Constant Pinging | URL Includes “/?ignorenitro=”

Hey there,

How are you? Hope you are safe and well.

It’s Plamen here, I recently took in charge as Head of Support at NitroPack, so I would like to take it from here.

It is really weird that this happens again after three months and it looks like these are indeed NitroPack IP’s. Would you mind sending me an email at [email protected] with your domain and I will make sure to get this resolved once and for all.

Sending positive vibes your way.

Best,
Plamen, Head of Support at NitroPack

Hi Plamen,

Please review your internal correspondence and records. The following was received from your support team (Atanas, NitroPack Performance Engineer) on March 26, 2024 and April 1, 2024, respectively:

(Note: Our domain has been obfuscated)

March 26, 2024:

My name is Atanas and I am a Performance Engineer at NitroPack.

I was made aware of what happened and I confirm that I removed the website from our system. The pings will now stop and not reoccur.

The explanation of what happened is the following:

We have a system that periodically checks the connection status between our system and our customer servers to ensure NitroPack is working. At some point, the website  https://www.mysite.com/ was connected to NitroPack and when the plugin was uninstalled, it didn’t notify the system so it didn’t stop trying to verify the connection.

We found a broken functionality in our plugin and it should not behave this way. The plugin must notify our system that the site is no longer using it. The action we’re taking is to update the plugin’s code to prevent such occurrences in the future.

In the meantime, to perform a full uninstall, it is recommended to first disconnect the plugin from the plugin’s interface in WP Admin and then delete it.

Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

April 1, 2024:

I was alerted that https://www.mysite.com/ is still receiving pings from our systems.

I cross-checked with our CTO and found that despite removing the website previously, I the queue was built in advance and rescheduled itself on the same list where the website existed.

My colleagues have explicitly removed the website from the list and you should stop receiving requests from our end. Also, my colleagues will work on improving the service to consider more variables when pinging a website to verify whether it should be pinged.

I apologize once again for the inconvenience.

Based on our current issue, it appears Team NitroPack did not implement the fixes and go-forward plan shared by Atanas.

Bottom Line:

This issue affects many websites that do not use or no longer use your plugin (not just ours).

Recommendations:

1. Update your backend code (conditionals) to ensure it can accurately detect websites that are actively using your plugin. Websites not actively using your plugin need to be removed from your servers and ensure your User Agent respects that finding (i.e., stops pinging websites).

2. Update your plugin’s code and instructions for performing a clean uninstall of your plugin. The updated code should include removing your plugin’s info and collected data from the user’s (i.e., website’s) database and your servers. Your updated instructions also need to state that performing a clean uninstall of your plugin will completely remove all data contained in the affected database(s) and from your servers. That is, all data will be lost and is unrecoverable.

Done at our end. Thank you.

Hey @generosus ,

Thanks for your reply.

We’ve been working actively on this since you reported it. I am happy to share that we’ve applied some changes from our end and this will not be happening anymore. What we did is to change the way our system behaves and it will no longer ping websites that are not active.

We will be happy if you can monitor this in the next couple of months and report back if this happens again but I am certain that this should not persists further.

Best,
Plamen, Head of Support at NitroPack

Hi Plamen,

Will do. That takes care of Recommendation 1. What about Recommendation 2? (a major contributor to the issue)

Thank you.

Hey there,

Thank you for your feedback and recommendation regarding the uninstallation process of our WordPress plugin. We have reviewed the current process internally and believe it is in good shape but we will have further internal discussions around it. Also, we would like to provide you with more detailed information on this topic.

Firstly, please note that simply deleting the WP plugin does not disconnect the website or erase the data. For further clarity:

1. Deleting the WP Plugin: For instructions on how to uninstall the NitroPack plugin for WordPress, please refer to this article:?Uninstalling NitroPack for WordPress.
2. Disconnecting the Website: After uninstalling the plugin, you will still need to delete your website from the NitroPack app. Detailed steps are provided here:?How to Delete Your Website.
3. Complete Data Deletion: If you require all your data to be deleted, please follow the instructions in this article:?How to Delete Your NitroPack Account. These requests will be handled by our Data Officer in accordance with the GDPR Data Processing Addendum.

Finally, we would like to thank you for bringing this to our attention. Because of your feedback we noticed some small improvements that had to be made in terms of pinging and the behaviors are now changed. The purpose of the pings that you are observing is to test the connection status between our system and the client servers.

Thanks for your time and understanding. Every feedback is priceless in our mission to make internet faster and safer!

Best regards,
Plamen, Head of Support

Hey @phristanov,

Thanks for the update. Based on your comments, highly recommend the following:

1. Create a support topic titled “How to Completely Unistall Nitropack“, add your above info to it, then pin it. This way, your info won’t get buried over time.
2. Add a toggle (ON/OFF switch) to your plugin’s settings titled, “Clean Uninstall“, with a tooltip next to it that redirects your customers/users to your related documentation. The “Clean Uninstall” toggle (when switched to “ON”) will automatically take care of all three steps you mentioned above.

Thank you.

Hey @generosus ,

Thanks for the quick response and for the recommendations.

I will make sure to pass them to the relevant Product team and address these internally. We appreciate all your efforts you put into this to improve our product.

Best,
Plamen, Head of Support at NitroPack