The Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should Ignore by Kai Chandler

The Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should Ignore

The internet is undoubtedly a fantastic resource for
families and offers a rich vein of educational content.
However, there are potential dangers - welcome to the
seedy world of viruses, spam, trojans, pornography, spyware
and other nasties.

Here are the Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should
Ignore:

1. Viruses - A computer program that copies itself. They
often disrupt your computer system or damage your data.
Viruses are usually received by email attachments so be
careful opening anything from a dubious source. They can
affect anyone, for example, the destructive Mydoom worm
affected one out of three small and mid-sized businesses.

2. Spyware - Sends information about you and your computer
to somebody else. Spyware may send the addresses of sites
you have visited or worse still, transmit personal
information. With today's concerns about identify theft
this is a real worry. For example, CoolWebSearch may hijack
web searches, home page, and other Internet Explorer
settings. Spyware is normally received as part of shareware
or freeware downloaded from the web.

3. IP Spoofing - A technique to gain unauthorized access
to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a
computer with an address indicating that the message is
coming from a trusted host.

4. Trojans - An apparently legitimate computer program
that is really intended to disrupt and damage computer
activity by sending information, perhaps even passwords
onto a third party without you knowing. As an example,
recent emails entitled "Osama Bin Laden Captured" attempted
to download the "Trj/Small.B." Trojan if the embedded URL
was clicked. This trojan attempts to hijack the PC.

5. Spam - Unsolicited mail often promoting products of a
dubious financial or sexual nature. Don't leave your email
address on websites and internet bulletin boards as they
are harvested by spammers.

6. Adware - puts advertisements on your screen. These take
many forms including popups, popunders and advertisements
that appear later, even if your browser is closed. Some are
sent using the Windows Messenger service which allows a
spammer to direct an advertisement straight to your
computer by sequentially sending messages to IP addresses.
Always irritating, they are also often of a pornographic
nature.

7. Diallers - for those of us still with dial up modems,
dialler programs redirect calls to a very expensive number.
You won't know until you get the bill.

8. Hijackers - Hijackers take control of your web browser
and may reset your home page, search bar and search pages.
They can redirect you to undesirable sites or stop you
going to particular sites.

9. Hackers - With so much personal data available online
to anyone with a password you must be sure your password is
secure. If you are using your mother's maiden name, your
cat's name or your birthday then your password is at risk.
Here are two tips for making a secure password. Method One -
pick two random unrelated three letter words and two
digits. Mix them up and what do you have? A secure password
such as "red19cat" or "hotpin73". Method Two - pick a short
sequence of words such as Now Is The Winter Of Our
Discontent Made Glorious' and you have a password of
"nitwoodmg". You could even change the I's and O's to
digits.

10. Phishing - Emails purporting to come from reliable
sources such as Paypal, Ebay or your bank. Often wanting
you to verify your account details, they can look very
realistic but are generally scams to harvest usernames and
passwords. Always open a new browser winder and type the
address there, rather than clicking on the link provided.

11. Hoaxes - Chain letters, scams, false alarms. At best
they take up time and bandwidth but at worst vulnerable can
be victims of fraud. Pass it on!

12. Stranger-danger - For those of us with children - do
you know what they actually do when they are online? Are
they working on homework tasks, downloading illegal music
or pornography? Or are they chatting to strangers in chat
rooms? You should consider blocking access to undesirable
sites and logging their activity with a surveillance tool.
Oh, and don't forget that where children are concerned,
computers should always be kept in a family room and never
in their bedroom.

Three Step Action Plan

There are three essential steps that should be taken to
ensure your PC is kept threat-free.

Firstly, be sensible when opening attachments or following
email instructions from apparently reputable sites.

Secondly, make sure you are using the latest service pack
of Windows as Microsoft is continually closing loopholes to
tighten up security.

Finally, there's a range of low cost tools such as
firewalls, antivirus, spam blockers and spyware killers
available. Like everything else they vary in quality and
you tend to get what you pay for so always do your research
first and perhaps try a free trial before getting your
credit card out.

http://www.surfcontrols.com specializes in providing
reviews and recommendations of top-rated tools to help
protect your online experience. There's a quick reference
list to dozens of top sites promoting different aspects of
safe surfing packed with useful information and there's
also a great set of top tips for safe surfing.

Copyright Kai Chandler (#12t5109)

Press Release: Why SEO Experts Should Not Use Press Releases

Rumor has it that press releases are the next big thing in the SEO business, and many companies are spending top dollars trying to write the next big press release announcing the next big balloon breaking technology. But is this really the next big thing?

By definition, a Press Release is a kind of news item released by the company on whom the news is being reported. As such, you will have to compete with all the other press releases and hope that your will get picked up.

Why Will Your Press Release Be Trashed?
1) Unless you are writing a press release about Microsoft, Adobe, Sony or one of the other mega-companies, or at least about a company that is relatively well known, forget about it. Journalists and news editors receive thousands of press releases a day and there is no way that they will waste more than a quick glance. So why should you pay a company seven to eight hundred dollars for them sending your press release to thousands of editors and journalists when they are going to junk it anyway?

2) Unless you are announcing a truly revolutionary product or technology (which I assume you are not since you are only interested in using the professionally paid and written press release to boost your search engine rankings), whatever you make up or announce such as some new free deal or new portal offering something unique, your chances of being picked up are very slim. Yes, the PR companies will tell you that they have vast experience in writing Press Releases that will make yours stand out and get picked up but this is not accurate. The only way your PR is going to get picked up is if it truly is something out of the ordinary or something that no one has ever thought off.

3) Unless you plan to spend millions of dollars and then just by sheer volume your site will go ahead in the search engines, this is not a good option. Why? If you send a large number of press releases then these will be placed on the different PR companies websites main page. Since most of these home pages have a very high page rank, your site will get a boost. The question is whether this boost is worth the large amount of money you will put into the PR companies pocket. No it is not. Use that money to buy (though I do not recommend this) links from high-ranked websites and you will pay less and receive more benefit.

4) Any press release, even if it has been accepted, will remain on the different pages for just a short time, making the time and effort and even more so the amount of money you paid fruitless.

Conclusion:
A press release is useful if you wish to contact the press and maybe get some free publicity, but it is of no use if you wish to use it as a tool in order to advance your website in the search engines.

Online Scams: How To Avoid Getting Fooled

Beware of the three ways of getting fooled into giving up your money through seemingly innocent money-making schemes. Scams are all around us and it can be found in every single area of life, but more so in such areas where the risk is greater such as when dealing with credit cards, bank accounts and other activities which involve sending or receiving money online.

The Bank/Credit Card Email Scam:
If you get an email asking you to sign up to your bank account or credit card through the email because your privacy is under danger or just to receive a free gift or something: BEWARE! Do not sign up through the internet address provided in the email. If the email does make you anxious, go to the bank or credit card site using the address you know already or through searching the search engines.
How Does This Scam Work?
The senders of the email know that only a very few will sign up but that is all they need. When you signed up to the bogus internet address, they got your user and password. Now its time for them to party!

The Missing Millionaire Scam:
If you receive an email saying that they represent a dead or missing former ruler, high-ranking official or businessman from an African, Gulf or even Russian: BEWARE! They offer you a chance to earn anything between one to five percent of ten to fifty million. And for your co-operation only. Don't get sucked into this, for though they speak of giving you money, they will receive cash and from your account.
How Does This Scam Work?
They will ask you for your bank details in order to transfer the cash and then they will use that to transfer a small amount. Now, once you trust them, they will ask you for more personal and secure details because they "need" that to transfer the entire sum in and out of your account. What they won't tell you is that they will transfer all the money out from your account: theirs and yours.

The Make Money Fast Scam:
This is the most innocent of the lot, but that is also why it is the most dangerous. These are so-called companies that advertise that if you only sign up and use their system, you will mint money. Please do not fall for such schemes. They will pay you some money but then once trust is built, they will fleece your bank account. Remember that quick money scams are the surest and fastest way to lose all your money!

Conclusion:
Whatever you do online, always remember that the internet is not a safe place. Treat it like you would treat any other business venture and bring up your guard. If you play it safe and check out the companies before committing, you will be able to guard yourself against losing money to crooks.

How to House a Successful Online Business

It is worth taking the time to make your site more search engine friendly, because it will bring you profit and appropriate exposure. Here are some simple advices on building successful web site for your online business.

How to build search engine friendly website? You can find plenty material when browsing the Internet, but a good foundation cannot sabotage your online initiative. A search engine friendly site is not just beneficial for top ranking in the search engines, but also helps to attract customers, thus getting business for you.

Before designing a site, make sure you have got a good domain name. The Domain name is your URL or Universal Resource Locator as in what a person types into the search engine bar like yoursite.com and others. Hypothetically, if your business is related to something like <a href="http://www.juegos-de-casinos-6.com/ruleta.html">ruleta</a> then it is good to have the word "ruleta" included into the domain name separated by dashes from other words or numbers. Generic domain names may help in search engine listing. It will be easier to find the sequence of words within a domain name directly related to the main idea of your business.

Make your site content based with at least two hundred words holding clear information of your products, services and business. This will help your potential customer to know about you and get some information on products they require. Apart from verbal description, you might use web design attributes to underline your point. Please do not startle the visitor of your web site with blinking texts, shocking colors and confusing animations on the web pages. The website must have a clean look so that the web visitor will feel relaxed to get all relevant information about your services, otherwise, he will shut it down within a minutes. 

Keep the site simple and easy to navigate. Complicated navigation will confuse the visitors. The navigation must be user-friendly and easily understood by the visitors. If you search through search engine results, you will find all the top ranking websites are optimized properly. These optimized websites make their presence felt in the search engines by making their site user friendly with good navigation, content texts, and Meta tags relevant to their websites, and having proper placed images. Why shouldn't you use such simple tool like navigation at your favorite?

News relevant to your site is also a great way to bring in traffic. Many people nowadays get their news online and not just world news. Maybe someone wants to read about the gambling bill that was passed in congress recently to ban money transfers to and from online casinos, a great advantage to having news on your page is that if it is well written piece of writing, other news sources like Yahoo and Google may take your masterpiece and put a link to it from their site. This would give you thousands of hits, and that is the goal.

While designing your website, the most important thing to remember your website is not to trick search engines by adding hidden texts or hidden links, irrelevant keywords or text, or very small text which is hardly visible for human eyes. Google usually punishes these websites by giving them low rank or sometimes removing them forever.

If you incorporate all these tips when building your website I can guarantee it will make your job much easier, no one wants to build a site and then find out they need to star over from scratch, because every day offline is potential money lost.

Use the above suggestions and utilize them into your company website in order to guarantee you stop losing money that you could be making.

Does the American government see its citizens as its children?

In Americas 230 year history the government seems to have forgotten that there job is to run the government as the people see as best and not the government telling the people what is best for them. The most recent example is the Internet gambling Ban signed into law last week by President Bush. The bill makes it illegal for banks and credit card companies to transfer money to casinos for the purpose of wagering on sports or games of chance, like roulette, blackjack and poker. These games are harmlessly enjoyed regularly by millions of Americans everyday, but some people become addicted to these games so the government is telling all of its citizens that no one is allowed to play these games in an online casino. This is not the first case of the government going against the wishes of the people, in the early 1900’s the government decided that the consumption of Alcohol should be banned, because some people were developing health and mental problems related to drinking too much. So rather then educating the people on the ill effects of prolonged Alcohol abuse the American government banned Alcohol. But instead of reducing the consumption of Alcoholic beverages it increased, and because the government was not allowing the production or importing of Alcohol, organized grime got into the moonshine business, and eventually the Government saw the error of their decision and repealed the law. Another great example of a failed policy to protect the people is the war on drugs that the government has been aging since the early 1980’s Billions of tax dollars a year goes into the war on drugs, but what are the results? The price of drugs has risen, and to support their habits many drug addicts have had to commit acts of robbery and murder to get their drugs. The American prisons are packed full of people whose only crime was possession of these illegal drugs. Instead of being an industry that is regulated and controlled you have people selling these drugs to kids in school playgrounds, and shooting each other to protect their territory. Had the government decided not to criminalize drugs but make it a heavily controlled industry, they could use the tax money for social programs like schools ad to give Americans universal health care. Please do not misunderstand me I am not in favor for legalizing hard drugs, but the current system is not working at all, but I am all in favor for legalizing online casino gambling. If I choose to play some hands of blackjack or poker from the comfort of my home what rights does the government have to tell me not to, and what sense does it make that I can not play in a casino over the internet, but I can drive down the street to the local casino and play there. To enforce this ban millions if not billions of dollars of software and computer hardware will be needed to monitor all of the banks transactions and that money will come from taxes instead of the government taxing online casinos or even having all the online casinos government controlled then they get all the profits to be used to improve the lives of the American citizens, millions of which are bellow the poverty line if not homeless. The American government needs to start re-thinking its policy of treating its citizens like small children, or the American people need to demand a new government.

Online Games: How to Play to Win

Learn how to improve your playing quality and even overall understanding of online gaming and how you perform while playing online. Gaming online is a huge business nowadays and that means that there are millions of people worldwide at online game sites all the time. Many are people just like you and me that like to play online and have fun doing it. Some of these people enjoy it so much, that they often do not even care about improving their skill and raising their chances of winning. So Why Should You Work on Your Game? Working on skills will not only help you improve your success while playing online games but will also give you higher self-esteem and a sense of achievement. And remember that the faster you master the easy games, you can turn to the more complicated ones and match your brain and skills against the real experts. How to Improve Your Online Gaming Skills? Online playing is different than just playing on your personal computer at home. While online, you have to pay attention to many different things that need to be taken into account, and I will detail these here: 1) Internet Connection: Pay attention to your online connection and make sure that the internet connection is strong and without any connection breaks. These can be done easily by trying to play a simple online game before moving on to the more serious ones. For example, play scrabbles or checkers online and then see how your connection works. 2) The Graphics: Check that your PC screen is strong enough to run the specific game you have in mind. Download the trial and play it on your computer. If you can't run or if it does not run smoothly, be aware that though the online version is less of a strain on the resources of your computer, the game might get stuck or stall from time to time. What can you do? Other than spending money on improving the hardware of your computer, the only thing you can do is to pick another game. 3) Limit your game time: One of the most important facts that young players tend to overlook is that they cannot play forever. The body needs sleep and even though it might appear or one might not feel tired, your performance drops as the hours pass by. It is important also to (if the game permits it) try and drink water while playing and not Coca Cola or Pepsi or anything else sweet or alcoholic. These will only make you more sleepy than before even if for the first few minutes it will feel as if they are invigorating you. 4) Game Plans: Have a look at how others are playing before you join the fray. Study the manner how the game moves and how others hide or move. Even if you end up playing against other players, eventually the nooks and corners of the game are similar. Remember that people tend to move in similar fashion so the whole point is to get a whiff of game movement. 5) Strategy: Look up different strategic models and systems offered and posted on the internet. Your players might use some of these and if you are aware of them it will be easier for you to block their moves. Conclusion: By preparing yourself for the online gaming experience you do not lose anything. In fact, it works quite to the contrary. Think of it just like in terms of playing at online casinos and not at game sites. You would not play for money without researching it before, would you?

Birthday Cards - Right Selection Is Important

All of us are becoming immune to the joy of birthdays. Unless it is our birthday, we show no interest in others to a great extent. Most of us have a list of friends and family members and on their birthday, we search the Internet, pick up an ecard and send it. Our duty is over. If by mistake, we miss the birthday, we will send a belated birthday wishes card. How do we expect to develop and maintain close relations with this kind of approach? Birthday cards can cement any relationship beyond imagination. Please use this occasion to do that. Every birthday comes only once a year. Don’t be sloppy on that day. Be alert and you will get great friends for life. Let us find out more about the magic of birthday cards.

Take the example of your birthday. You open your mailbox and find many ecards or cards sent to you. You begin clicking one after another. One card attract s you very much. After that all other cards for your birthday are forgotten except that one birthday card. Will you not remember the sender with great affection? Will you not love that person for his/her care in selecting a very good ecard and sending it to you? Will you not remember this card till your next birthday and look for the ecard sent by the same person first? That is the difference we make with small details and care.

Small things matter a lot. For us there is only our birthday that is important. For others it is their birthday. On that day, they feel joy. You have to add to that joy with your actions. Put little more effort in selecting the right birthday card and use it to enhance your bond. A small card can make a big difference. You will win a friend for your lifetime. Please pay attention to what others want, and you will get what you want from them.

Back to School: Textbook Savings

If you are sending your adult children off to college you know that there are three school related expenses which make up the bulk of your budget: tuition, room and board, and textbooks. The first two expenses are mostly fixed and predictable costs, while the third is impossible to predict as well as a potential budget buster. You may not be able to predict textbook expenses, but you certainly can reduce them by following these three important steps:

1. Shop Online. Your college bookstore has an ironclad grip on textbook inventory, right? Well, at one time that was a true statement. Today, thanks to the internet, websites have sprung up that sell new and used textbooks at prices much lower than those found on campus. Shop with those retailers who have clearly outlined payment, shipping and handling, and return policies. Scan auction sites too for additional savings.

2. Shop Retail. The big bookstore retailers as well as some of the office supply stores carry some titles. At the very least your student can purchase all of his or her supplies off campus, saving you big money in the process.

3. Shop Used. Your campus bookstore knows that having used textbooks on hand will keep them somewhat competitive. The trick with textbook publishers is that yearly updates can make used copies obsolete: planned obsolescence in action! Still, when I was in school I had one professor who encouraged students to pick up the “outdated” copies of one book since he knew the cost was outrageous and he planned on referencing it sparingly. Your student may also learn that some of the titles on the professor's list are optional, not mandatory purchases.

Students today no longer have to feel as if they are being “held hostage” by outrageous textbook prices. Have your student shop wisely and your budget will remain on track.