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Believe it or not, the article is true. This is what happened to a friend of mine. I am not at liberty to name the SEO company, especially since the investigation is still ongoing, but this is what happened.

A couple months ago, my friend hired an expensive SEO company (charged $2500) to reoptimize his website to get maximum exposure for the search engines.

After he paid the fee, he soon learned that they contracted out the job overseas to a bunch of random people who asked for his website hosting username and ftp password and told him that it should be ready in a few days.

They made some changes to his website. He visually saw many of them but not all of them. They said wait 3 months before making any other changes and let our SEO work do the job.

He waited, and his traffic started dropping. He contacted them, and they told him that it was completely normal while his website was being reindexed by Google, and to be patient.

His orders began to suffer, his visits were decreasing, he barely lasted the 3 months. When he tried to contact them again, they had disappeared.

He hired someone else to go in and take a look at his website to figure out what had gone wrong.. This is what they had done..

In his product catalog, some of the product names had a special hidden javascript next to them. When someone would go to the main website and click everything, the website would perform normally…

HOWEVER, if they came through a google referer in the http request, the javascript would activate and send his visitor to a competitor / spammy website who was selling the same products.

The only way he could have seen this, is if he visited his website like a normal visitor would who showed up from Google. Instead, he manually typed in his website address and therefore the javascript wouldn’t activate.

So here is a guy, who pays $2500 to an SEO company to help increase his traffic, and instead, all they ended up doing was stealing his money, AND his traffic.

This is something that everyone needs to be careful about. Don’t EVER trust an SEO company unless you have investigated THEM first. Don’t just hand over your FTP username and password to someone, and say “go ahead, and do what needs to be done”

…in this case what needed to be done was to hijack his website, steal a nice sum of cash, and run off in the middle of the night. His payment was cashed overseas, and the free mail accounts they had were no longer operational.

A real nice scam. Plus you have to wonder how much they made off his free traffic they stole over that 3 month period. How much other website hosting traffic did they steal from other websites caught in their SEO scam?

We’re all so desperate to get to the top rankings of the search engines, sometimes, we lose our business sense, and just hand money over to the first person who promises what we want to hear.

Jie Fang - Please share this story with anyone you know. More useful articles like this are at http://sillyinternet.blogspot.com

Tags: Security, seo marketing

Chances are your computer network or PC has been attacked at some point or another. Perhaps a worm caused your system to slow down severely, a virus erased your entire hard drive, or, malware plagued your registry and browser, leaving you helpless and frustrated. What you probably learned from these attacks was how or where to find a quick-fix while your overall security remained unchanged. What you may not know is that there are a few fundamental practices in relation to the hardware, software and people that can help to improve or optimize the safety level of your computer network and personal system. These practices or ways are sound, easy to implement and highly effective.

On the Hardware/Software Side

While they may appear relatively basic at the onset, some practical measures should be taken to not just establish and maintain but also to increase ongoing security to computer hardware and software. Failure to adhere to these measures or ways of implementing security can potentially lead to disaster. Of course, you can further add to or enhance these measures depending on your particular situation–such as budget restraints, time-frame, etc.

Specifically, you will want to:

• Upgrade or replace. Older hardware can malfunction and become unstable; older software can have security holes and vulnerabilities or could fail to properly integrate with newer technologies.
• Patch up and harden. Whether it’s a domain controller or your home PC, install anti-virus software, configure a firewall, update the OS using service packs and remove unnecessary services.
• Limit access. Keep the system away from prying eyes and unauthorized users. Implement strong passwords; use encryption. Locks and biometrics are strongly recommended, too.
• Monitor regularly. Make a habit of watching network activity and reading system logs to find inconsistencies and unusual traffic patterns.
• Maintain good backups. Backup often and verify your backups always. Keep one or more copies off-site, if possible.

On the People Side

When it comes to security, people usually are the weakest link in the chain. They can be lazy, indifferent, uninformed or represent some other security liability. Because you, too, may possibly exhibit such characteristics and behaviors yourself, here are ways to address these people problems and successfully increase and ensure IT security. For example, you should:

• Establish controls. Rules and policies can help to specify what is or isn’t acceptable use. Enforce them. Be prompt at acting on the slightest deviation.
• Train and educate. You and your staff can never be too knowledgeable about the newest technologies or the latest types of attacks–worms, viruses, Trojans, malware and others. Be prepared to learn and learn to be prepared.
• Be safety aware. Don’t expose yourself or your systems to potential attacks by linking to questionable websites. And, opening an email attachment from an unknown source could quench much more than sheer curiosity.
• Go “long” on commitment. Engage people by assigning them (or yourself) duties and responsibilities with realistic goals and rewards. Foster loyalty and support alongside accountability for non-performance.

Experiencing a malicious attack is sometimes the result of weak or ineffective security practices. And, while finding quick solutions to the attack may be reactionary and expected, it is not necessarily the only or best course of action in securing PCs and networks. There are far more sensible and fundamental ways to implement and address security in relation to the hardware, software and people involved in day to day operations. It is, in fact, by applying those ways and practices that you can effectively and successfully improve upon and optimize security in IT.

Author:  Eddie Bannister works as a network consultant and computer instructor. He also enjoys writing about a wide range of topics.

Everbody hates spam! I am sure spammers hate getting spam too, but they still continue to dish it out. Why? Because it is still effective. Believe it or not, many of us still click on the links or follow-up with the spam message. As long as we continue to do this, spam will exist. If everybody understood this and paid no attention to spam, the spammers will eventually give up because it costs them realy money to send out emails. It is hard to quantify what the cost of sending out one, two or fifty emails is, but 1 million or 5 million emails certainly has a cost that is not negligible. When the payback starts to get so small that the spammers cannot make a decent living, they will find something else to do. This day will come and I cannot wait for it to arrive.

In the meantime, what can we do about it. Well, I am not going to tell you that there is a perfect solution that will stop all spam, but what I will tell you is that there is a way to reduce the problem and manage it effectively using the 7 steps outlined below.

Step #1: Get Your Own Domain Name
Fighting spam effectively starts with getting your own domain name. For example if your name is Andy Williams, you would purchase a domain name called andywilliams.com, which is of course already owned by the famous singer. This has some unique advantages over using an ISP given domain name or a webmail service such as Hotmail or Gmail. It also has some minor disadvantages. Let’s examine these.

One major advantage is that you control the entire email address. You could create emails addresses like andy@andywilliams.com, info@andywilliams.com, sales@andywilliams.com and so on. This is in stark contract to an ISP assigned name like andywilliams@comcast.net. If you wanted another one, you’d have to open up another account or pay extra for each additional ISP assigned address. If you ever decided to switch ISP’s, you would lose that email address and have to start over using a new one, and inform everyone you communicated with about it - a very messy proposition.

Many get around this problem by getting a Hotmail, Yahoo Mail or Gmail account which you can access from anywhere as long as you have internet access. These types of email accounts definitely have a place in your email toolchest, but do not suffice as your primary personal email address. One reason is that you do not have access to your email messages and address books when you are not online, like during a long flight. Anotehr drawback is that they do not allow you to export the online address books making portability very tedious.

I prefer owning my own domain name which I call my permanent email address. I will always have this email address as long as I renew this domain name every year. The cost of registering a domain name varies from $4 to $8 per year for most common ones. This is a small price to pay for the advantages it brings you.

The one minor disadvantage of owning your own domain name is that you need to manage it yourself, or have someone do it for you. This in my opinion is far outweighed by the advantages mentioned above.

Step #2: Create Private Email Adresses
A private email address is one that nobody but your inner circle knows about. Every person that you give your personal email address to is someone that you trust and want to receive email from.

Setup one private email address for every person who is going to need to receive messages. This could be you and 5 other members of your family or 12 employees that work for you. This part is quite straightforward, you simply login to your email control panel and create new accounts for each email address that is going to be used to receive email.

Step #3: Create Public Email Addresses As Aliases
A public email address is generally known to the public. It can be specific like andyw@andywilliams.com or generic like receptionist@andywilliams.com.

A public email address is created as an email alias. An email alias is not a real email address, but an address that gets redirected to a real email address. For example, you setup receptionist@andywilliams.com as an alias that redirects to mary@andywilliams.com. Whenever some sends an email to receptionist@andywilliams.com, it will end up in Mary’s inbox. If you change receptionists, you simple modify the redirect for a very elegant solution. You can then publish this public email address on a website, in a brochure, on print advertising, business cards etc. without giving away your personal email address and without having to make much changes if Mary leaves and a new receptionist is hired. This is a huge benefit and maintains your privacy as well as those of others you have created email adresses for.

How does this help with spam, you ask? By using email aliases in a smart fashion, you could very easily shut down any spam that starts coming in. Let’s examine how this can be done.

Step #4: Setup the Default or Catch-all Email Address
Your email control panel will have something called a “default address” or it is also sometimes called a “catch-all address”. This is a valid email address that all unresolved emails go to. If you set this up to be your personal email address for example, then you will receive all emails that are addressed to “anything”@andywilliams.com, this includes sales@andywilliams.com, joe@andywilliams.com, andrew@andywilliams.com etc. Herein lies the secret to combat spam.

Step #5: Create Specific Named Public Email Addresses As And When Required
When you are forced to register on a website where you want to get some information from, you are usually asked for a valid email address. Well guess what, you now have an unlimited supply of valid email adresses. I usually use a specific format when registering at websites - it is “websitename”@andywilliams.com. So if I am registering at a website called www.get-rich-quick.com, I would use the address get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com as my valid email address. When the site sends me an email, it gets redirected to my personal email or whatever the default or catch-all address is.

Step #6: Send Spam Back To Where It Came From, If Possible
Here comes the real bonus, if you subsequently start receiving spam addressed to none other than get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com, you simple create an email alias for get-rich-quick@andywilliams.com and redirect the email back to exactly where it came from, for example georg-bush@get-rick-quick.com. You will then never get another email from anyone using that email address ever again. This is cool and is my favourite part. Bear in mind that spammers usually send email from an address that is not their own, so if you see an address like noreply@get-rick-quick.com, then you would redirect it somewhere else, for example a Hotmail address that you setup just for redirection purposes. Please exercise some discretion here because spammers often use the email addresses of real people and we don’t want these innocent people getting redirected email.

Step #7: Be Diligent In The Ongoing Management Of Your Domain
If you do this diligently for each website where you register by identifying the website name, you will very quickly know which websites are selling email addresses and which ones honor their promise not to share your information. ALl this while, nobody by your personal inner circle knows your private email address.

A real-life example in my case: I use a specific email alias for my Paypal account which nobody but Paypal knows. I have never ever received spam on this address, but I have received hundreds of spam messages on other email aliases that I have created. All of these emails supposedly come from Paypal and address me as “Dear Valued Paypal Member” or something similar, warning me that my account is going to be closed or suspended unless I click on their link and update my credit card information.

I hope that I have given you some food for thought on how to manage the ever growing spam problem by protecting yourself by taking some initiative and getting your own domain name. The added benefit is that you now have a permanent email address no matter where you choose to live or which ISP you use to connect to the internet.

Author:  644 EBooks - Marketing - Arts - Autos - SEO - Tools - Traffic - List Building - Society - Shopping - Sports - Self-Improvement and MUCH MUCH MORE! All For only $7 A Book. http://coreygeer.blogspot.com/

In this age of information, cookies are an essential element in making transactions faster and so much more convenient. We are not talking about the food item, of course. In the computer vernacular, cookies are actually files that store important information which are sent from your system to remote terminals in order to process certain requests.

These cookies have become the targets of some devious individuals who could be after some important information pertaining to you or your business. Spyware cookies stealers are programs developed by these unscrupulous people to make stealing information easier for them.

Whenever you perform an online transaction - say, you log on to a website to pay your electric bills - you enter your user name and other personal information. The website saves these bits of information so you don’t have to enter them again each time you log on in the future. What spyware cookies stealers do is look for this information in your hard disk and steal it from you. Usually, you won’t even know this has happened.

Once the spyware cookies stealer has acquired your information, this will be available to other people who can do whatever they want with it. In order to visualize the potential damage that spyware cookies stealers can cause, think of all the data that you enter into websites…user names, passwords, credit card numbers, bank account numbers, and other personal information.

Now imagine those information being in the hands of some malicious person. In these times when you can do practically everything online, an individual in possession of all your passwords and financial data can destroy your life, literally.

An online thief can empty your bank account with just a few clicks and you can be bankrupt in an instant without even knowing what hit you. People can use your identity in performing criminal acts and you can end up suffering the consequences of their actions.

The scary part is that this does not happen only in movies. It can actually happen to you, thanks to the many spyware cookies stealers that abound in the Internet.

The good news is that spyware cookies stealers can be removed from your system, and if they are detected early, you can minimize the damage they can bring. A good anti-spyware program can detect these spyware cookies stealers that may be hiding within your files.

When you have spotted and removed the spyware cookies stealer in your system, the next thing to do is to delete your cookies. You will then need to perform a thorough scan of your system to make sure that no threat is left behind.

To prevent future infiltration of spyware cookies stealers in your hard disk, upgrade your anti-spyware software regularly. You may need to pay a fee for these upgrades but when you think about the protection it can give you against spyware cookies stealers, a few dollars worth of protection is definitely worth it.

Author:  You can also find more info on Spyware and Spyware And Adware. Removespywarehelp.com is a comprehensive resource to know about Spyware.

There’s a frightening new batch of scams going around now that can damage your reputation as domain “squatters” steal your domain name.

There are a number of ways the “game” is played. The first is entirely legal, if more than a little questionable. In this version, the name of a city or geographic area is grabbed by a domain squatter and pointed to… “sites that you wouldn’t want your children visiting. (ie: porn)”

A prominent notice is placed on the sites, offering them for sale at prices that range from $2500 to as much as $500,000!

The idea here is that city officials will feel that enough damage is being done to the reputations of their towns that they’ll pay to keep them from being associated with that type of material.

It’s obviously safe to say that it’s not appropriate to pop those kinds of images into people’s faces while they’re looking for info on a completely different topic.

That’s where the pressure on the cities comes from, and why this is such a disgusting scheme.

In essence, the domain squatter says: “Pay us, or continue to watch as your city’s reputation suffers.”

Many would call this blackmail…

The second variation on the theme is not always legal. When someone takes a trademarked name (or variation of the spelling of one) or a famous person’s name, and does the same thing.

For trademarks or close variations, there’s a specific procedure for addressing the problem. (See the resource section at the end of this issue.)

For the names of famous people, there MAY be a remedy. But, it can be tricky — and expensive.

For example, if someone named John Jones registered http://WalterCronkite.com and pointed it to one of “those” sites, Walter Cronkite could probably force the domain away from him.

However, if someone named Steve Cronkite registered http://Cronkite.com and did the same thing, Walter Cronkite would have no recourse. It would be very hard to demonstrate that Steve registered the domain in bad faith. And if Steve’s son’s name is Walter, the same is true for http://WalterCronkite.com.

If you feel that your name is likely to be typed into a browser when people are looking for information on you, you should consider getting both the .com and .net versions of the domain if they’re available.

It will cost you a few bucks to prevent the problem. Fixing it, assuming you win, will cost you hundreds — if not thousands — of dollars.

And there’s no guarantee you’ll win.

A third version is a bit more benign. It’s common among members of affiliate programs. In this version, names very close to, or even including, the trademark are registered. The sites are created to drive traffic to the affiliates’ URL at the main site.

This may or may not be acceptable to the affiliate program owner. If it is, it’s a good technique for getting traffic. If not, it could get you into hot water. Check with the owner of the trademark before doing this. Less benign is an alternative version of this technique where someone grabs domain names that are close to the trademark of a competitor and uses them to grab competitor type-in traffic. This is often done by finding out the most common misspellings of the real domain name or trademark. Watch for people doing this with your domain. Here’s the worst version of this — and it can hit anyone if they have enough traffic and don’t pay close attention to when their domain registrations expire.

In this situation, someone grabs expired domain names and points them to “those” kinds of sites. This is a “no lose” for the hijacker, as they will profit from the traffic even if the previous owner doesn’t pay the requested ransom for the domain.

The more traffic the URL gets, the greater the clickthrough value to the hijacker. This means more potential damage to the original owner — and a higher ransom to get it back.

In effect, your own popularity is your worst enemy in this case.

The solution to this one is simple — and very important: Don’t let your domain names expire!

Useful Resources:

If you find yourself a victim of domain hijacking, there is hope for correcting the problem.

For a more formal explanation of the legal aspects of this problem, visit: http://www.llrx.com/congress/100200.htm

For specific information on the UDRP (Uniform Domain Name Dispute Resolution Policy), the procedure for taking domain names that are being used in violation of a trademark, see http://wipo2.wipo.int/process1/index.html .

For information on taking action under the Anti-Cybersquatting Act (A US law that provides for damages in addition to the less severe penalties of the UDRP) see:

Editor’s note: Author’s suggested resource link was dead and replaced with those below:

The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
FAQ: The Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act
Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act vs. Uniform Dispute Resolution Policy

If you have a famous name or trademark, the best defense is to make sure that you register the main variations in both the .com and .net form. The .org is probably only necessary if you are heavily involved with charitable activities. Protect yourself. Scammers come up with new schemes all the time…

So, keep your eyes open.

Author:  Douglas Miller is a retired fire service captain, now making a living working from home. His company Hundred-Fold-Life is not just a name but also a belief. To learn how to find the best home based business ideas and opportunities so you can work at home visit: http://www.clixgo.com

I receive approximately 5,000 emails containing spam each and every day. Well, maybe not that many, but it sure seems like it. Spam is spiraling out of control and shows no signs of stopping. The question is, where does spam come from, and can you do anything about it?

Most of the spam I receive in my inbox is sexually explicit, but I still like to look at it because some of this junk is actually quite entertaining. My personal favorites are offers to purchase discounted Canadian Viagra, ads for pornographic websites, and bogus work-from-home programs.

How do these people get their grimy hands on your email address? One way they can get it is through opt-in email. When you order something online, as part of the subscription or service that you signed up for, you may have inadvertently agreed to receive offers via email from that company in the future.

As a result, said company adds you to their mailing list and begins to send you email. This is perfectly legal as long as the company provides you with a way to unsubscribe from their mailing list. If they do not provide you with a means to unsubscribe, then the emails they are sending you are considered spam.

To make matters worse, a spammer will sell your email address and any other information you submitted to them to hundreds or even thousands of other companies who are looking for leads. Before you know it, your email address has been circulated everywhere. Once this happens, there is almost no way to prevent spam from reaching your inbox.

Another common way your email address can end up on a mailing list is when an internet marketer purchases a list of email addresses from someone else, and then sends a joke or an interesting cartoon to everyone on that list and asks you to forward it along to all your friends and relatives.

Once you forward the message, the email has a program attached to it that will copy the list of addresses that the message has been forwarded to and send that list back to the person who originally sent you the email. So now, that person not only has your email address, but also has the email address of everyone you forwarded the message to.

Another popular technique is known as harvesting. This is accomplished by writing a simple retrieval program that searches through every web site listed on a search engine for a certain keyword, and then grabs any any email addresses that are posted on those sites, and subsequently sends them back to the harvester. Using this technology, it is possible to acquire thousands of email addresses in an hour or less.

Harvesting has become a legal dilemma. The email marketing community feels that they should be allowed to harvest email addresses that are posted on public websites. In their opinion, if someone has posted their email address for all to see, then other people have the right to contact that person and ask them questions or send them offers.

However, web sites where email addresses are posted have threatened legal action against anyone that harvests email addresses from their site and uses them to build spam lists. Unfortunately, these web sites really have no way to prevent this, and it will only get worse in the future.

We will never stop spam completely. Both big businesses and small businesses have a strong incentive to send bulk email, because it costs nothing, and is a valuable tool for increasing their customer base. Sending regular mail or hiring a telemarketer costs a lot of money and is extremely ineffective. As a result, most companies would prefer to send massive amounts of email. So, expect your inbox to be chock full of spam for many years to come.
Author:  Jim Pretin is the owner of http://www.forms4free.com, a service that helps programmers make an HTML form

“Spyware” has evolved in the cyber era as the most dangerous, damaging and menacing technological appliance in current history. It is no aggravation of statement that if you are linked to the Internet, there’s every chance of being affected by this nuisance. So, it is a good time for us to possess a peripheral view about “spyware”.

It was on 16th October 1996, when the word “spyware” was used in the public for the first time. It appeared on the Usenet. Basically it was on an article sarcastically aimed at the business strategies of the global leader Microsoft. Later still, around about the year 1999, its usage was synonymous to spy equipment like microphone bugs or miniature cameras. Later that year in a press release of Zone Alarm Personal Firewall by the Zone Labs Company it was used in the meaning we know it today.

The word “spyware” was an instant hit in the mass media and among the general mass and soon after in June 2000, the first anti-spyware application OptOut was released by Steve Gibson. Gibson planned to market its OptOut for a very competitive price but they faced tough competition from Lavasoft, around the middle of 2000 with their free anti-spyware software version 1.0 offered absolutely for free. Lavasoft’s application was more competent as a spyware removal component and already was performing multi-tasking applications. As a result Gibson had to abscent himself from the race leaving their OptOut with no more development. Nevertheless, OptOut could be termed as the pioneer of anti-spyware applications.

It must be stated that the term “spyware” yields a bit of confusion. Though the word renders a notion of information being send back to certain individuals, not all spyware applications may perform this job. Many computer personnel dealing with data security management prefer the word “malware” in place of “spyware” as it indicates a software that is particularly detrimental to the computer system. Another word “adware” is also popular to specify software applications like keyloggers and Trojans, which are nothing but “spyware” in usage.

According to a once celebrated cyber report, an explicit spyware application was put forward to numerous internet users under the covering of a free, exceedingly user friendly and a mass alluring game software named “Elf Bowling”. This occurrence took place in around the 1999s. At present, and in general, the Windows operating system is the more favorable target of the spyware applications.

A few of the most iniquitous spyware programming are Xupiter, Gator, XXXDial, DirectRevenue, Euniverse, CoolWebSearch, 180 Solutions, Bonzi Buddy and Cydoor. One thing is to be noted. All these applications attack only Microsoft Windows operating systems. Platforms like Linux and Mac OS X are never ever reported to be affected in anyway by these spyware applications.

In October 2004, America Online and the National Cyber-Security Alliance performed a survey. The result was startling. About 80% of all internet users have their system affected by spyware and about 93% of spyware components are present in each of the computers and 89% of the computer users were unaware of their existence. Out of the affected parties almost all, about 95% confessed that they never granted permission to install them.

Legally speaking, spyware cannot be entitled as a virus as it never replicates itself. As a result it remains undetected when anti-virus applications are used. What’s more, you actually agree to be spied upon while you click the ‘I agree’ button on the screen while you install software which contains spyware files (often bundled in). Unfortunately, people rarely read end user licence agreements while downloading and, if they were to read them, the documents are written in legalize. People never refer to a lawyer while doing such things as downloading or installing.

To safely enumerate what spyware actually is, we can easily quote what Dick Hazeleger, famous for his “Spyware List”, said, “Spyware is the name which was given to software that - without the user of the program knowing that the software performs this kind of action - traces the user’s usage of the internet and sends this information - again without the user knowing this is happening - to a computer (”Server”) designated by the developer of the Spyware software. By performing these actions, detailed user profiles may be collected - without the user’s knowledge and approval - which then can be used for commercial or other purposes. By gathering and sending this information both resources on the user’s computer as well as bandwidth on the Internet is abusively used, not to mention the breach of privacy such a User profile would be.”

The state of Utah has already gone a step ahead of others and announced that several tasks performed by spyware would be strictly proscribed. Even the US Congress is preparing to follow the same line of operation. House Resolution 2929–the Spy Act has been prepared to control this menace.

This is what Utah’s antispyware law, the Spyware Control Act, has to say, “… we would not consider any application that uses pop-ups, is distributed through file sharing such as Kazaa or is not removable. Beyond that, we would look for applications that provide consumers value and would be installed on their own if people knew about them. The aggressive tactics of some advertising-supported software has given the whole sector a bad name. But if the software is fully disclosed and doesn’t rely on intrusive methods such as pop-ups, the consumer should have a choice to view ads in return for software. What’s more, the developer should have a right to make money. Beyond these guidelines, the legal risks and moral problems become clear, and legitimate businesses should stay away from these practices.”

At present Microsoft can champion about its anti spyware application release and it is mandatory for the software developers to be certified by the International Charter as Spyware Free.

Author:  Chinedu Norbert writes a blog about spyware and adware removal at easilyremoverspyware.blogspot.com. He recommends using a product called NoAdWare.

I must be the luckiest person alive. In the past three days I found out I won 1.5 Million Euros in the UK lottery, One Million Euros in the Winx International Lottery, 1.5 Million Euros in the 2007 E-Mail Lottery, and 500,000 Pounds in an e-mail lottery held by the Coca Cola Company. Wow! What did I do to receive all these riches?

The sad truth is there are actually people who fall for these schemes. For the promise of a quick buck (or million Euros as the case may be) people will turn over their bank account numbers, wire money in the hopes of getting more back, or give other information that could lead to identity theft.

These lottery and sweepstakes schemes have gone on long before the internet, with one of the oldest being the phony sweepstakes which required an entrance fee to claim your prize, which amounted to more than the “prize” was worth. Another variation of that scheme was requiring the potential “winner” to call a certain number to find out if he or she was a winner. The phone call cost the potential “winner” a certain amount per minute with an unusually-long wait time on hold. The real winner was the scamming company which made money off the phone calls.

Today’s thieves have a wide choice of scam-delivery mechanisms, including in person, the mail, phone and internet. However, the same holds true no matter how the scam is delivered: if it sounds too good to be true, it is.

How Can You Recognize the Lottery or Sweepstakes Scam?

There are certainly legitimate lotteries and sweepstakes offers. Who hasn’t bought a state or multi-state lottery ticket from their local lottery retailer? Or, who hasn’t seen one of those sweepstakes offered by a recognized company advertising in the coupon section of the Sunday newspaper? You fill out the entry form or reasonable facsimile (usually a 3″x5″ card) with your name and address and send it off.

Therein is your biggest clue as to whether you’re the victim of a scam. In a legitimate lottery or sweepstakes you have bought the ticket or entered your name and address. In a scam lottery or sweepstakes you are notified you’ve won when you haven’t even entered or bought a ticket.

In addition, it’s illegal to use the mail or telephone to play lotteries across borders, whether national or state lines. Any lottery offer involving the purchase of lottery tickets for other state or country lotteries could end up with you being charged with illegal activities.

One ploy used by foreign scammers involving lotteries or sweepstakes is offering you an “advance” on your winnings. The scam artist will send you a check for part of your “winnings.” All you have to do is wire them payment for “taxes” or other official purposes. By the time you find out their check has bounced the money you wired is in their hands. And, because it was wired it’s harder to trace.

Lottery scammers don’t always use e-mail or the phone. Sometimes they do their dirty work in person. A typical scam would go something like this: You are approached in person by someone who claims he or she just won the lottery but isn’t eligible to claim it. They offer to split the money with you if you claim the prize. Sounds good, right? Except that before you claim the prize from the lottery retailer you are required to withdraw some money from your account and give it to the ticket holder as a good-faith gesture. By the time you find out you’re holding a non-winning lottery ticket, the thief is long-gone with your good-faith money.

In order to protect yourself from these scams, it’s important to remember the following:

Lotteries

* It’s illegal to use the mail or telephone to play lotteries across borders.

* If you ever receive a phone call, letter or e-mail announcing you just won a lottery, it’s a scam.

Sweepstakes

* It’s illegal for a company to require you to pay to win or claim a sweepstakes prize.

* It’s illegal for a company to suggest that buying something will improve your chances of winning.

* Companies cannot ask for money from you for taxes they say you owe on a sweepstakes winning.

* Be cautious when entering sweepstakes from displays you see in malls - often times these are people just wanting your name and address for a future sweepstakes scam.

* Only enter sweepstakes from recognizable companies, and never pay a fee to enter.

Avoiding being the victim of a scam takes a healthy dose of skepticism. If you are ever unsure about the legitimacy of an offer made to you, you can call the National Fraud Information Center’s Hotline at 1-800-876-7060

Author:  Shari Hearn is a writer and creator of Safety Tips 411, where you’ll learn how to guard against identity theft.

It seems that every day there is a new virus, spyware or adware threat. What are you doing to protect your personal data and identity? Here are ten free ways which can help a home user can protect his/her personal computer from online malware threats.

1. Use anti-virus software, keep it up-to-date and run scans regularly
   There are many choices of software out there some cost money others are free for home users. If you are a home user I recommend AVG Anti-Virus. AVG can be setup to update itself, scan incoming email for potential viruses as well as be set to run periodic scans. In other words, AVG does not require much user intervention at all. It has a clean, well laid out out user interface and is really quite simple to use.
   To download AVG or view an entire list of free anti-virus applications go to our free anti-virus software page
    
2. Use anti-spyware software, again, keep it up-to-date and run scans regularly
   My personal favorites in this department are SpyBot Search & Destroy, AdAware, Windows Defender and HiJackThis, all of which are free for home users. I have found that running Spybot Search & Destroy, AdAware and Windows Defender will pick up most, if not all spyware threats. For a more advanced tool you can use HiJackThis but I recommend finding an online forum where you can post your HiJackThis log so a professional can analyze the file and let you know what is safe to remove. I have used Spybot Search & Destroy, AdAware and Windows Defender to remove infections from many computers. Running these programs while in Safe Mode seems to be most effective. To learn how to start a computer in Safe Mode go here
   To read more about the above mentioned free spyware detection/removal applications go to our free anti-spyware software page.
    
3. Keep your computer’s operating system up-to-date.
   If you are running Windows XP this is a fairly simple process using Windows build in feature called Windows Update:
   1. Click on the “Start” menu and choose “Control Panel”.
   2. Double-click the “System” Control Panel and click the “Automatic Updates” tab.
   3. Put a check the box that says “Keep my computer up to date”.
   4. Under “Settings” choose “Automatically download the updates and install them on the schedule that I specify”.
   5. Now choose a convenient time for Windows to update your computer.
   6. Click the “Apply” button and then click “OK” to close the window.

    

4. Do not open email attachments from unknown sources.
   Email is probably one of the most common ways to pick up a computer virus. Image this, an email comes into your inbox, it’s from an unknown sender but the attachment is called freemoney.txt.exe. You see the .txt file extention and think that the file must be safe because it’s only a text file so you decided to open the attachment. Within seconds your computer is infected by a Trojan virus, without your knowledge your computer sends a virus infected email to all of the contacts in your address book. As a result, your friends open the attachment, their computers get infected, they send the infected message to all the contacts in their address book and so on……In other words you computer can become part of the larger problem. This can be avoided by making sure that you know who is sending you the attachment and that the file is indeed safe.
    
5. Use passwords that are not easy to guess and change them frequently
   Do not use your first name, phone number, dogs name etc.. as your password. Choose something that is unique to you. Use a combination of letters (both uppercase and lowercase), numbers, symbols and punctuation. if you can. For example using: ‘3eRz17b’ as a password would be more difficult to guess than ’spot’. Change your online banking passwords, computer login passwords and email passwords frequently. Keep your passwords safe and don’t write them down on paper and tape it to your computer monitor. . I know that this seems like common sense but I had to mention it.
    
6. Do not download free software unless you have verified that it is legitimate.
   There are many websites online that are simply there to infect your computer. If you see something that you want to download type the name into a Google search box and see what others have to say about it. Gather up a few sources and be certain that it’s safe to install. The time you take to verify the legitimacy of the software will probably much less than the amount of time and it would take to clean viruses and spyware from your computer.
    
7. Use a software firewall
   A firewall is exactly what it sounds like - a barrier between your computer and the Internet but we are not talking about protection from fires! A good firewall monitors both incoming and outgoing network traffic. Windows XP and Vista both have built in firewalls but they only monitor incoming traffic. I recommend a program called Zone Alarm. Zone Alarm is free for personal use. It’s simple to configure and offers solid protection from unwanted Internet traffic. There are many other free firewalls out there. Read more about Zone Alarm and other free options here
    
8. Stay away from ‘questionable’ websites
   Plain and simple, if you are going to visit ‘the dark side of the web’ you run the risk of infection.
    
9. Be wary of pop-ups
   Do NOT click any button in the pop-up for example: do not use the ‘Close’ or ‘Cancel’ buttons, or the Close box that may appear in the upper-right corner of the window. Closing a pop-up in that way could potentially install a virus or other malicious software on your computer. To close a pop-up ad, press Ctrl-W.
10. Back up your data regularly
    This is self explanatory, keep backups of your personal data. There are many cost effective ways to do this do some research and develop a plan to backup your data frequently preferably on some form of external media such as DVD, CD or external hard drive. For more on how to back up data see this tutorial.  

Computer security is a serious issue. No particular above mentioned method can 100% guarantee to prevent all malware infections. Following these guidelines (mixed with a bit of common sense) can help prevent virus and spyware infections. Education is the primary malware solution.
Author:  Michael has written many articles on virus and spyware removal techniques. He is the owner of Vermont PC Solutions and he maintains MalwareSolutions.com which is a website dedicated to supplying online information about malware protection and removal as well as free virus and spyware removal tools. He has been cleaning infected computers for over ten years.

Today many people rely on computers to do homework, work, and create or store useful information. Therefore, it is important for the information on the computer to be stored and kept properly. It is also extremely important for people on computers to protect their computer from data loss, misuse, and abuse.

It is crucial for businesses to keep information they have secure so that hackers can’t access the information. Home users also need to take means to make sure that their credit card numbers are secure when they are participating in online transactions.

A computer security risk is any action that could cause lost of information, software, data, processing incompatibilities, or cause damage to computer hardware, a lot of these are planned to do damage. An intentional breach in computer security is known as a computer crime which is slightly different from a cypercrime.

A cybercrime is known as illegal acts based on the internet and is one of the FBI top priorities. There are several distinct categories for people that cause cybercrimes, and they are refereed as hacker, cracker, cyberterrorist, cyberextortionist, unethical employee, script kiddie and corporate spy. The term hacker was once actually known as a good word but now it has a very negative view.

A hacker is defined as someone who accesses a computer or computer network unlawfully. They often claim that they do this to find leaks in the security of a network. The term cracker has never been associated with something positive this refers to someone how intentionally access a computer or computer network for evil reasons. Crackers are basically evil hackers. They access it with the intent of destroying, or stealing information. Both crackers and hackers are very advanced with network skills.

A cyberterrorist is someone who uses a computer network or the internet to destroy computers for political reasons. It’s just like a regular terrorist attack because it requires highly skilled individuals, millions of dollars to implement, and years of planning.

The term cyperextortionist is someone who uses emails as an offensive force. They would usually send a company a very threatening email stating that they will release some confidential information, exploit a security leak, or launch an attack that will harm a companys network. They will request a paid amount to not proceed sort of like black mailing in a since. An unethical employee is an employee that illegally accesses their companys network for numerous reasons. One could be the money they can get from selling top secret information, or some may be bitter and want revenge.

A script kiddie is someone who is like a cracker because they may have the intentions of doing harm, but they usually lack the technical skills. They are usually silly teenagers that use prewritten hacking and cracking programs.

A corporate spy has extremely high computer and network skills and is hired to break into a specific computer or computer network to steal or delete data and information. Shady companies hire these type people in a practice known as corporate espionage. They do this to gain an advantage over their competition an illegal practice. Business and home users must do their best to protect or safeguard their computers from security risks.

The next part of this article will give some pointers to help protect your computer. One must remember however, there is no one hundred percent guarantee way to protect your computer so becoming more knowledgeable about them is a must these days.

When you transfer information over a network it has a high security risk compared to information transmitted in a business network because the administrators usually take some extreme measures to help protect against security risks. Over the Internet there is no powerful administrator which makes the risk a lot higher.

If your not sure if your computer is vulnerable to a computer risk than you can always use some-type of online security service which is a website that checks your computer for email and Internet vulnerabilities. The company will then give some pointers on how to correct these vulnerabilities. The Computer Emergency Response Team Coordination Center is a place that can do this.

The typical network attacks that puts computers at risk includes viruses, worms, spoofing, Trojan horses, and denial of service attacks.

Every unprotected computer is vulnerable to a computer virus which is a potentially harming computer program that infects a computer negatively and altering the way the computer operates without the users consent. Once the virus is in the computer it can spread throughout infecting other files and potentially damaging the operating system itself. Its similar to a bacteria virus that infects humans because it gets into the body through small openings and can spread to other parts of the body and can cause some damage. The similarity is, the best way to avoid infection is preparation.

A computer worm is a program that repeatedly copies itself and is very similar to a computer virus. However the difference is that a virus needs o attach itself to an executable file and become a part of it. A computer worm doesnt need to do that I seems copies to itself and to other networks and eats up a lot of bandwidth.

A Trojan Horse named after the famous Greek myth and is used to describe a program that secretly hides and actually looks like a legitimate program but is a fake. A certain action usually triggers the Trojan horse, and unlike viruses and worms they dont replicate itself. Computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses are all classifies as malicious-logic programs which are just programs that deliberately harms a computer.

Although these are the common three there are many more variations and it would be almost impossible to list them. You know when a computer is infected by a virus, worm, or Trojan horse if one or more of these acts happen:

1. Screen shots of weird messages or pictures appear.
2. You have less available memory then you expected
3. Music or sounds plays randomly.
4. Files get corrupted
5. Programs are files dont work properly
6. Unknown files or programs randomly appear
7. System properties fluctuate

Computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses deliver their payload or instructions through four common ways. A very common way that people get a computer virus, worm, or Trojan horse is when they open up an infected file through an email attachment.

• The first way happens when an individual runs an infected program. If you download a lot of things you should always scan the files before executing, especially executable files.
• Second is when an individual runs an infected program.
• Third is when an individual bots a computer with an infected drive, so thats why its important to not leave media files in your computer when you shut it down.
• Fourth is when it connects an unprotected computer to a network or makes it part of a bot-network.

There are literally thousands of computer malicious logic programs and new one comes out by the numbers so thats why its important to keep up to date with new ones that come out each day. Many websites keep track of this.

There is no known method for completely protecting a computer or computer network from computer viruses, worms, and Trojan horses, but people can take several precautions to significantly reduce their chances of being infected by one of those malicious programs. Whenever you start a computer you should have no removable media in the drives. This goes for CD, DVD, and floppy disks. When the computer starts up it tries to execute a bot sector on the drives and even if its unsuccessful any given various on the bot sector can infect the computers hard disk. If you must start the computer for a particular reason, such as the hard disk fails and you are trying to reformat the drive make sure that the disk is not infected.

Cybersecurity is becoming a more important issue every day. Knowing the environment can help you be better prepared.

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