Often, I get emails from Forex Peace Army members asking how they can help. Of course, I ask them to share their experiences in the forums and reviews, but some ask if there’s a way to donate funds to assist the FPA. I’m personally thrilled that the FPA does such a good job helping people that some of them are ready to volunteer to help the FPA.
After some discussion, it’s been decided to give FPA members a chance to help with the most critical priority for the website. This is keeping the site safe from denial of service and hacking attacks.
Did you know the Forex Peace Army has been involved in a quiet war for many years now?
It began with Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks back in 2008. In 2013, they managed to hack their way into to the FPA’s forums database and email system for a short time. Discussions which could have helped resolve serious trader issues were erased.
Here’s a report from the Anti-DDoS service the FPA was using in 2011…
The attacks vary in size and intensity. Sometimes, a few weeks or even a couple months can go by without a serious attack. Then they come back and try over and over again. This is a typical test attack. It’s a simple probe to see if the attackers have enough forces to slow down or block the FPA’s site…
Since 2008, the FPA has steadily been increasing the amount of money spent on DDoS resistant hosting.
Site security has also been continuously upgraded. When so many scammers are ready to commit crimes to keep the FPA from warning traders, the number, size, and style of attacks varies.
When this first started back in 2008 and 2009, the FPA could be knocked offline for hours or days. Later upgrades reduced the downtime dto less than a few hours. The hackers increased the size and complexity of their attacks enough to make several “DDoS Proof” hosting companies ask the FPA to move elsewhere.
One part of blocking an attack is to locate the source computers and block out the IP addresses they are using…
For attacks from a few thousand computers, this is easy. When the attack comes in from half the world, other measures have to be added to contain the attack.
Currently the FPA hosting is among the most secure and attack resistant available.
The largest attacks can only knock the site offline for a few minutes or slow it down for an hour or two. Here are images from another attack against the ForexPeaceArmy.com…
As you can see, the 3 peaks in this one happened over a 10 minute period. It also is much more intense than the test attack above. The short duration shows this attack was a failure If it had taken ForexPeaceArmy.com offline, they would have kept the attack going longer. Since the most intense attacks this group of hackers could bring up only slowed the site down a little, they gave up.
The problem with this is that the FPA doesn’t spend $50, $100, or even $500 a month for hosting and security issues.
Last year, the FPA spent a total of $47,487.75 on hosting and security.
This includes tools and approximately 240 hours of highly skilled professional services. BTW, I’m very proud of the tech guys. They provide these services to the FPA at a fraction of the fair market price. They do this because they also believe in the important mission the FPA carries out for the trading community.
Many times over the years, people asked if they could donate to the FPA. If you find the FPA’s services to be valuable to you, now’s your chance. If you want to make the FPA less dependent on banner ads, now’s your chance. If you want to get me to stop writing more in this post, now’s your chance.
Based on 2015 prices, the FPA spends about $3,957.31 per month keeping the site online and secure from frequent attacks. If you feel you’ve derived value from the FPA and want to help, the plan is to ask members if they can help cover those defense expenses. For June, if any amount above $3,957.31 is raised, that will be applied towards July’s defense expenses.
There is no requirement. There is no member fee. This is just an opportunity
for you to help out an organization which dedicates itself to helping out traders for no charge.
Your donation makes it easier for the FPA to keep the best possible defenses. Your donation makes it harder for scammers to pay hackers to determine what information you can find online.
