Sterling Investment’s Update for June 3rd, 2013

Site Changes: There have been some changes with the site, and here is where we are at with them.

1. We Got Hacked: About a month ago our content management system (CMS) got hacked. The primary damage was the overwriting of our web page template, and a loss of access to some our news pages. Rest assured none of our reader information was compromised. We could find no evidence of any reader or user data being compromised. This is primarily because we do not store your data. We keep no record of your user or personal information, therefore there is nothing for the hackers to get. The hacking attack was primarily malicious in nature. Our tech support providers tend think these types of attacks are the work of foreign governments or non-governmental agencies (NGOs) probing U.S. cyber technology in preparation for some yet unknown future series of attacks. (Something to think about)
2. New Cloud Based VPS Server: We have been hosting our site for a long time through HostRocket (www.hostrocket.com). They have done an excellent job for a very long time. However, our equipment was beginning to show its age and it was time for an upgrade. So we moved over to their cloud based VPS Hosting division DotBlock (www.dotblock.com).? It took a little work, but it sure looks like it was worth it. The new vps server should dramatically improve the responsiveness and up-time of our web site.
3. Discontinuation of Internal email Service: We are discontinuing all email services using our internal email service. The reason for this is really very simple. It just simply became too hard to avoid being occasionally blacklisted, despite our best efforts to comply with all the anti-spam rules and regulations, as well as proper emailing procedures; we just could not keep up all the efforts to block spam and the occasional being incorrectly identified as a spammer. It is very time consuming to correct those issues. So in addition to all the other reasons to prosecute spammer, you have yet another reason, it chokes out legitimate business.What we are going to do is transition over to a service based distribution system that essentially delivers our newsletters and blogs through an approved sender network. We are currently testing several systems and will make a decision shortly.
4. Additional News Pages: There have been some changes in a couple of key services that we rely on that most of the web users may not be aware of.The most significant is that Google is going to discontinue its RSS Reader. We were a very heavy user of the Google Reader, having multiple Reader accounts with a massive number of news feeds coming. As a result of Google’s decision to discontinue its Reader, we need to find a new way to access all of these RSS feeds. One of the simplest is to move as many of them over to new web pages on our various services. Look for us to roll out a massive number of new pages in the next few weeks as we need to have this completed by the 1st of July when Google discontinues its Reader. For the record, we wish Google would reconsider and keep it alive. We feel that the Google Reader is an invaluable tool that most people would use if they knew more about it.
5. Additional News Sites: Sterling Investment Services through its Sterling Holdings division maintains a portfolio of web properties that we are developing to provide news on a variety of topics. The move to the new vps server allows us to greatly expand the existing web properties and develop new ones.? We plan on rolling many new sites over the course of the next several months.

Please look for more news and updates over the course of the next few weeks as we add new services and features to our site.

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www.sterlinginvestments.com