Yet another bitcoin website dies a preventable death

[error]

For the love of gawd...

http://serverfault.com/q/622020/126632

The website is fairly large, deals with Bitcoin, there's thousands of dollars in account balances possibly lost, and I'm panicking. ... I do not have a recent backup.

Note to developers: The fact that you can install Ubuntu successfully and use things like Docker, Heroku and AWS does not make you competent at operations.

Please, please, if you're going to start anything that involves Bitcoin, or other people's money in general, be sure you have a competent system administrator looking after things and making sure there are no business-killing mistakes in the environment, like lack of working backups, using Ubuntu as a server, systems not being properly secured, etc.

P.S. I'd love to know which website this was, as I didn't see any news about a well-known site being down after a brief look in the usual places.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

How did you find this?

[error]

How did you find this?

I've been on Stack Overflow for years...

[JohnFromWIT]

Oh man, they have a right to be panicking.
Strange that they say it happened last night but no ones been mentioning it here.

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

Oh man, they have a right to be panicking.
Strange that they say it happened last night but no ones been mentioning it here.

It means the operator put up a fake message saying something along the lines of "maintenance". Or a scheduled downtime. Looks like he was a bit more straightforward than I thought.

[error]

Oh man, they have a right to be panicking.
Strange that they say it happened last night but no ones been mentioning it here.

I don't think it's a very large website or I would have seen it here or on reddit, and I didn't. But I figure if anyone does know what it was, it would be here.

[zhinkk]

Damn, thousands of dollars in bitcoin and no recent backup? Why are website owners so careless of user's funds like that?

[herebittybittybitty]

After I got Goxxed I vowed never to store any Bitcoin outside of my control again. I haven't regretted it. And I'm pretty much out of pity for anyone who doesn't do the same. It's happened too many times...

[commandrix]

Pure incompetence here. You'd be surprised by how many "businessmen" either think they can just set up a server and try to save on the typical salary of a system administrator because "it'll take care of itself," or hire a system administrator and then never listen to him when he says that we ought to be making backups of everything and doing A, B, C and D to avoid a catastrophic failure. And then the system administrator is blamed when everything goes to pot. Which is why the system administrator should primarily communicate with his boss in a way that can be easily recorded for his reference so he has a case if there is any kind of dispute.

I feel bad for the people who are going to suffer from somebody else's bad decisions. Seems like people like that rarely have any kind of recourse other than an expensive lawsuit when things go wrong. Which is why I like the Australian system where anybody can sue anybody at any time, but the loser has to pay the winner's legal fees. Besides the obvious effect of cutting down on frivolous lawsuits, it helps people who can prove that they've lost out because of somebody else's poor decisions keep more of the cash in their pockets.

[counter]

I agree with the OP this is a damn shame and I wish I new which site this was.  I'm expecting we may find out soon enough.  But with this type of thing I think the sooner the better, especially when it comes to peoples funds and the poor way the situation is being handled.

Oh man, they have a right to be panicking.
Strange that they say it happened last night but no ones been mentioning it here.

It means the operator put up a fake message saying something along the lines of "maintenance". Or a scheduled downtime.

Damn piss poor way to do business if you ask me.

[x8008]

Here it is - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=449010.msg8400897#msg8400897

Site is http://adbit.co/

[error]

Here it is - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=449010.msg8400897#msg8400897

Site is http://adbit.co/

Thanks. I would have never found that myself

[fudbuster]

Third party exchanges are definitely on the way out, there are just too many hacks and too much incompetence.

The future is going to be decentralized exchanges, exchanges built into clients and if you are going to operate a third part exchange, it will have to be open source and transparent as hell (coinport is attempting this now).

[JohnFromWIT]

He's honest about it at least

[RodeoX]

Satoshi gives us trust-less money that does not require banking. Then a million people take their bitcoin to the first thing that looks like a bank. 

[commandrix]

Satoshi gives us trust-less money that does not require banking. Then a million people take their bitcoin to the first thing that looks like a bank.  

That's what I was thinking. It is so friggin' easy to just keep it in your own secured and backed up wallet that I wonder why people even need those third party websites. Do we need to create a class on the secure use of Bitcoin and make everybody who wants to use Bitcoin pass a test or something?

[minifrij]

Third party exchanges are definitely on the way out, there are just too many hacks and too much incompetence.

The future is going to be decentralized exchanges, exchanges built into clients and if you are going to operate a third part exchange, it will have to be open source and transparent as hell (coinport is attempting this now).

This has nothing to do with the topic. Believe it or not Adbit is an ad website, not an exchange.

[QuestionAuthority]

Bitcoin the experiment was a complete success. This is the final proof we needed. The experiment showed that with dozens of examples of fraud to draw experience from the average individual should not be allowed to control his own money. We can all go home now.

[Meuh6879]

  people ... take the train or walk.

[apepoof]

How many fake losses can be written off as security mistakes...

[MineForeman.com]

Anyone else just go out and do a dry run of their DB backup?

Neil

[Remember remember the 5th of November]

  people ... take the train or walk.

HTML5 looked interesting 7 years ago, now...it feels dated, because technology is improving every day.

[dKingston]

Satoshi gives us trust-less money that does not require banking. Then a million people take their bitcoin to the first thing that looks like a bank. 

This is something that I very much don't understand. One of the benefits of bitcoin is that you do not need to trust others to "hold" and keep safe your bitcoin as you can easily do this yourself. There is no third party necessary to trust your money with, but your money is secured by the network. Despite this there are so many people that entrust their hard earned money to others.

[error]

Anyone else just go out and do a dry run of their DB backup?

Backups are all well and good, but you need to remember to test restores!

[MineForeman.com]

Anyone else just go out and do a dry run of their DB backup?

Backups are all well and good, but you need to remember to test restores!

You are right of coarse, that is what I meant.  When I do a dry run it is for the entire backup cycle.  Testing bits of your backup procedures does not count (in my opinion).

Neil

[gweedo]

It looks to be this site. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=449010.msg8404729#msg8404729