We’ve been Google-free for about three weeks now – and the site is recovering, both functionally and financially. 
Functionally, you may have noticed it loads faster – an unexpected (to us) perk of losing all the Google Ads. We’ve also enjoyed a significant increase in traffic – up to about 100,000 unique visitors a month now and growing. That’s all right for a site that hasn’t got any corporate “pull” and which relies almost entirely on word of mouth (and link, via friends such as Lew Rockwell) to help spread the word.
We’ve also almost recovered the previous two month’s server costs and other losses following our de-listing by Google.
But – and here’s where it gets interesting (and creepy):
Shortly after we divorced Google, and the site began to recover, we began to get hit by DOS (Denial of Service) attacks that either crashed our servers or made it next to impossible for anyone – me included – to access the site for hours at a time. The worst one – so far – happened yesterday, as many of you already know. The site was down/not working properly from around lunchtime to around 9 p.m. Sunday evening. It took Dom all that time to sort it out. Here’s a look-see:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cxQlgpnJdX4
We expect these attacks to continue and hope you’ll bear with us.
Which brings me back to the financial part. Your support has helped us to make up the losses (Adsense) we incurred during July/the first part of August, after we got “Googled.” We’re hoping enough of you will continue to support us such that we’ll be able to continue covering our nut, make a little money in the process – and (wish list item) be in a position to eventually upgrade our servers/bandwidth to deal with these DOS attacks.
So, again – thank you for your support so far – and thank you in advance for your support in the days to come.
Ah, ya got no article I can tag this onto, so I’ll just throw this out there: One bit you guys might be interested in, maybe:
“If the internet gets regulated, who do you think the Gov will turn to for the infrastructure and resources to govern the internet ???
Cap Gemini ????”
http://mindbodypolitic.com/2013/08/26/anonymous-some-interesting-connections/
…Makes me want to throw up.
Why do you think NSA and FBI already have their own rooms at everyone’s Network Operations Center. FISA Court my ass. Plus, you won’t get online without your ID anyway.
Almost forgot. It will be sold to the cows to track people with towels on their heads and to protect the children from predators & kiddie porn. We are all up for that, aren’t we comrades?
You left out that it’ll be used on PRISONERS first.
Go to prison, get your RFID or active GPS.
Then, it’ll be used on parolees as well (no deactivation).
Then, sex offenders and the like will have to be ALWAYS monitored.
Then, it’ll be sold to scared parents in another “Stranger Danger” fest, so the children can be found…
After that? Well, just let a few generations die off, and make it part of the delivery-room activities. No one will even question it! Why, the hospital is just PROTECTING the child to make sure it goes home with Mommy!
I gotta admit – this sort of progression makes me think Agenda 21 isn’t so bad. Kill off the control freaks, the sycophants, the Statists… That will de facto take care of the Elites, and leave the rest of us FREE.
Of course, THEY want it the other way around: Separate evolutionary streams, Morlocks and Eloi. they should recall how THAT turned out… Morlocks EAT Eloi. (Not to mention, even with genetic engineering, you have certain issues – clones become sterile, I understand – and a small pool of genes becomes too rarified to support life, resulting in inbred genetic defects. Like european royalty.)
That’s right. Anyone who had a halfway-decent ISP in the past may remember the alt.binaries newsgroups. It took some technical ability to use but one could find all sorts of things there – MP3s, movies, porn, etc., it was a flea market bootlegger’s dream come true. It took some time, but eventually the internet censors, after having busied themselves for years with playing whack-a-mole with the likes of Napster, Kazaa, and others, put their sights on the binaries newsgroups. “They’re full of child pornography!” and “Think about the chillllllllldreeeennnn!”, they howled – at least, the ones who weren’t getting a private thrill at what they found there. As expected, most larger, corporate-owned ISPs fell all over themselves to be seen “taking action on this latest threat”.
I’m sure that the fact that most ISPs stopped carrying all binaries newsgroups, thereby eliminating those associated with content piracy, was pure coincidence. I’m also sure that the RIAA and MPAA had absolutely, positively, categorically no involvement whatsoever with the whole debacle.
I’d suggest even going one step further and setting up the entire site to run over SSL. At least that will make it a bit more work for any “in-line” snoopers.
Notice that all Google search results are coming back via an encrypted connection. Not that they have any compunctions against the alphabet soup agencies getting access to what people are searching for – Google just wants to make sure they have to pay for it instead of getting it for free via their sniffers.
Id agree with that.
I’d also back an effort to nuke ANYTHING google-related – including the Chrome browser.
I found out last night when confirming my CNN issues to give Dom a full picture – half of the Chrome browser is detected as malware. And it’s not CORRUPTED by this stuff – it’s PART OF GOOGLE.
HTTPS won’t matter if the browser is in on it – it’s not a “man in the middle” attack, but a forked process. Regardless what YOU intend – something else can happen.
An analogy would be, give a confidential document to someone to copy. They make TWO copies, bring you one, and mail the other. So, you’re using HTTPS, the connectino between the browser and the site is fine – but the browser sends a second NON-HTTPS stream to someone else, who warehouses it and uses it against you later.
Anybody ever do online shopping from home? Say, looking for lingerie for a significant other? Then you login from work, and the ads are all for lingerie?
That’s Google in action – you don’t need to use Chrome, or even sign in – Happens in IE 9, behind a firewall, using a corporate user ID, with no connection to my home (non-work-controlled) PC.
I’m switching to Linux ASAP, and learning how to harden the effing thing. (and same with Windows, which I’ll need to keep for work-purposes.)
I guess it’s back to Firefox. Or maybe I’ll make a total break and go to Opera? Not sure yet.
Pity – I LIKED Chrome browser. But I won’t sleep with someone with STDs – why should I use software I know is infected? With ANYTHING?
Anything from Google is essentially “compromised”. Why trust bastards who bend over backwards to give access to those who wish to screw you? Answer: you don’t!
Jean wrote, “I’m switching to Linux ASAP, and learning how to harden the effing thing.”
I wish you’d do a blog on that.
I’ve wanted to do the same since ’95.
…Just never did.
I never understood why organizations would pay for endless MS updates.
I thought that would be the end of them.
If the back doors MS provides isn’t the end of them, well, CEO’s and such really are stupid.
Downshift, I know the feeling. I loaded Ubuntu Linux on my older laptop. It works, but coming from Windows there is a definite learning curve to it. Beyond what the give you, which is good, the good old point and click installs & such require a lot more “manual” understanding and setup.
As a temporary fix get the “TOR browser” download. Funny as hell to have Yahoo & Google mail ask for more confirmation on my emails because they sense I am in Sweden or some other country.
Garysco wrote, “Yahoo & Google mail ask for more confirmation on my emails because they sense I am in Sweden or some other country.”
Ha! That is funny just reading it. And, that’s way cool.
I enjoyed Knoppix. Things ran kinda hot though. Wish I wouldn’t of stopped there.
At the same time, I almost like my ISP (and likely MS) selling my visiting points to other vendors. Do you think that spreads the word?
I got a flyer from my ISP asking me if I wanted to Opt Out ( I had 30 days and took too long) I almost think that’s a good thing.
Now that more than my ISP knows I visit EPA. Think that makes a difference in a small way?
It’s like, cookies ‘On” all the time and I’m naked. [That’s what I thought about FakeBook when I tested the waters too (TVYM KDC) and I didn’t like it. Hopefully I won’t feel the same way about this approach.] … Ha. No, I’ll just get a knock/pound on the door from Clover’s friends some night at 2 A.M.?
What’s that ,’Moo-Lan.lube’ thing they say?
@Downshift – “What’s that ,’Moo-Lan.lube’ thing they say?”.
Put that symbol with the crossed AR-15’s on the front door. Slows down the forced entry team and shoos the Watchtower people away.
Gary, Ubuntu wasn’t to my liking, so I tried Puppy Linux about 6 years ago. It was very user friendly, and with the seamonkey browser was great for simple internet surfing. Puppy is a small OS that can coexist on your hard drive with XP.
The version I used was 85meg in size. You can boot your PC up on Puppy from the CDROM drive and the OS runs in RAM with no need to actually install it on your hard drive.
http://puppylinux.org/main/Overview%20and%20Getting%20Started.htm
Well, Hell, Ed says, Get that Puppy!
…Ok, I’m done.
Ha.Ha. “puppy” I’ll have to check that out later in the A.M.
Whatever I can do, you got it. BTW, I read that DOS attacks are illegal and there’s some jail time involved in the US, at least. The article I read said that a hacker could get 10 years under UK law.
Such attacks are vandalism, like arson or breaking windows would be to a brick&mortar business location. It’s likely that the ones doing this to epa.com aren’t worried about the legal aspects of their criminal actions.