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Tag: JotForm

  • Jotform.com Is Back In The Hands Of Its Rightful Owner

    Jotform.com Is Back In The Hands Of Its Rightful Owner

    The Jotform.com domain was returned today. The only problem is that the feds still aren’t saying what caused the suspension in the first place.

    You may remember yesterday when we reported that Jotform.com was suspended by the federal government for apparently no reason. When the Jotform team attempted to contact the Secret Service as to why their Web site had been taken down, they were told that the government was too busy to look into it.

    It’s a good thing then that the Jotform.com domain was returned today. The business can keep operating under their original domain and everything can go back to normal.

    Hold on there, not everything can go back to normal just yet. Techdirt requested comment from the Secret Service as to why Jotform.com was taken down. What a great response they got:

    “We are aware of the incident and we’re reviewing it internally to make sure all the proper procedures and protocols were followed.”

    In response to this, a post went up on Hacker News that details what U.S. Web sites can do to protect themselves from the overreaching arm of the U.S. government.

    Today’s sysadmin todo list:

    0. Get corporate membership with EFF.

    1. Identify all applications with user-generated content.

    2. Move all associated domains to a non-US based registrar.

    3. Migrate DNS, web serving and other critical services to non-US based servers.

    4. Migrate yourself to a non-US controlled country.

    I’m sorry for US sites and users. Your government is hell-bent on turning the internet into a read-only device like TV, easily regulated and controlled. The population will be required to sit quietly and keep their eyes glued on the screen so they don’t miss the ads, with any infringers deemed terrorists and pedophiles and thus deserving of summary punishment by DHS squads.

    Hopefully the internet will route around the damaged segment, and the rest of us can continue to enjoy the amazing interactivity it has brought our society.

    Is it a little extreme? Yes, but it highlights what is slowly becoming reality in the U.S.

    The United States keeps on saying that it wants to help startups and small companies succeed, but you can see with the example of Jotform that the government can take whatever they want when they want.

    Are you a small business owner who uses the Internet? What do you think about the Jotform debacle? Will you be moving your business? Let us know in the comments.

  • JotForm.com Suspended By US Feds

    The U.S. government is continuing its happy-go-lucky censorship of Web sites for reasons blown way out of proportion.

    It was revealed yesterday that JotForm.com had its domain suspended. The reason behind the suspension was not exactly clear. Aytekin Tank took to the JotForm.net blog to explain exactly what had happened and what users can do to retrieve their documents.

    What Tank calls an “ongoing investigation about content posted in our site” is the cause behind the JotForm.com domain being suspended by the U.S. government. The company claims to be “fully cooperating” with the authorities, but doesn’t have a clue as to when the site will be back up.

    For those who don’t know what JotForm is, it’s a service that allows users to create various forms for use on their Web sites. It allows users to create anything from application forms to bug reports.

    This is likely the cause for the criminal investigation. Tank recently updated the situation on Hacker News to say that it was most likely people creating phishing forms using their service that led to the suspension.

    It doesn’t make it any better to know the cause, however, when the Secret Service refuses to work with your company. He says that he called the Secret Service agent in charge of the case and was told that it would be a few days before he could get them to look at his case. While he’s waiting to hear back, hundreds of thousands of users are locked out of their forms.

    Tank does offer some form of respite in the form of their .net domain. He says that any user can just change the URL of their form to .net from .com to get any forms up and running again.

    At the end, he issues a word of warning to any Web site that allows user created content. He says to contact your most active users quickly after any URL take down or similar actions to let them know what went down and what they can do to retrieve their files.

    The case raises some striking similarities to the MegaUpload case. Both sites depended on user generated content as their primary business. While illegal content was present on the site, it didn’t make up the majority of the content. It was primarily used by legitimate users who are now being punished by a government that doesn’t know the difference between an IP address and a DNS.

    We’ll keep you updated on this and other stories of Web sites being supended for little to no reason.