How to update your DataYard Mail Filter Settings

DataYard’s new and updated mail filter features improvements to both spam and virus filtering performance and the user interface.  This article explains how to create an account on DataYard’s Mail filter, update your password, add and remove entries from your whitelist and blocklist and adjust your spam filtering levels from the defaults.

Creating an account

Access the Mail filter login page at https://filter.datayard.us.  Enter your email address in the username field and click  “Create New Password”

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It will tell you that an account has been created and will have sent an email to you with your password.

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Now you can log in to the portal with your email address and password.

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Here is what you’ll see when you log in.  The page will default to the Quarantine Inbox that is disabled by default (you can enable it by following the instructions here).

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Changing Your password

Upon logging in, click on Preferences

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Then click Password

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Enter your old password and desired password as directed, then click Save Password.

 

Updating your whitelist/blocklist

Click Preferences, then Whitelist/Blocklist

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You will be presented with the following page.  To add an address to either list, click into the entry box in either list, then enter the address and click Add.  To remove an entry, click the trash can next to the entry you wish to remove.

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To remove an entry, click the trash can next to the entry you wish to remove.

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You can edit the list as a whole by clicking Bulk Edit on the list you wish to edit.

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Never edit the first line and put each entry on its own line, as shown below. Click Save once finished.

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Customizing your filter settings

Click on Preferences, then Spam Settings

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In order to change your settings from your Domain defaults, select No for Use Domain Defaults under the Spam Scoring section, then click Save.

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You’ll now be able to adjust the scoring levels for blocking, quarantine (see Enabling Your Spam Quarantine if you’d like to utilize the quarantine feature) and Tagging.  Adjust the sliders to your desired levels and click Save.  Higher numbers are less sensitive and lower numbers are more sensitive. For example, if you change the Block slider from the default level of 5 to 8, you will receive more messages.

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Getting Help

The new mail filter includes comprehensive help, if you need an explanation for a setting or section, simply click the “Help” link at the top right of every section header.

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You can also contact us any time at [email protected] or 937-226-6896 for assistance.

A Commitment to Radical Privacy

On April 3rd, President Trump signed legislation repealing the FCC’s privacy regulations. As a result, Internet Service Providers (like DataYard, AT&T, Spectrum, etc.) can now quietly gather, store, and sell the Internet histories, communications, and usage patterns of everyone they provide Internet access to. The legislation goes further, by placing restrictions on the types of privacy guidelines the FCC can attempt to institute in the future. If you’re reading this on a screen, this action covers you at this very moment.

I’ve worked at DataYard (and previously DONet) for 11 years, four of those as a Systems Administrator and Data Center Engineer. I know first-hand the level of access that ISPs have to customer data, and the gravity of that access. We have a mantra at DataYard, “with great power comes great responsibility”, attributed to either Voltaire or Ben Parker, depending on who you ask. It is incredibly true in this and many other industries and vocations, but as more and more of our daily lives are driven online…well, ours is a unique business. We at DataYard make it our practice to log only the data we need to maintain our systems and provide the best customer service to our clients. We’ve got a database with your address in it, but so does Trader Joe’s.

If you are a business owner, work with Intellectual Property (IP) or Personally Identifiable Information (PII), are a HIPAA covered entity, or simply don’t want your personal preferences and business browsing data tracked and categorized – this new reality is an uncomfortable one. When ISPs begin to track, store, and replicate this personal data, it exponentially increases the potential attack footprint for malicious access. We’ve all heard about the Target / Yahoo / Verizon / [insert name here] hacks. Can you imagine the fallout if those companies had the last four years of your Internet usage stored and indexed for the taking?

We at DataYard want to publicly voice our disapproval of these legislative actions, undertaken with the sole purpose of opening new profit centers in an exploding industry. We know better than most the implications this decision has. It’s our business to know. Every customer we work with can rest assured that DataYard is not, and will not be, interested in the collection or sale of your communications and activities.

In a time when every move is tracked, every bit is stored forever, and everything is for sale, promising to forgo those profits is a radical move. But it’s a promise we make proudly.

See more: Dayton Daily News story here.

DataYard’s Privacy Policy:

https://www.datayard.us/about/policies/open-internet-compliance-statement/

Data Center Cooling Maintenance for 10/11/2016 – Rescheduled for 10/18/2016

We will be conducting  maintenance on our primary cooling system in the data center on Tuesday, October 11, 2016 between 8:00 AM and 5:00 PM.  We will be using our auxiliary cooling system during this time.

Let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or just want to chat: 1.800.982.4539 or [email protected]. Remember to follow us on Twitter (@datayardtechops & @datayard)!

Update – Maintenance Rescheduled:

We had to reschedule the cooling maintenance for Tuesday, October 18, 2016.  We will be running on auxiliary cooling system from 8:00 AM to 5:00PM while the maintenance on the primary system is being completed.

Let us know if you have any questions, concerns, or just want to chat: 1.800.982.4539 or [email protected]. Remember to follow us on Twitter (@datayardtechops & @datayard)!

Roomberry Project v.10

With just one week remaining, we managed to have a successful week tying everything together. Like Owen said last week, we ran into issues with the RFID. We had finally gotten it to work on our makeshift electrical tape track with a few sensors along the way, and decided to move it along to a practical application. However, that’s when we realized that our tags being 3mm, the antenna was too small for the signal to overcome the metal floor tiles. This week we received our color sensor as an alternative. We decided that since we can’t use any form of wave communication, our best bet was to either change back to QR (which we really didn’t want to have to do) or find an alternative. This color sensor has worked wonders thus far. We are able to pick up readings via lux, or lumens, and convert that into a 6 digit RGB hex code. With this we can set it up exactly like our RFID tags. We will be mapping out the data center similar to how we had tags, which is to have a temperature reading taken at the front of a server cabinet. Not only will this allow more precise temperature data, but it will also be a sort of location finder for the roomba. IMG_3587

With one week remaining, there is still a decent amount to be done, but we feel confident that once we leave, there will be a stable platform for the rest of our peers here to work with and improve upon when necessary. With our downtime on Monday before the color sensor came, we were able to get our preliminary temperature and humidity data uploaded using phant. The link for  that, which will be updated real-time once this is permanently running, is here. Next week our main goal is to, well, finish the project. We need to implement our new color tags, fine tune any bugs, and get our data uploading to local servers here for ease of access.

Stay tuned for our final blog post next Friday!

Roomberry Project v.9

Monday was yet another productive start to the week for Jim and I. More testing was done on RFID tags, and we fully ironed out our IR line following. However, on Wednesday tragedy struck.

Ever since we first had started messing around with RFID tags, there have been issues. with our 125kHz reader, we could never find a tag small enough to be used with our floor tiles. To solve the problem, we upgraded to a 13.56MHz reader and nifty little three millimeter tags. However, we were never able to get the reader to properly identify the tags. So instead we bought a different, more widely used version of the reader that came with a pre-made Python library. Once we got that up and running, we thought we were in the clear, but on Wednesday we found that due to the small antenna on the RFID tag it cannot be read if it is within one centimeter of the metal floor tiles.

Because the deadline of the project is drawing near, Jim and I decided to save both money and time and scrap the idea of using RFID in its entirety. Instead, we will be focusing our efforts on two ideas that we had as possible replacements.

The first idea we had was to give QR codes a second chance. If we can minimized the amount of time each poll takes, we would be able to make a track of QR codes along the floor. Our second idea is to use a color-sensitive light sensor in combination with colored tiles to determine the next command.

Next week will be hammering out these new navigation methods, wish us luck!

Roomberry Project v.8

This past week brought a great deal of success for myself and Owen as we continue working towards our final goal for this project. Last week we obtained various pieces of hardware, but some of those such as the RFID reader and USB hub for the Raspberry Pi zero didn’t want to play nicely.

Coming into this week we had set a goal for ourselves to have all of the parts put together in an attempt to have our first working prototype by the end of next week. Hardware wise we were able to achieve that goal, but not without some frustrations. We started the week with an RFID reader, ICSH008A, based off of the popular Mifare RF522 card, but realized that we could only find documentation in Chinese and on lackluster Ebay pages. Lesson learned – buy the real thing! We ended up going with the Adafruit PN532 breakout board and had a huge breakthrough with our tags. Not only can it read any Mifare card, but it also spits out the UID on our 3mm tags mentioned last week without any additional code or having to write to it.

Slack for iOS Upload (3)On top of getting our RFID to work, we also were able to get the Pi zero USB hub to work. This wasn’t a huge issue to fix, but once we hooked it up to the Pi we were worried that we might not be able to use a port on it for serial communication. On the Pi 3 we were using before there was a dedicated serial port, COM0, which we weren’t sure the USB hub had. However it did, and we were able to continue on with using the Pi zero.

Slack for iOS Upload (4)After some preliminary testing with the new inductive charging, we were able to confirm that it does charge our LiPo battery at a much quicker rate, and more efficiently, than our last set of coils. As of today we’ve also done some testing with our IR and making turns with it, and have decided on a new process that will eliminate the use of RFID tags to turn the Roomba. We will strictly use the IR for movement, and RFID for data points and positioning. Our current IR has 6 sensors; we decided to keep the black line centered between sensors 3 and 4, rather than correcting to other sensors. From there, if the Roomba reaches an intersection and sensors 1, 2 and 3 are covered, it will make a 90 degree left turn. If sensors 4, 5 and 6 are covered, it will make a 90 degree right turn. If sensors 1-6 are covered, it will make a 180 degree turn and continue on path.

We take our success this week with a grain of salt, as we are now reaching the tedious testing and fine tuning phase which will likely take some time. We hope to have complete IR control as of next Friday, and can implement the RFID in the following weeks. Owen and I are proud of how far this project has come along and that we are near reaching a final product, stay tuned for next week’s post!

Roomberry Project v.7

So this week’s blog post is going to be a bit longer than the others because I’ll be talking a lot about the various hardware upgrades that Jim and I have gotten for the project, and our thought process behind them.

The first and probably most exciting upgrade for us was going from a Raspberry Pi 3 to a Raspbery Pi Zero. We’ve been using a Raspberry Pi 3 for the past couple of weeks in order to test things like the IR sensor, the RFID reader, and even the camera to read QR codes (even though we’ve since abandoned it). However, Jim and I knew that we wouldn’t be using the RPi 3 in the final version of the project for two reasons. Firstly, the model 3 is fairly large. We have to fit all of the electronics inside of the modified vacuum bin of the Roomba, and it was a very tight fit putting the RPi 3, the serial-USB connection, and the IR sensor alone. Secondly, we were worried about the battery consumption of the model 3. At nearly a third of the size and one sixth of the power consumption, the RPi Zero easily solves both of these problems.

However, even though using the RPi Zero was the best solution to our problems with the RPi 3, it didn’t come without it’s problems. The biggest being the lack of USB ports. With our current setup, we need to have two open USB ports. One will be used for a WiFi dongle so we can collect sensor information in real-time, and the second to use to talk to the Roomba. Simple solution to this was to get a USB hub. The one we found is actually really neat, it fits nicely on the underside of the RPi and just screws into the mounting holes. No soldering needed at all! Now that we had figured out the issues with the RPi, we could move on to some of the problems with our ‘track’ that the Roomba would follow.

A few blog posts ago, we discussed the use of an RFID reader instead of a QR code scanner. The RFID reader that we had tested operated on the 125 kHz range, and its tags were roughly the size of a credit card. Eric and David expressed their concerns with having a dozen or so credit card sized tags lining the floor of the server room, so I looked into the possibility of using smaller tags. A week later, a package arrived containing what I believe to be the smallest 13.65 MHz RFID tags that we could buy. Measuring at 3 mm square, you can clearly see the size difference between the two cards.

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Again, this upgrade didn’t come without its own problems. Because we’re using a different frequency tags, we needed a new reader to be able to scan them. Our old reader was very plug-and-play friendly, only needed a few lines of Python to get it up and running, but our new reader is a bit of a mystery. The only code we can find to get it running is for Arduino, and even then we’re having trouble scanning the tags. Next week we plan to look into reading and writing to the tags.

The last upgrade that Jim and I got this week was for our inductive charger. We noticed that the rate of charge was a bit slower than the rate of consumption on the RPi 3, and we wanted to be sure that the RPi would be able to run 24/7, so in combination with a greatly reduced power consumption (RPi Zero), we beefed up our inductive charger. This should ensure that we’ll be able to keep a constant supply of power to the RPi Zero.

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That about wraps it up for this week! Next week, along with getting our new RFID reader up and running, Jim and I will be thoroughly testing the Roomberry on a makeshift track to iron out any issues that could come up regarding line-following and RFID tags.

Celebrate Sysadmin Appreciation Day With DataYard: July 29, 2016

Sysadmin Day 2016

Beer and Pizza to Celebrate Sysadmins!

Here we are again!  The last Friday in July is annual Sysadmin Day – a chance to recognize those individuals toiling in the shadowy boiler-rooms of the Internet who keep the world at large running smoothly.

We’ll meet at the Dayton Beer Company around 4PM, have some local craft beers and Pizza Factory ‘za, and later dump a cooler of Mountain Dew on the crew (or at least one of them). Please join the DataYard team in raising a toast in a celebration to these IT heros!

Planning to Attend? Seating is limited, so if you’re planning on coming to our Sysadmin Day celebration this year head over to our Eventbrite page and reserve your free ticket now. Bring a couple of tech friends with you and have a great evening, on us.

Pick up a copy of our Sysadmin Day poster, too.

Roomberry Project v.6

This past week has been yet another successful one for Jim and I. We’ve been making progress on the mounting solution for our DHT22 sensors. We wanted at least three sensors picking up data from different heights, so Jim 3D printed a series of parts to mount a 3/4″ dowel rod onto the Roomba’s body. We’re still fine tuning how everything will fit together, but he has a pretty good prototype right now. Next week when we get our fancy new 3mm RFID tags and a USB hub for the Pi Zero, he’ll be working to find a finalized interior setup for all the electronics in the modified dust bin

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On the software side of things, I’ve still been fine-tuning our line-following logic as well as preparing for the use of RFID tags. As Jim said in an earlier post, we won’t be using black electrical tape as our guide, but rather the cracks in between the tiles themselves. This leads to the issue of the crack being slightly smaller than the distance between the IR line sensors, so there might be readings where the line doesn’t show up at all. I think I’ve found a good balance between speed, turn correction, and the length of time it will time out at if it hasn’t found a line.

Before I left on Wednesday, I ran a little program to drain the Roomba’s battery completely, and to measure the amount of time it takes to do so. From what I found, the battery drains (with the wheels moving, and the OI in Full) at a rate of approximately 1% every 4.75 mins. This morning I ran the same program, except to measure how fast the Roomba charges. I found that with the OI in Passive, the Roomba charges at a rate of 1% every 1.5 mins. We’ll use this information when planning the route the Roomba will follow.

Next week, Eric and I will be looking into the possibility of using Slack as the method of turning off the Roomba for server maintenance as well as sending alerts that the Roomba might be lost, running low on battery, etc.

Roomberry Project v.5

Another successful week has occurred for us working on our Roomberry Project. After successfully implementing our serial tether on Monday, we started putting together the rest of the pieces we had been working on. The biggest improvement came from the addition of our line following IR sensor. Our roomba now follows dark lines, specifically black electrical tape at the moment. The goal for this is for us to darken the lines between our floor tiles in the data center, and have the sensor follow that. The biggest hurdle thus far with that idea is the thickness, or lack there-of, of the space between the tiles. Owen will have to fine tune his code in order for it to stay on track. With the help of David and Eric, we were also able to successfully 3d print a new caster bin, replacing the vacuuming tray, in an attempt to have a spacious place for the hardware. After 3-4 tries, and a roll or two of ABS, it was printed perfectly. The main focus from here on out is to fine tune the IR, and continue to work on a feasible solution for the roomba to know when to take readings and upload them, as well as turn commands. We originally thought to use QR codes with the RPi NOIR camera, but decided we might have better luck with an RFID reader.

There is still much work to be done, but there will be continuous progression on this project the next 5-6 weeks.