DNS issue affecting some users – Resolved

Update: This issue has resolved for all users as of July 21.

On July 14, we experienced a short term problem with DNS that cause the binsniper.com and viebuy.com IP addresses to change for about 20 minutes. This has been corrected, and everyone should have been back online five minutes later. But we’ve noticed a few users are still experiencing problems with outdated or misconfigured DNS servers and trying to connect to the wrong server.

If you have connection problems, try pinging binsniper.com or viebuy.com, it should return 23.253.173.194. If not, your DNS server is outdated/misconfigured. If you are not familiar with ping, you can usually ping the server from a command line like this:
ping binsniper.com

If it works sometimes, try the ping command several times and see if the IP changes.

Things to try:
– Try flushing your DNS Cache. On Windows: open a command prompt and enter: ipconfig /flushdns
– Try flushing your firefox cache. Options > Privacy > Cookies and Site Data > Check: Cached Web Content (Only) > Clear
– Reboot
– We recommend using Quad9’s 9.9.9.9 or Google’s 8.8.8.8 as your primary DNS. Just enter one or both of these as your primary nameserver(s) in your network settings to avoid these issues in the future.

This should eventually resolve itself when your DNS server refreshes itself. Outdated DNS can cause errors that look like missing websites or outages during your normal browsing.

We cannot fix it for you, but you can contact your ISP and explain that their DNS is outdated. It’s usually much easier to just use one of the free DNS providers.

If you use a hosts file, the current IP for both domains is 23.253.173.194

Please note this IP address will change next week when we upgrade the server, so please try to resolve your DNS issues prior to that time. The server upgrade should be transparent for most users and we will add it in parallel for a day or two.

Server Upgrade Completed

The server upgrade for HTTPS/SSL has been completed.

Viebuy users may need to refresh the page. You should see “VieBuy v4.1 Connected” on the page if you have the new version loaded and a secure lock icon in the address bar.

BINSniper Sidebar users need to install version 4.1, which is now available the Mozilla Add-ons.
Select Tools->Add-ons in your browser. If you are not prompted to upgrade, click the triple dot icon next to BINSniper in the extensions list and select Update.

Legacy BINSniper users do not need to upgrade their extensions.

BINSniper users should see a secure lock icon in the address bar when landing on pages on binsniper.com

In some cases (we’re looking at you Chrome), some page redirects may be cached by the browser (which is crazy). If you have connection issues, or are redirected to unexpected pages, please clear your browser cache files. You do not need to clear cookies, history, etc – just files. Instructions for clearing cache files on various browsers can be found at https://www.pcmag.com/how-to/how-to-clear-your-cache-on-any-browser

Please let us know if you have any issues connecting by replying to this post.

HTTPS upgrade – Week of Feb 10, 2020

We will be migrating the service to full time SSL/HTTPS sometime this week. There may be a small disruption of service. We do not expect it to be more than an hour. If you have trouble connecting to the service, please check this page first for more information.

SSL/HTTPS will provide secure data encryption of your web traffic. This change is necessary because of changes to Chrome as part of Google’s effort to force the world to use HTTPS.

The viebuy.com server will automatically redirect you to the HTTPS version once it is up and running. VieBuy users will simply need to refresh the page to get the secure content.

BINSniper users will need to upgrade their browser extension. A version for legacy Firefox and compatibles will be provided and the BINSniper Sidebar for current Firefox releases. Existing extensions will not work with the new server. We will provide these updates thru the Mozilla Add-ons feature at the same time that the server is converted. Add-ons will also be made available thru this site if the Mozilla distribution is delayed for any reason.

BINSniper Sidebar users need to update to v4.1

Legacy BINSniper versions (< 4) do not need to upgrade, the server will adjust. If you can't update BINSniper Sidebar or access the server with a Legacy version for some reason, viebuy.com will be available, so BINSniper users can use that in the meantime. The cut-over of the server will be done at a period of low activity, likely early AM (US Central Time), mid-week.

Negative keyword searches

The normal keywords OR syntax is

case (black, blue, red)

which will find items that include black OR blue OR red in the title.

Some users have been using this OR syntax for negative/exclude keywords. (doesn’t contain black OR blue OR red):

case -(black, blue, red)

We recommend that you use this single word format for maximum forward compatibility with eBay since the group format has not always been supported:

case -black -blue -red

The two formats are functionally the same. Our system and eBay currently support both forms.

Search Results and Model Numbers

Model number search behavior appears to have been modified at eBay to support partial keywords in any position in the model number:

clevite MS981 will match these: MS981 MS-981 MS981A MS981P20
clevite 981P20 will match these: MS981P20 MS-981P-20
These are examples and are not all inclusive. Other similar numbers may match.

But it looks like matching is based on the full letter and number groupings. Partial groupings do not match:

clevite S981P20 will NOT match MS981P20 because the M in MS is not included.
clevite 81P will NOT match because the 9 is not included.

The search algortithms appear to be treating the model number MS981P20 as MS 981 P 20 which can be searched in combination in order sequence only. e.g. MS20 will NOT match.

Hyphens and dots/periods are ignored and can be skipped or included in search filters as is common in text searches.

Strings of numeric values can be matched multiple ways. Consider this listing title for automotive fuses:

Fuses Assorted 15 pcs 5A 7.5A 10A 15A 20A Pack

Any of the following search phrases would match this listing:
10A 15A 20A
A15A20
15A20A

While this has some advantages to doing wildcard style searches, it can also result in false positives.