We’ve made some changes to the login system for the Account Manager that are now live on our production Account Manager.  I’d like to outline what those changes are and the reasons we made them.

What the changes are

• The next time you log in to the Account Manager (or go to the Account Manager if you had your account set to “Remember Me”), you will be prompted to migrate your password.
• During this migration you will be prompted to enter your current password, followed by a new password two times.
• You will also be prompted to enter a Security Question and a Security Question Answer.  The question is a freeform text field that you can put whatever question or other information you like.  This “question” will be given to you as a prompt during the “Forgot Password” procedure.  The answer is the data you will be prompted to enter as the answer to your question.

Why we are making these changes

There are a number of reasons why these changes are being put into place.  First of all, we are using a new method of storing user passwords that provides additional security and utilizes a different hashing mechanism than we used before.  Some additional reasons for this change are:

• We are consolidating user records in our system.  When this process is complete, customer admin accounts and end user accounts will be consolidated into one system to allow for consistency across our systems.
• We will be adding in functionality to allow customers to designate additional administrators.  These additional administrator accounts can be set up as full-fledged account administrators or can be given access to various areas of the Account Manager, including fine grain control down to the server and/or domain level.
• We will be consolidating the quarantine system into the Account Manager, making one place where users log in to see their quarantine and manage their account.  Since we released custom branding options for our customers, the need for a separate quarantine site that is under a different brand has diminished.

At this time, the only changes that have been made have been to migrate existing customer admin accounts to the new user system and add the additional security measures surrounding logins to the site.  As we release additional changes we will post about them here on the blog.

Please comment here or contact support@purity.net if you have any questions or issues with the new system.

Some of you have reported issues with the new Account Manager when using IE7.  I’m happy to let you know that the problem has been fixed…  and it was caused by a single errant comma in the javascript code.  Funny how one little comma can cause so many problems, eh?

Some new things to report:

• Fixed a problem for international users where if the state field was left blank or not valid on the “Add Payment” screen it would error out.  Those of you experiencing problems adding credit cards, please try again.
• Added the “Account Info” page to allow you to change your contact name, address, email, etc.
• Changed easyantispam.com to point to purity.net
• Made a few design changes on purity.net

Please let us know how things are going with the changeover to the new system.  We’re definately open to ideas and suggestions, so feel free to post your thoughts here.  Thanks!

First of all, thank you for your patience during our billing system upgrade.

As some of you know, over the next couple of weeks we’re going to be re-branding Easy Antispam.  We’ll be taking on the name Purity Networks, as we plan to expand into additional areas of internet security and felt that Easy Antispam was too restrictive of a name.  You’ll see some more announcements about this over the next couple of weeks, but I wanted to touch on it briefly since I’ll be directing you to a new URL for our Account Manager in this email.

Our new Account Manager is located at https://manage.purity.net/.  This is still a work in progress and we’d appreciate it if you’d let us know if you run into any issues with it.  The old account manager will stay online for a while at http://manage.easyantispam.com/ in case you need to fall back to it to accomplish something that’s broken in the new one.

Please go to the new Account Manager and add your credit card details so that we can begin billing with the new billing system.  It is important that you do this as soon as possible, as we will begin generating invoices with the new system within the next day or so.

Some of you have used PayPal in the past to pay for your services.  We will continue to offer PayPal as a payment option, though it will not be included in the new Account Manager right away, as we are working to get the credit card processing done first since the majority of our customers use credit cards.  If you wish to pay invoices via PayPal, please do so manually until we get the support for it built into the Account Manager.  When invoices are generated we will be sending an email notification of it.  Please send a PayPal payment to sales@interjuncture.com for the amount due and we will manually credit it to the invoice in the Account Manager.

Please let me know if you have any questions and thank you for choosing Easy Antispam!

As you know from previous posts, we had planned to synchronize everyone’s billing date for March 15th and run invoices that date with the new billing system.  Unfortunately, the new billing system development is behind schedule (of course).  So, with that being said, here’s how we’re planning to proceed:

• We will be running one last batch of invoice processing on the old billing system today. Those that are set up for automatic credit card payments will be charged, those that are set for PayPal will need to pay the invoice when you receive it.
• We will synchronize everyone’s billing date for April 15th and will run the billing on that date in the new invoicing system of the Account Manager.
• The new version of the Account Manager will be live in the next couple of days, which will allow you to update your billing information in the new system at that time.  Additionally, online ordering will be enabled at that time as well.

Thank you for your patience and understanding during this transition and please contact support if you have any questions.

I believe I’ve mentioned before that we’re going to be transitioning to a new billing system soon.  Well, the time is nearly upon us.  I’m going to outline here how the transition is going to work and what the transition means for you.

1. Between now and February 15th, we will be finalizing work on our new order process for new services as well as the ability for existing customers to order new services directly from the Account Manager.
2. On February 15th, between the hours of 9:00pm and Midnight central US time, the Account Manager, billing and ordering systems will all be down for maintenance.  During this time, recurring billing functions and ordering functions will be turned off in our current billing system and the new order process will be enabled.
3. Between February 15th and March 14th, all recurring billing processes will be turned off.  No new invoices will be generated that are due between those dates.
4. All accounts will have their billing dates reset for the 15th of the month, starting March 15th.  New invoices for all accounts will be generated in the new billing system that will be due March 15th.
5. New payment information will be required from all customers. We will send out a notice to all customers via email when the functionality is available in the new billing system for them to enter their payment details.  Please note that credit card payments will be automatically billed each month.  PayPal users will receive an invoice and will need to manually pay their invoice via PayPal each month.  This is due to technical limitations of PayPal’s billing system.  We recommend using Visa, Mastercard or American Express as your form of payment.
6. Once the new billing system is in place and billing date reset to March 15th, billing will proceed as normal from that point, recurring each month on your billing date.  New accounts signed up during the February 15th to March 15th window will have a billing anniversary of whatever their signup date is, like normal.  The billing date change only impacts existing accounts in place before the February 15th switchover.

Please contact support if you have any questions regarding this change, and thank you for your patience as we work to upgrade our systems to provide better service for you!