United Brachial Plexus Network, Inc.

The 'other' TBPI Board, the one set up by the TBPI Group has been having real bad problems these past few days, and this is just a note explaining why for anyone who has been trying to post there or even logon to them.

Ezboard, the webhosting company who hosts our boards has been hacked..apparently...with the result that every single board that they host, and there are over 10,000, has been affected in some way.

We have been lucky in so far as we have lost only 3 out of the ten forums we have there, sadly including the pain management diary that Yeti wrote for us. (Other boards hosted by them have reported that they have lost everything...years of posts in some cases, 10's of thousands plus all their membership lists)

Ezboard have been assuring us for the past three days that they will try and restore the boards from their regular backups, but to date, this hasn't happened. In fact, things have become worse, and we are now losing old topics, from when the boards were first set up.

I closed down all the forums we had left yesterday in an effort to save what we have, and I also managed to set up a temporary forum yesterday which was working well up until today.

As of around 1 p.m. BST today, no-one as far as I know can now logon on to the boards at all, including me, and I have no idea how long this situation will continue. I can't even access their help boards to check up on the restoral process, even if it does actually happen.

So, many apologies to anyone who has been trying to look in there or post. All this is out of my hands I'm afraid and I am absolutely gutted that I can't do anything about it.

I will hang on for another 24-48 hours, but in the meantime, I will be looking around to set up the boards somewhere else as I am disgusted at certain ways that Ezboard have handled (mishandled) this crisis that they are having. I wouldn't have minded too much if our boards were free...they aren't. They are paid for by very kind people donating money to keep them going.

Any help or suggestions regarding this mess will be very gratefully received...

Lizzy B :0(

PS If anyone manages to logon to the messageboards, will they please let me know? my email is liz@tbpi-group.org messageboards link is on the TBPI website home page http://www.tbpi-group.org

Many thanks

I get a Server Maintenance Alert.... I hope things clear up around there....

COurt xx

Liz,

I am so sorry to hear this and I hope things are up and running again soon and esp. that you haven't lots all the history of your posts.

Nancy

Liz and all tbpi/uk posters.

I am so sorry to hear about this problem.
I really feel bad about your loosing all the old posts they are so supportive for newbies...
I hope things work out SOON and maybe you can get your older posts back.

Kath

Liz, sooo sorry this is happening.. you have slaved away getting that site going and building on that and then this happens, very sad indeed. Your ongoing efforts are and have been VERY much appreciated by all who visited there, i really hope things work out..

Dave

I just posted.... hmmmmm any luck with the stuff that was LOST!?

COurt xx

Hi Court...no, no luck yet..I believe that Ezboard are 'working' on it. We have lost almost everything now. From yesterday, we lost the contents of 4 more forums and a good bit more off the main forum.

What has really made me mad is the fact I couldn't get in there for hours yesterday to to at least try and save some more stuff. I can't believe that Ezboard had no contingency plan for an attack on this scale..apparently, they kept their backups on a password protected machine actually linked to the servers.

If this is true, then I can't believe that a company as big as Ezboard would be so stupid...even I, as an almost complete layman where computers are concerned can see that the utter stupidity of doing that.

Seems the hacker has destroyed a good percentage of all their backups so we have little to no chance of getting anything back.

Anyway, the temporary forum is working...for now anyway so please don't be put off from posting there. As usual, please let me know via email if you get any error messages when trying to post. Because they are (presumably) working on all the servers one at a time, the whole system is prone to slowness, so please be patient. If it times out, please try again later.

Many thanks for everyones patience over this...mine is just about at the end...

Lizzy B