Is phpbbserver.com permanently dead?

[rrraven]

I know phpbbserver.com is a third party host, but I thought there might be users here who knew more about what's going on with this company. I've been admin for a message board running there (using an older version of phpBB) for about five years. Our message board is currently not responding, and the main domain at phpbbserver.com (where one would ordinarily sign up new forums) is also not responding. Strangely, I am not finding any reports about this in my searches. Perhaps most of its users had moved on to other hosts. I'd certainly considered it, but with our large existing userbase it seemed simpler to just maintain status quo.

I'd love to learn if anyone know what happened to phpbbserver, or if there are any options for retrieving any parts of what was there. At first I thought it was a temporary outage and would return when they got it back up, but I am losing hope of that now...

[KevC]

Your guess is as good as ours.

If you can't access anything you have no way of retrieving any of the users or posts.

[Genaddict]

I am having this problem too. It did happen once before, I was advised to contact noeclue, they said it was due to a new server and it came back on. Now it has happened again and I cant even contact noeclue

[Pony99CA]

Have you tried contacting the Admin in their WHOIS entry?

Admin Name: WHOISGUARD PROTECTED
Admin Organization: WHOISGUARD, INC.
Admin Street: P.O. BOX 0823-03411
Admin City: PANAMA
Admin State/Province: PANAMA
Admin Postal Code: 00000
Admin Country: PA
Admin Phone: +507.8365503
Admin Phone Ext:
Admin Fax: +51.17057182
Admin Fax Ext:
Admin Email: [email protected]

It's one of those privacy services, but maybe they can help.

Steve

[Marshalrusty]

I've received about a dozen emails regarding this, one from an individual adamantly threatening to sue us. Unfortunately, we really have no idea what's going on there. I personally had not come across phpbbserver.com until these emails, as otherwise we would have had words about their name, which is a violation of the phpBB trademark.

If you've ever paid them any money, tracing where those payments went would be a good start to tracking them down. Of course, if their ToS was written "well", then you probably don't have any rights to the data, and they have no incentive to hand it over.

[Plastic Nev.]

Another third party seems to have also died, namely armleg.com, their own website is down and also the forums they hosted, and have been for nearly two weeks now, no news can be found anywhere else on the net.
So if anyone knows anything it would be good to hear.

[Noxwizard]

These hosts all share a common name server provider: bubybuby.com
However, the glue records appear to be broken as bubybuby's own name servers are now running through arevy.com.

Let's start at the .com TLD name servers to see where DNS is failing. First, look up phpbbserver.com:
nslookup -type=A phpbbserver.com. a.gtld-servers.net

Code: Select all

Name:    phpbbserver.com
Served by:
- ns1.bubybuby.com
          64.237.54.179
          phpbbserver.com
- ns2.bubybuby.com
          64.237.54.179
          phpbbserver.com

It's served by ns1/ns2.bubybuby.com. Let's verify that those records are correct and lookup ns1.bubybuby.com manually.

nslookup -type=A ns1.bubybuby.com. a.gtld-servers.net

Code: Select all

Name:    ns1.bubybuby.com
Served by:
- ns1.arevy.com
          142.54.163.34
          bubybuby.com
- ns2.arevy.com
          142.54.163.34
          bubybuby.com

They're served by ns1/ns2.arevy.com. I won't show the lookup for verifying the arevy addresses, but they're correct. Now, we ask ns1.arevy.com about ns1.bubybuby.com.

nslookup -type=A ns1.bubybuby.com. 142.54.163.34

Code: Select all

*** UnKnown can't find ns1.bubybuby.com.: Non-existent domain

So arevy knows nothing about the bubybuby name servers. However, the TLD records have entries pointing to 64.237.54.179. If we lookup phpbbserver.com there, it just times out.

nslookup -type=A phpbbserver.com. 64.237.54.179

Code: Select all

DNS request timed out.
    timeout was 2 seconds.
*** Request to UnKnown timed-out

They may be changing their infrastructure and forgot to update some records, or they've abandoned the service. It's hard to say. Another note of interest is that the phpbbserver.com domain name expires in under 3 weeks. It may auto-renew, who knows.

[Kailey]

otherwise we would have had words about their name, which is a violation of the phpBB trademark.

I'm not a trademark lawyer, but what about others? A quick google search comes up with prophpbb, phpbbhs, phpbbhost, etc.

[RMcGirr83]

phpBB3bbcodes even

[Lumpy Burgertushie]

and two of mine as well.

robert

edit: would that also include things like phpbb.nl or any of the other internationl sites?

[T0ny]

Another third party seems to have also died, namely armleg.com
So if anyone knows anything it would be good to hear.

armleg.com and phpbbserver.com are (were) both run by the same company, "noeclue pte ltd"

If it helps, the domain registration details from earlier this year (before they were hidden behind whoisguard) were

Code: Select all

Registrant Name: SOFIAN WIJAYA
Registrant Organization: NOECLUE PTE LTD
Registrant Street: 2 RIVER VALLEY CLOSE #12-04
Registrant Street: THE REGALIA
Registrant City: SINGAPORE
Registrant State/Province: SINGAPORE
Registrant Postal Code: 238428
Registrant Country: SG
Registrant Phone: +65.91899175
Registrant Phone Ext:
Registrant Fax: +1.5555555555
Registrant Fax Ext:
Registrant Email: [email protected]

also the email address [email protected] appears to be theirs (its in a lot of their DNS records)

[Marshalrusty]

otherwise we would have had words about their name, which is a violation of the phpBB trademark.

I'm not a trademark lawyer, but what about others? A quick google search comes up with prophpbb, phpbbhs, phpbbhost, etc.

Any name that sounds as though it is officially affiliated with this project is not okay. I have reached out to a number of these organizations and will continue to do so. Some of these orgs are based out of countries with weak "IP" laws.

Obviously we're not interested in forcing them to shut down entirely or to break existing links. I won't bore you with more detail here

[Plastic Nev.]

So it looks like noclue have vanished, possibly run off with the profits for all we know.
In my particular case it is no real loss as the forum had dwindled since the death of the originator and at the end only had around four regular contributors, and all they were doing was play games. All I was doing was nothing more than managing the forum and keeping out the spammers, so in essence I am glad it has gone. Less work to do when I am involved with a lot more other forums.