News and Updates

July 28, 2020 – We’ve had several customers inquire about a phishing attempt which is apparently hitting a lot of our customers.  An email comes in which looks very similar to the screenshot below:

Please note that we do not have any such system and we never go by the name “Internetpro”.   We do own the domain internetpro.net, but the name of the company is Network Solutions, Inc.   If you have responded to this email and given your username and password, please contact us to change it immediately, as  your credentials have been stolen.

Update 8/14/2021:  Another variation is making the rounds.  It look similar to this:

Update 8/28/2021:  Yet another variation…Looks like this:

And Another (9/14/2021):

July 22, 2021 11:30am – There is a widespread internet outage going on.  We have seen issues reaching Microsoft as well as other services using the Akamai CDN (Content Delivery Network).  Akamai’s network touches many public services, and they may not be the primary source of the problem.   We will be posting updates here as we find out more.

This is not an issue with our servers or services and is something affecting the internet as a whole.

Update 11:50am: We are hearing that Amazon Web Services (AWS) is also affected.  Many large sites run on their services, so this is affecting banks, news sites, and others.

Update 11:55am: Down detector https://downdetector.com/ is showing 45 major sites on their homepage.  The site has to be reporting a major issue to be featured there. They specifically list a problem at Akamai as the root issue.

Update 12:05pm:  Akamai reports that they have implemented a fix and services are returning to normal.  We have seen sites coming back online as well.  We expect full normalization within the hour.

If you have any specific questions about this outage, please feel free to contact us via chat below, or text messaging or calling 256-547-6817 or by emailing support@internetpro.net.

We will be conducting planned maintenance on Saturday, July 24th.  This maintenance will mostly affect VPS (virtual private server) customers.  Email systems and shared hosting services will experience little to no interruption.   We will be upgrading the infrastructure for some servers and storage systems.   This maintenance will take longer than usual, so we will be beginning a bit earlier than normal, starting at 10:00pm CDT.

July 24, 2021 9:35pm – Maintenance has started.  Most work is being done “behind the scenes” right now and will not be customer-facing.

Update 10:15pm – Customer facing sites have begun to be affected.

Update 10:35pm – Email services *are* going to be limited for a brief time…Starting now.

Update 10:59pm – Email services restored.

Update 11:30pm – Because of the maintenance, we had taken our proactive alerting system offline (too many alerts would be sent).  However, we missed a shared server having trouble and affecting customer sites.  We’re working on that.

Update 11:40pm – The aforementioned unplanned outage has been resolved.

Update 12:35am – As part of the maintenance continues, our phone system is now offline.

Update 3:00am – Phone system back online and VPS machines are returning.

Update 3:35am – Everything seems to be functioning normally now.  If you have any services which are not performing correctly, please let us know.

If you have any questions or concerns about this work, please email us at support@internetpro.net, call or text 256-547-6817, or reach out through the chat box below.

July 13, 2021 – Sparklight is experiencing a major outage which started about 10:45 CDT.   It has been ongoing now for about 2 hours, so we assume this will be an extended outage.   The issue has taken down their call center as well as their website at https://www.sparklight.com.   Customers in the Gadsden area are also affected.  We have not been able to reach anyone for an ETR (Estimated Time to Repair) and currently are just following reports on Twitter.  We will post updates as we get them here.

Update 3:30pm – Their call center has had service restored.

Update 4:50pm – We are getting reports that Sparklight is beginning to come back online, but we definitely have customers still affected.  No additional information has been posted on their Facebook page.

Some articles related to the outage:
KTVB.COM
Valley News Live
Sparklight Facebook

• June 28, 2021 4:00pm – Comcast seems to be experiencing an issue in south Gadsden.  We began receiving calls as early as 2:30pm, so this seems be an outage that is going to be lasting a bit.  Currently, the estimated time to repair (ETR) is 7:14pm central time.  That time is usually automatically generated for 4 hours from the time they declare that an area is having an outage, so we doubt it is accurate.   Unfortunately, that is all of the information that we currently have.   This outage seems to primarily be affecting the Country Club area.   We’ll post more information here as we get it.

Update 6:25pm – The ETR is still listed as 7:14 p.m. No additional updates are available.

Update 6:35pm – We are told that modems are beginning to come online right now.

Update 7:00pm – Confirmed that things are back online.

May 29, 2021 2:55pm – One of our shared web servers is having some issues and sites it is hosting are currently unreachable.  We are investigating the problem to determine if it is a hardware failure, denial of service attack, or some other problem. Sites on that server will just not respond, so if you currently are having trouble accessing your web site, this is most likely the problem.   We will post updates here as we find out more information.

Update – 3:35pm – Services have been restored.  Unfortunately, we haven’t yet been able to tell exactly what the root cause of the issue was, but we are still investigating it.  If we find anything particularly interesting, we’ll post an update here.

If you have any further concerns regarding this outage or if your site has not yet come back online, please give us a call at 256-547-6817 or email support@internetpro.net.   It is a holiday weekend, but if you hit 8 for support, you will get a technician.

05/11/21 4:42 P.M.

It has been brought to our attention by multiple customers that there has been a bug introduced into Microsoft Outlook from the latest update pushed by Microsoft. Outlook users may notice that they can not read the bodies of their emails and text may disappear while composing emails. Microsoft has acknowledged this issue and are currently working on a resolution.

As a temporary work around you can issue the following command in an Administrative command prompt to roll Office back to the previous version.

“C:\Program Files\Common Files\microsoft shared\ClickToRun\OfficeC2RClient.exe” /update user updatetoversion=16.0.13901.20462

If you are uncomfortable with running this command or need assistance please call us at 256-547-6817 to speak with one of our technicians.

May 10, 2021 – We have been receiving reports from customers using Trend Micro’s Hosted Email Security that are having delayed email.  The emails seem to be coming through, but they are very delayed. The issues started around 11:30am as that is the time of delivery for the last emails some customers are seeing.  Right now, we don’t have any news from Trend Micro regarding a time of resolution but we are working to find out.  Currently this issue is “up stream” of customer servers and is not a problem on their networks.

We will post updates here.

Update 2:24pm – They have posted this statement on their website:

–BEGIN
[ONGOING ISSUE] HES, TMES & PRE-FILTER | INBOUND MAIL LATENCY ISSUE We had an issue in Hosted Email Security and Pre-filter earlier 2021-05-10 23:15 (UTC+8) where there’s a delay in delivery of emails affecting NABU, JP and EMEA region customer. We really apologize for the inconvenience it caused you but we are currently addressing the issue and will do our best to resolve it ASAP. Thank you for your understanding and patience on this matter.

–END

Update 4:26pm – We are starting to see pretty quick deliveries from Trend now.  According to them, no email was lost – just delayed.  It looks like this may now be resolved on their end, but it may take a bit for the email to be delivered.

April 18, 2021 – It seems as though we have been the target of yet another phishing attempt.  Although we don’t post an article about every one (because it would be almost every day), this one seems to be affecting many of our users.  We thought it important to post a reminder that we will not ever send out emails asking you to “verify” your password or to check your online activity.  No legitimate request from any company will be similar to that.  Every one of these emails is an attempt to compromise your password.

And since we are on the subject, there are also *many* attempts coming through phone calls (and emails) telling you that charges have gone through for the purchase you made and to call a number if you didn’t make that purchase.  NEVER call any number about charges to your credit card except for the phone number printed on the back of your card.  And remember, there will NEVER be a reason that customer service needs to take control of your computer to “help” you reverse charges.

Here is a sample of the most recent phishing attempt going around to our customers:

–BEGIN

Internetpro

New device signed in to

support@internetpro.net

Your Internetpro Account was just signed in to from a new Windows device. You’re getting this email to make sure it was you.

Check activity

You can also see security activity

mail/activities/support/ions.com

You received this email to let you know about important changes to your Internetpro Account and services.

© 2021 Internetpro LLC, 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA

–END

April 16, 2021 11:00am – We have received some reports of email delivery not working.  We are currently investigating the issue, and it seems to be related to the quota system.   We will be posting more information here has we determine what is going on.  Currently, affected users are not receiving email and senders to those users are not receiving bounces.

Update 11:20am –  The issue has been resolved.  Apparently, a software update was pushed last night which caused the problem.  The update has been rolled back.  We believe email that encountered the issue was lost, but we are still investigating that.

Update 11:35am – It looks like email affected by this issue *was lost*.  The sender did NOT get a bounce indicating a problem had occurred and the recipient did not receive the message.  This is a worst-case scenario in email delivery, and we do apologize for the trouble.   Please contact anyone who may have sent you an email this morning.  We are looking into the exact time the issue started.

If you have any questions, please contact us via Chat (lower right of your screen) or email support@internetpro.net.