet. Inside it, or on it, you could only request webpages and emails and voice communications from the other users within that self-contained virtual internet. Your ‘allowed-in’ VPI/VPP users can even pick their fantasy geographical location in your virtual fantasy world. Your...

December 2, 2014

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

In this day and age being paid using Bitcoins can be a confusing and perplexing and even a daunting experience. Yet current buzz is that the Bank of Canada is considering the advantages of using so called encrypted-currencies, notably Bitcoin. Canadian companies may be able to benefit in various ways by accepting bitcoin and then in turn exchanging those for Canadian dollars. What should business owners be thinking about cryptocurrencies today and into the next year? Would it ever be advantageous to pay your employees or refund your customers with bitcoins? You might want to check out the Bitcoin Alliance of Canada which explores these type of topics. The Bitcoin Alliance website states it is: “Dedicated to raising awareness of bitcoin among Canadian consumers, merchants, and policy makers; to promoting bitcoin adoption in Canada; and to furthering study and research in bitcoin." The need for bitcoin today This complex issue can be boiled down to some basic questions: “What percentage of people are aware of bitcoin at this time?” “What is the general impression and trust of bitcoin as an alternative currency?” “What is the real benefit for a company that isn’t involved in bitcoin as of yet?” The answer is, unless your customers already believe and and feel comfortable with bitcoin, then otherwise results won't be so good or 'worth it'. However there are some companies that are beginning to trade with bitcoins. For example, the electronics store NewEgg began accepting bitcoins from Canadian customers in June 2014. It even offered bitcoin-only deals for Black Friday. Also, Overstock.com started accepting bitcoin about a year ago and they now process about $15,000 per day in the encrypted currency. Canadian examples are: BitDeals.ca, Best Sleep Centre, and hundreds of smaller business ranging from restaurants, coffee shops, dentists, butchers, auto supply stores, and beauty spas and others. You can view a more extensive listing of them here. There are some good reasons to offer bitcoin payment. A customer may feel good buying a product (or service) that is shipped and to make the payment without having to be send private payment information, that they may fear will eventually get leaked somewhere. Even...

November 18, 2014

Domain Related, Hosting Related, Security, Security Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

Did you know what google gives a very slight ranking boost to websites that use SSL (https://...) encryption? There are other more significant reasons for your website to offer secure connections to your website visitors, especially if your website conducts ecommerce or credit card transactions. Nowadays, people everywhere have to purchase a SSL certificate if they want to offer secure/private connections to their website visitors. However, that might just be a thing of the past with https://letsencrypt.org/2014/11/18/announcing-lets-encrypt.html As their website explains: “ The challenge is server certificates. The anchor for any TLS-protected communication is a public-key certificate which demonstrates that the server you’re actually talking to is the server you intended to talk to. For many server operators, getting even a basic server certificate is just too much of a hassle. The application process can be confusing. It usually costs money. It’s tricky to install correctly. It’s a pain to update. Let’s Encrypt is a new free certificate authority, built on a foundation of cooperation and openness, that lets everyone be up and running with basic server certificates for their domains through a simple one-click process. Mozilla Corporation, Cisco Systems, Inc., Akamai Technologies, Electronic Frontier Foundation, IdenTrust, Inc., and researchers at the University of Michigan are working through the Internet Security Research Group (“ISRG”), a California public benefit corporation, to deliver this much-needed infrastructure in Q2 2015. The ISRG welcomes other organizations dedicated to the same ideal of ubiquitous, open Internet security. The key principles behind Let’s Encrypt are: Free: Anyone who owns a domain can get a certificate validated for that domain at zero cost. Automatic:The entire enrollment process for certificates occurs painlessly during the server’s native installation or configuration process, while renewal occurs automatically in the background. Secure:Let’s Encrypt will serve as a platform for implementing modern security techniques and best practices. Transparent:All records of certificate issuance and revocation will be available to anyone who wishes to inspect them. Open:The automated issuance and renewal protocol will be an open standard and as much of the software as possible will be open source. Cooperative:Much like the underlying Internet protocols themselves, Let’s Encrypt is a joint effort to benefit the...

November 6, 2014

Domain Related

Reading Time: 8 minutes

As a business owner, you probably know your business inside an out, but what about your web hosting service? How well do you know web hosting? You might find it hard to believe, but your web hosting company can make or break your business. A fast, reliable host means your web traffic gets what it’s looking for – a fast site that doesn’t throw any errors. A slow web host discourages users, creates a loss in sales, and it can even harm your rank in search engines. Canadian web hosts are fast and affordable. Here are some tips when you’re looking for a reliable web host. Do Your Hosting Resources Scale? As with any business, you should not only look at your current state but your future. Not every business succeeds, but if you take off, you need a host that can handle speed and resources needed for large volumes of traffic. Most businesses also see seasonal traffic, which means the industry is popular for a part of the year, it dies down a bit, and then traffic skyrockets again. For instance, the diet industry is slow at the last quarter of the year, and then it becomes a very popular topic in January when everyone wants to lose holiday weight. Does your host offer the right resources to handle the rush? To summarize, the traffic you have now might not represent what you could have in a few months or a year. If your web hosting account is somewhat slow now, what happens when you increase your traffic? Resource usage spikes and the website gets even slower. Canadian web hosting infrastructure is rated among the top 10 in the world. Not only do you get fast bandwidth, but Canadian hosting offers the latest in technology, just like its US counterparts. What Type of Business Do You Have? There are generally three types of online businesses (although there are some variances): affiliates, content sites, and ecommerce. An affiliate site uses web traffic to generate sales to other sites, content sites generally make money on sales such as a blog with Adsense, and an ecommerce store makes money by selling product...

October 22, 2014

Domain Related

Reading Time: 8 minutes

If you run a .ca domain or a site that targets Canadian customers, you should look for a Canadian web hosting company. Canadian web hosting companies offer you the right infrastructure, SEO, workforce, and connection speed you need to service Canada web traffic. If you can’t decide on whether or not you want to host in Canada versus another country, here are some reasons why you want to go the Canadian route. Canadian Infrastructure Canadian infrastructure is fast. Fast is what you need for your users. Statistically speaking, you lose a percentage of your traffic for each second that it takes for your website to load. For instance, if your site takes six seconds to load, you can lose up to 50% of your traffic versus losing only 30% of your traffic if it takes 5 seconds to load. In other words, your site should load as quickly as possible. You can’t control the speed of your host’s servers and the backbone network (such as fiber cabling) that connects the host’s data center to the Internet. However, you can choose the right hosting and fast hosting is a part of a Canadian host’s infrastructure. Canadian infrastructure has 100megabit-1gigabit since 2011, which is faster than the average US hosting company. Canadian hosts have the latest in technology as well, so you receive the most up-to-date equipment when purchasing hosting services. Overall, Canada’s Internet services are ranked among the top 10 in the world in terms of speed, reliability and performance. Workforce and Website Support With any website, there comes a time when you need support. Support comes in several forms including account help, technical services and website uptime. All of these issues affect your bottom line, so you should look for a hosting company that offers the best in web hosting support. A good company will offer 100% uptime with 24 hour support, 7 days a week. Something you won’t get from most other web hosting companies outside of Canada is the friendly, courteous support and educated staff. Canadian web hosting staff are highly educated and skilled. Compared to the US, Canada has a better educational system and is ranked in...

October 14, 2014

Domain Related, Hosting Related

Reading Time: 3 minutes

On a Wednesday afternoon in the first week of October 2014 in Palo Alto California, some of biggest names in technology, together many less famous others, were talking with harsh words in response to the ongoing US government surveillance scandal; during a meeting to discuss the potential of the ever creeping state funded spying activities. The event included Google chairman Eric Schmidt, Microsoft's Brad Smith, and Dropbox representative Ramsey Homsany, and a long list of others. Breaking the Internet? They spoke their thoughts on the matter to a Senator from Oregon, Ron Wyden. Google's CEO warned that the impact of all the hyper-surveillance is “severe and getting worse." Fired NSA employee Edward Snowden exposed the US government’s creepy and secretive multi-billion dollar surveillance activities; by coping thousands of official documents (perhaps to a tiny memory card) that clearly outlined the mass surveillance of regular internet user to be far more extensive than the ever-gullible population were aware of. "We're going to wind up breaking the Internet," Google's chief added. World-wide effects and ramifications on the US economy The concerned interests focused on the sequence of issues... read_more after of the uncovering of the massively illegal and unconstitutional mass spying on all of our digital 'effects'. They talked about how some governments are already seeking to make technology companies build their data centers <i>within</i> their borders in order to improve security (from the NSA spies and peeping-toms). The tech companies generally said, if most countries end up following that path the costs would be astronomical would without any doubt damage the US economy. Example fallout from it all has already hit American companies such as Verizon; which recently lost its contract with the German government over concerns about network security. Snowden’s documents pointed out that more than 100 world leaders were swept in for surveillance by the NSA, with German leader Angela Merkel as a leading example. Lack of trust in Ecommerce? Bradly Smith, of Microsoft, raised concerns at the meeting, stating that "in the same way as someone wouldn’t leave their money with a bank they don’t trust, nor would they use an Internet they don’t trust." "The trust element...

October 6, 2014

Domain Related

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Forward: There seems to be quite a lot of confusion around regarding the origin of the internet, which has been around since the 1960s, and began as a US DoD project known as ARPANET, and the origin of world wide web, which has only been around since about 1990. Mr. Berners-Lee, a former employee of CERN and Belgian computer scientist Robert Cailliau proposed in 1990 to use hypertext "to link and access information of various kinds as a web of nodes in which the user can browse at will". The first web browser and web server was created by Mr. Berners-Lee using a Next workstation. Long before the web, the internet existed in the form of newsgroups, e-mail, and FTP sites for exchanging files. Tim, currently aged 59, is a director at the World Wide Web Consortium ( http://www.w3.org ), a think-tank which publishes guidelines for the future development of the world wide web. So the British man generally mistaken or over-rated “inventor of the internet” is still quite great guy regardless because he is using his status for the protection of internet freedoms. On Saturday the 27th of September, at the London 'Web We Want' festival concerning the future of the internet, he gave a speech asserting that freedom over the internet is under attack/threat by governments and corporations who are in many ways independently and jointly interested in controlling the web; for additional profit and also tightened over-control over all our lives. He called for a “Bill of Rights” that would guarantee all of us independence on the internet and protect end-user privacy. Much like an internet version of the Magna Carta, a famous English charter from the 13th century enshrining and guaranteeing basic rights & freedoms. read_more "If a company can control your access to the internet, if they can control which websites they go to, then they have tremendous control over your life," he went on to say ... "If a Government can block you going to, for example, the opposition's political pages, then they can give you a blinkered view of reality to keep themselves in power. Suddenly the power to abuse the open internet...