Upcoming Upgrades = Downtime

[rawTOP]

There will be a series of downtimes over the coming week or two. I just want to explain what's happening…

It all started by realizing that I need to encrypt portions of the database. There was a data breach in Spain that exposed details on over 300,000 cam site customers. In the discussion about it on an industry forum it became clear that sites like this need to encrypt certain types of data. New privacy laws (GDPR in Europe as well as an even more strict one that in California) strongly encourage data encryption for user data – especially when it involves "Your money or your life!" (money, health, sex, etc.). Since you guys talk about HIV and other health conditions, and share your sex lives, the laws apply to this site. The irony is that much of what I'll be encrypting is publicly accessible and indexed by Google. But bureaucrats are humorless and probably wouldn't understand how the information being public makes a difference. But even so, there are aspects of this site (your private messages, etc.) that would clearly benefit from encryption. And while what Google sees may not be enough to identify you, if you add to it unseen details like your IP address that are stored in the database, together it might be enough to identify you.

I should pause for a moment and say there are many things that can be encrypted when it comes to the web. Your passwords have always been "hashed" (a form of encryption). The information passed between your web browser and my server have been encrypted for a number of years now. This next step is about encrypting the data in the database that's "at rest" – meaning the files on disk. This won't completely secure the data, but it reduces the number of ways hackers can get the data.

Anyway I did a little research and realized I needed a database upgrade in order to encrypt the data. I asked my host to upgrade me from MySQL 5.6 to MySQL 5.7. They said it would probably take a half hour. So far so good. Then when the upgrade was supposed to happen a more senior tech chimed in and said something like "You're running Debian, and on Debian we only support MariaDB. We don't support MySQL on Debian." We had a back and forth where I considered a major OS upgrade (which would require me to change servers) and finally I just decided on a migration from MySQL to MariaDB. The OS upgrade can wait until next year.

Well, his initial guesstimate is 4-8 hours of downtime for the migration to MariaDB. He has to do some tests to get a more accurate number, but hopefully that will happen in the next few days.

It's unclear whether the encryption can be done during the upgrade or whether it will be done afterwards. If afterwards there will be even more downtime, and it will be substantial since some of the tables that need encryption are large.

If you have questions about any of that, just ask.

[rawTOP]

One other thing I should mention… I strongly encourage you guys to start using DNS over HTTPS ("DoH"). Right now what goes between your web browser and my server is encrypted. But when your computer first resolves the domain name into an IP address – that is done in clear text. So anyone with network access can see that you're visiting this site – they just can't see what on the site you're looking at.

While your OS should support DoH, it probably doesn't. Mozilla is the organization pushing the hardest for DoH, and they've put a work-around in the Firefox browser that lets you get around the fact that your computer doesn't support DoH. Here's how to turn on DoH in Firefox…

1. Go into Preferences
2. Search for "DNS"
3. Click on the Settings button for Network Settings
4. Click the checkbox next to "Enable DNS over HTTPS"
5. Click the OK button

After that point your DNS queries will be encrypted – but just for the stuff you look at in Firefox.

If you want to read further about this, check out this article… https://blog.cloudflare.com/dns-encryption-explained/

The short version is that there are two primary ways to do encrypted DNS – DoH and DoT (DNS over TLS). DoH does the request over the same port as normal web requests (when you're requesting a web page). DoT uses ports that have been traditionally used for DNS. A lot of corporate and government firewalls (even ISPs) force DNS queries to go through their DNS servers. Which means they can monitor the sites you go to and stop you from looking at things they don't like. DoT continues that model – it just encrypts things along the way.

Governments and corporations who want to control what you look at are terrified about DoH. The UK was planning to block porn, but they finally gave up when they figured out that DoH (and VPNs) will make it impossible to do what they were planning to do. DoH will also be a huge help to dissidents around the world – DoH makes it incredibly difficult (more or less impossible) for governments to control what their citizens see. And that's a VERY good thing!

[Hairypdxpig69]

When I try to copy a name in the barebackrt field, or any more info fields, it won’t let me, instead it highlights the rest of the words in that field, except the actual name you are trying to copy. It worked fine until your update. 

I’m using an iPad running 13.2

thanks 

mark

[Guest BreedMeInVegas]

Looks like some emojies may not be resolving and are only showing the url:

This post: 

 

Edited November 26, 2019 by BreedMeInVegas

[rawTOP]

3 hours ago, Hairypdxpig69 said:

When I try to copy a name in the barebackrt field, or any more info fields, it won’t let me, instead it highlights the rest of the words in that field, except the actual name you are trying to copy. It worked fine until your update. 

I’m using an iPad running 13.2

Welcome to iOS 13. I have the same problem in every app on my iPhone since they released v13. It has nothing to do with the upgrade today.

 

50 minutes ago, BreedMeInVegas said:

Looks like some emojies may not be resolving and are only showing the url:

This post: 

 

I really have no clue what you're talking about. I see no emojis on that thread.

That said, there was one change in the upgrade that would affect emojis. But the change was only made to a search index table. So you won't be able to do searches that include emojis. But I can't imagine anyone doing a search with an emoji.

[Hairypdxpig69]

FYI, this has been going on for a while, didn’t start today and copying works fine in other fields 
 

When I try to copy a name in the barebackrt field, or any more info fields, it won’t let me, instead it highlights the rest of the words in that field, except the actual name you are trying to copy. It worked fine until your update. 

I’m using an iPad 

[Guest BreedMeInVegas]

3 hours ago, rawTOP said:

Welcome to iOS 13. I have the same problem in every app on my iPhone since they released v13. It has nothing to do with the upgrade today.

 

I really have no clue what you're talking about. I see no emojis on that thread.

That said, there was one change in the upgrade that would affect emojis. But the change was only made to a search index table. So you won't be able to do searches that include emojis. But I can't imagine anyone doing a search with an emoji.

You can see where the URL is shown in the post in the attached image.  I've seen it a few times, not sure if it's only on my end, but just trying to help per your request to send feedback.  My apologies if it's not an issue.

[paskin]

Not sure if it's related as I haven't been around much lately, but the MemberMap (edited first post of the former Cumdump Network) isn't working, and there's no link to it under"Other" as the edit suggests. 

 

Thanks for all your efforts and hard work regardless.

 

 

[rawTOP]

12 hours ago, Hairypdxpig69 said:

FYI, this has been going on for a while, didn’t start today and copying works fine in other fields 
 

When I try to copy a name in the barebackrt field, or any more info fields, it won’t let me, instead it highlights the rest of the words in that field, except the actual name you are trying to copy. It worked fine until your update. 

I’m using an iPad 

A database upgrade can't cause the problem you describe. What you're describing is an interface issue. Databases have nothing to to with user interface.

 

12 hours ago, BreedMeInVegas said:

You can see where the URL is shown in the post in the attached image.  I've seen it a few times, not sure if it's only on my end, but just trying to help per your request to send feedback.  My apologies if it's not an issue.

This has to do with how URLs are handled differently now. I'll see if I can disable the old emoticon system that was really just inserted images. People will still be able to actual emojis (characters typed in their keyboard).

 

4 hours ago, paskin said:

Not sure if it's related as I haven't been around much lately, but the MemberMap (edited first post of the former Cumdump Network) isn't working, and there's no link to it under"Other" as the edit suggests.

That happened a few weeks ago. It needed an upgrade, was rarely used, and never worked as intended. So I've disabled it.

 

So moving forward, there's a software upgrade that I'll do in a moment and then there will be occasional outages as I encrypt the data that needs encryption.

[rawTOP]

I've encrypted all the sensitive data in the database. I'm seeing similar page load speeds as before. So it seems to have gone well.

Once again – there is no perfect security on the Internet. But there's at least one less thing a hacker can do to compromise this site.

Since none of the problems that were reported were actually related to the database upgrade, I'm going to lock and unpin this thread.