Subj : Local IRC Shut Down on KD3net
To   : All
From : KenDB3
Date : Wed Oct 29 2014 03:13 pm

The IRC daemon and ports are being shut down. Not due to any existing problems
with running IRC, but more due to a friend convincing me that running an IRCd
is just inviting trouble into my network. 

I actually put a little bit of work into setting up my IRC, creating a Message
of the Day to be displayed and creating a page on the HTTP web site that
allowed you to connect through an AJAX client provided by Mibbit (which worked
beautifully). I even tweaked the Mibbit code to pop in your Username if you
were logged in on the HTTP web site. 

However, with a heavy heart, I closed down the ports last night after a
surprising conversation. I never thought about how much "Bad" stuff can happen
on IRC. I only ever used it for chat, and I've seen some really cool bots like
the one that let you control a Shoutcast music stream, but it can easily be
used for BOTS that talk to BOT-Nets, scripts that can start doing DoS (or DDoS
if you couple that with a BOT-Net), and lots of other nefarious stuff.

The kicker was when my friend made me realize that all it takes is someone
finding the IRC, and using it to start moving illegal materials or even worse
start talking about terror and security stuff to get my site looked at by the
government. And that's more hassle than it's worth. Worst case scenario they
decide to just confiscate my entire PC running the BBS. And that would suck. 

The biggest problem is, I don't monitor the IRC because I don't have the time.
The BBS is a hobby, and if I had to make sure nothing shady was happening in
IRC all the time, well then that would feel a lot more like a full time job.
Not what I'm going for here. 

My solution is to repoint the IRC links on the web site to irc.synchro.net. The
folks there have a good IRC running, and it is a round robin server across many
Synchronet BBSes, so you're bound to get more folks in the chat room than just
on my own little BBS. The AJAX link through Mibbit will connect you directly to
the #bbs channel on that server. The direct IRC:// link will work with whatever
client you have on your computer set to grab that request (I tend to use
Chatzilla, a great Firefox plugin). 

Hope you folks enjoy the other services that are still up and running on
KD3net. Get out there and play some text games!

~Kenny DiBattista / KenDB3
Amature Sysop
--------------------------------------------------
This message was an edit/repost from 10/26. 
I added the stuff about pointing to Synchro.net

.