Another one bite the dusts

For my more loyal readers, you are likely aware that in the year 2008 I wrote an article called “Reasons why you shouldn’t use a free forum host” which outlined a few problems with using a free forum host. While it was not my best written work (is any ?) it did explain that if you was to use a free forum host then make sure to keep backups if you can.

A few days ago I learnt that IPBFree went off-line suddenly and so many forum administrators have now finally lost their forums and likely had no backups what so ever. Searching around, all I can see about what happened was that IPBFree was taken off-line relating to DMCA matters which does not surprise me as IPBFree was a forum service filled with warez forums.

Anyhow the only “official” thing I can see about all this is the following e-mail:

I apologize, but I am legally bound to keep secret why everything is missing. Just know that there is a reason and we at IPBFree no longer have control of the situation. I’m sorry for the damage this has caused.

According to the twitter or another staff member they are not updating and there is no intent on them coming back.

Here are the twitters:
http://twitter.com/tomlough
http://twitter.com/catfriedrice

Sorry I lost a lot as well!

If any IPBFree owners are reading this then I would advice the following to you. I would NOT go with another free forum host at all, but rather either pay for IP.Board and host it yourself or get something like phpBB and host it on some free host. At least then you can make backups.

Umm, seems odd this has happened after a major WordPress web host was taken down in the United States or even the massive DDOS attack on major DNS providers that happened yesterday.

Umm, wonder if there is a connection to all this.