Starting now, if you would like to maintain your free Dyn account, you must log into your account once a month. Failure to do so will result in expiration and loss of your hostname. This activity helps us eliminate hostnames that are no longer needed and/or dormant. Note that using an update client will no longer suffice for this monthly login.

This was in my Inbox this morning from DynDNS. I’ve used them for years and years to maintain an easy way to get back to my machines at home when traveling or at the office. A few years ago, they changed their policy and stated that if you ever failed to update your Dyn account with <a href="http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/ddclient/" target="_blank">ddclient</a> within 30 days, you would lose your hostname, and have to re-register. Now, the same penalty is in effect, but you also have to log into their web interface.

Fun.

This made me look for a non-DynDNS solution, and much to my delight, I can use CloudFlare as a ddclient target. I already have the domains I want to use hosted in CloudFlare, and it took less than 5 minutes to download the patched ddclient from github and set it up.

Five minutes, and I’m done with DynDNS forever. Which, I guess is what they want. I’m a user who was unlikely to ever switch to being a paid customer, and I’m just a drain on their services and infrastructure. But it also means I’ll never be a paying customer in the future.