Services maintenance and password security

We recently took our services (NickServ and friends) offline for maintenance to ensure encrypted storage of the services database.

During this process, we accidentally started services with an empty database. While we quickly realized the mistake, a large number of users were already logged out before we stopped the process, receiving a message like "Account youruser dropped, forcing logout". Services were quickly restored to normal afterwards and people were able to log in to their accounts as before. We would like to apologize for the disruption and confusion this may have caused.

Unfortunately, some people have used this opportunity to spread some misinformation, claiming that "all passwords have been released". This is not the case; there has been no threat to account security due to this incident. Additionally, we do not store passwords in a recoverable form at all.

In any case, we do recommend using a unique and secure password not shared with other online services. If you wish to change your password, you may do so using the command /msg NickServ SET PASSWORD <newpassword> while logged in (replacing <newpassword> with the password you wish to set). You might wish to consider using a password manager as well, such as KeePassXC.

We do take security and privacy very seriously. Notifications about any actual security breaches would appear on this site, as well as in global notices sent out by members of staff (identified by a freenode/staff/ cloak).

Apologies for the confusion and thank you for using freenode!