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- Joined
- Apr 11, 2009
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- 49,316
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- Location
- Greensboro, NC
- Military Branch
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We have put a ton of hours/energy into upgrading site security in the past 2 weeks. I wanted to thank Om for doing much of that legwork which has been pretty thankless. Some things to let you know about.
First of all, we have moved the site to the SSL format. You don't have to use the more secure 'https:' before the site url (it will change it automatically if you don't), but just be aware that we are an 'SSL'/'https:' site now. I have received an education on this topic. On many of the main BGO pages, you'll immediately note a green lock next to the address window, or dependent on browser, you may see some other indication that you are on a secure page. On some pages of the site, you may not see those identifiers, but trust us, SSL is still activated even on those (don't freak out if you get a 'warning' - you are only getting a warning because we are now an SSL site and many pages contain harmless images that were originally linked from their old 'http:' address). There is nothing unsafe about them, but we have to go in and manually correct every one of them.
We have also spent some significant $$ on increased firewall protection and we will leave it at that as there is no benefit to getting into details.
And we will change some site practices, such as no longer allowing auto-approval of new registrations.
Thanks for your patience as we've worked through (and will continue to work) to strengthen our site security and to prevent future downtimes or inconvenience.
On an unrelated note, we have decided to forego all ads of any kind on BGO going forward, for all members. We have also closed the few Premium member subscriber accounts on Paypal since all of BGO is now ad-free. Those of you who have generously contributed in the past will remain 'Premium Members'. We will soon initiate a donation campaign and offer the 'Premium Member' banner to any member who makes at least a one-time donation of $19.95. As always, we utilize member funds only to improve the site and pay for monthly server costs.
Thanks for your support of BGO - we appreciate all of you and what you bring to this place, or we might not be so interested in keeping it moving forward. Should you run into problems, please contact us via Private Message here or send us a 'Contact Us' email. We will begin resuming several of the add-ons that we temporarily disabled while we worked on site security. You should start to see those accessible again over the course of the next 4 or 5 days.
First of all, we have moved the site to the SSL format. You don't have to use the more secure 'https:' before the site url (it will change it automatically if you don't), but just be aware that we are an 'SSL'/'https:' site now. I have received an education on this topic. On many of the main BGO pages, you'll immediately note a green lock next to the address window, or dependent on browser, you may see some other indication that you are on a secure page. On some pages of the site, you may not see those identifiers, but trust us, SSL is still activated even on those (don't freak out if you get a 'warning' - you are only getting a warning because we are now an SSL site and many pages contain harmless images that were originally linked from their old 'http:' address). There is nothing unsafe about them, but we have to go in and manually correct every one of them.
We have also spent some significant $$ on increased firewall protection and we will leave it at that as there is no benefit to getting into details.
And we will change some site practices, such as no longer allowing auto-approval of new registrations.
Thanks for your patience as we've worked through (and will continue to work) to strengthen our site security and to prevent future downtimes or inconvenience.
On an unrelated note, we have decided to forego all ads of any kind on BGO going forward, for all members. We have also closed the few Premium member subscriber accounts on Paypal since all of BGO is now ad-free. Those of you who have generously contributed in the past will remain 'Premium Members'. We will soon initiate a donation campaign and offer the 'Premium Member' banner to any member who makes at least a one-time donation of $19.95. As always, we utilize member funds only to improve the site and pay for monthly server costs.
Thanks for your support of BGO - we appreciate all of you and what you bring to this place, or we might not be so interested in keeping it moving forward. Should you run into problems, please contact us via Private Message here or send us a 'Contact Us' email. We will begin resuming several of the add-ons that we temporarily disabled while we worked on site security. You should start to see those accessible again over the course of the next 4 or 5 days.
There are some auto forms you can fill out. Yet to get even an automated 'we received your request' reply. I'm not hopeful I can get it resolved. And we can't post BGO content on Twitter unless it is resolved. So that may be the end of our Twitter participation...