Will you stop making money tomorrow?

9 replies
On February 1st PayPal are changing the way their IPN works (that's the system by which they tell your site that a payment has been made or someone has cancelled).

In an email dated 1th November 2012 they wrote this:

In a bulletin dated October 18, 2011, we announced that we were going to expand the number of IP addresses for www.paypal.com to improve our site's performance, scalability and availability. As part of this transition, we planned to discontinue support for the HTTP 1.0 protocol starting February 1, 2013.

We have recently identified that this change may impact the ability of some of our merchants to perform IPN (Instant Payment Notification) post-back validation or PDT (Payment Data Transfer) posts to www.paypal.com. This happens when the IPN or PDT scripts use the HTTP 1.0 protocol and do not include the "Host: www.paypal.com" header in the HTTP request.

Additional Details Starting February 1, 2013, we will require all incoming requests to have a "Host" header which complies with HTTP 1.1 Specifications. This header was not required under HTTP 1.0. IPN and PDT scripts using HTTP 1.0 may start failing with "HTTP/1.1 400 Bad Request" errors after February 1, 2013, which will result in IPN messages not being validated successfully, or PDT scripts not being able to retrieve transaction information.

Your Action Required before February 1, 2013 You will need to update your IPN and/or PDT scripts to use HTTP 1.1, and include the "Host: www.paypal.com" and "Connection: close" HTTP headers in the IPN and PDT scripts.
As far as I know they haven't sent out any further reminders - and truth be told, I had missed the first one completely.

Cutting through the tech talk, it seems they are saying that many membership sites, shopping carts and other types of sites that rely on the PayPal IPN will stop working correctly because they will no longer be able to communicate with PayPal.

I only found out about the problem and its potential to mess up my business because the support team at Kim Standerline's EasyMemberPro sent out a message to their customers a few days ago explaining how to update the program so that it will deal with the new IPN code. It is basically a reinstall of the software using the latest version (they provided a link and instructions).

None of the other programs I use to run sites that take PayPal payments have, to my knowledge, sent out any support messages. At least if they have they haven't reached me. I know that LFM and RAP have got updates in place to correct the problem and I'm sure other script producers have addresed it as well.

Don't be caught unawares tomorrow. Get the latest updates installed for your scripts today - and check with customer support if you are unsure.

Martin
#making #money #paypal ipn #stop #tomorrow
  • Profile picture of the author lotsofsnow
    HTTP 1.0 is some fairly old stuff. 1991 to 1996 to be exact.

    It is very doubtful that a lot of web sites or scripts are still running on this.

    And if you are using a piece of software that has not been updated since 1996, well, this might be the time to go shopping for a company that cares...
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  • Profile picture of the author Martin Avis
    It may be old stuff, but at least three scripts that I use have issued updates to ensure they will still work from tomorrow. The problem is that only one of them (as far as I know) bothered to tell anyone.

    Many people, me included, don't always bother to update to the very latest version of things. Now, perhaps it is time to do so.

    It may not be an issue, but it does no harm to check.
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  • Profile picture of the author writeaway
    Wow, 17-year-old technology. OP has a point though-Paypal could have issued more follow-ups after their November notice.
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  • Profile picture of the author tporritt
    Thanks Martin for the post. I imagine for most of us we will only know the affects of these changes on or after February 1. I keep my fingers crossed that very few of us are affected myself included.
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    • Profile picture of the author Martin Avis
      I have been told this afternoon that RAP sent out a message to their customers on Jan 29th telling them to install the latest patch to prevent problems tomorrow. Good to know that some companies are concerned enough to issue advisories.
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  • Profile picture of the author EmilyAbbott
    Banned
    I have not received such an e-mail :-(
    Should I be worried about these changes? Especially since I don't really understand much of what is going to happen starting with 1st of February. That is...tomorrow! :-(
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  • Profile picture of the author ced28
    Sid sent out a message to all RAP users on Jan 29th, the patch is available inside your RAP admin panel. V.3.2.17. I've done all my "RAP" updates today.

    Now I'm wondering if I need any patch for my "butterfly marketing" sites? The BM forum is pretty dead... I guess I"ll see tomorrow. Crossing my fingers.
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  • Profile picture of the author asiriusthoth
    That is quite interesting; I haven't heard about that in quite some time. I run a few websites that do have IPN setup through our gateway. I'll get my tech to check this out... we don't want 0 sales that day haha.
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  • Profile picture of the author dvduval
    I'll certainly be looking for this, and be referencing this thread should I get reports of downloads not being activated in our system. Thanks for sharing.
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    It is okay to contact me! I have been developing software since 1999, creating many popular products like phpLD.
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