Made Moon Blog

What makes identity theft the epidemic it has become? The fact
that half of all victims know the person that committed the theft according to the Better Business Bureau’s 2005 Fraud Survey.

Watch out for these red flags

1. Resentment

I worked for a company that reports handled lost stolen credit
card reports. I don’t know how many times someone called and
said their ex or soon to be ex spouse stole all of their financial information and went on a vengeance spending spree.

Of course it’s not limited to former husbands and wives but anger is a powerful emotion. The obvious familiarity, total access to private information combined with the desire to do as much damage as possible makes this the most devastating form of id theft financially and emotionally.

No matter what the relationship, always keep a close eye on your credit and other financial information. .

2. The Snoop.

The people that ask you too many questions of a very personal nature. Its easy to not think anything of it.The person may be a relative, neighbor or close friend but ask yourself (and them) exactly why do they need to know your date of birth or social. You may even catch them snooping thru your personal information.

Now it could all be perfectly innocent but with id theft the number one crime for the fifth year in a row, do you really want to take that chance?

3.Addiction

“I don’t have any drug addicts in my family.” Good deal but
substance abusers are not the only people who will steal from you. Alcoholics, people addicted to porn, even compulsive shoppers are potential identity thieves.

Gambling and pornography on the internet are billion dollar
industries. According to Jim Vaules, an identity theft expert for
Lexis Nexis, “You see a lot of internet gambling and pornography
sites being charged to stolen cards. [Identity Thieves] might use
the card of a family member or friend”

Any kind of obsessive behaviour can throw a person’s normally
rational judgement out the window because the only thing that
counts is satisfying the habit NOW!

Addiction also means more than likely the identity thief can and will justify their actions. Even if you catch them red handed, its very possible they’ll say its not their fault, put the blame on you or just shrug their shoulders and say “so what?”

What do you do in instances like this? Filing a police report may
not be a bad idea.

Author Liz Pullman Weston of MSN Money says “A little tough
love may be the only way to stop a miscreant from becoming a
career criminal”

Even if the addict apologizes profusely and vows never to do it
again (quite common) the odds are high they will do it again unless they get some counseling. Filing a police report no matter how reluctant you are could be a step in that direction.

There are of course other symptoms. Somebody living above
their means or mail that looks like its been tampered with. Identity theft requires constant vigilance with credit monitoring, storing private information in secure places, shredding documents etc.

If identity theft happens to you, the best thing besides recovering your identity will be your peace of mind in realizing it wasn’t anyone you know.

Believe it or not identity theft has moved to the dead. It is compounding more and more family’s grief because con artists are digging up identities of the deceased.

The identity of someone who has died is becoming an irresistible target to thieves and the death helps buy them time before they are likely to get caught.

The scam artists search the obituaries where they find valuable information that gives them a jump start at identity theft. Lengthy obituary and death notices gives crooks more valuable information that they use to do more damage.

Identity theft crimes involving the deceased are a dark, shady side of the booming identity theft crime. Although the deceased don’t have to be concerned with keeping their credit rating good, the emotional burden of the crimes cause undue stress on the family.

The spouse of a deceased person can especially have serious problems if the accounts affected are joint accounts.

Sometimes these scammers are not just out to take the money and run. They want someone else’s identity for the long term to escape immigration or legal problems. They assume the identity of a deceased person and could live for years under that name before anyone finds out.

Here are a few things that you can do to help minimize the possibility of identity theft of a deceased family member.

Tone down the news obituary in the paper by not giving too much information.

Notify all 3 credit reporting agencies of the deceased and have them put a “deceased” flag alert on the account.

Equifax 888-766-0008

Trans Union 800-680-7289

Experian 888-397-3742

Contact the Social Security Administration direct and let them know about the death and have them flag the person’s social security number as “inactive”.

If you discover signs of identity theft or any type of fraud from a deceased relative, notify the police immediately and file a report. This police report will be helpful in dealing with financial institutions and clearing up things later.

Then call any one of the major credit reporting agencies and they can give you more guidance about where to go from there.

Dealing with the loss of a loved one is an emotional experience laden with stress and grief. Taking a few precautions from the beginning of their death will hopefully lead to preventing identity theft of your loved one and keeping their identity their own.

Copyright © 2005 Spyware Information.com All Rights Reserved.

This article is provided by http://www.spyware-information.com where you will find free spyware cleaners, downloads, removal software, computer firewalls and valuable tips. For regularly updated articles about adware, spyware and protection from identity theft go to http://spyware-information.com/articles_1.html

How many of you bank, shop, or transact other business online? There are at least 4 million Department pf Defense employees that access their pay records online only. Even offline, stored financial data can be placed at risk in computers that are used on the Internet as well. As one of the fastest growing crimes in America, identity theft is a concern for everyone.

A criminal gaining access to your bank or credit card accounts or personal information can wreak havoc with your credit and leave you holding the bag. Protecting your personal data at home and online is not too painful and lowering your risk for a reasonable effort level is well worth it.

Before we tackle the computer and online environment, let’s take a quick look at your other home risks. Your garbage can and mail box are prime targets for identity thieves. Bills, old checks, financial statements, credit offers, the list goes on. All of these documents need to be shredded with a crosscut shredder before discarding and mail should never be left in the mail box for long. Arrange for someone to pickup mail if you are going to gone from your home for more than a day. In short, anything with your full name combined with any other sensitive information should be shredded before discarding.

Phishing and social engineering are methods to get you to divulge your data to a criminal by making you believe the criminal represents an organization or interest with access or rights to your information. Any phone call you receive from someone requesting your personal information or credit card numbers should be suspect. Request a way to call them back via the organization’s published numbers and verify the number is associated with the organization before proceeding. Suspect good deals that come to you out of the blue via the telephone or any other method. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Now for your computer, there are a few things you should do here. Your online activities pose the greatest risk. You need a hardware, or good software firewall. You need good Anti-Virus and Anti-Spyware software. The software versions will need regular updates to keep ahead of the hackers out there.

You also need to take some precautions with your own personal online and offline habits. Online, you should use different, complex passwords for each identity related account you access. You should set your browser security settings as high as possible for general surfing and avoid clicking advertising links from unknown vendors, or links in emails that come from unknown senders or are out of character for the known sender. Never follow links sent via email purporting to be from your creditors or financial institutions asking you to validate your account information. Call them instead, if you believe it is valid. Most financial or credit organizations will never send you an email unless you have asked to receive account updates. The last thing you need to be aware of online is who you are doing business with. Be careful about providing your credit card numbers online. While ensuring the site is secure is absolutely the bare minimum, ensuring the vendor is honest and keeps your data secure is necessary too.

Offline, you should secure any financial, health, insurance, or other documents containing your personal information by using encryption and password protection. Most financial software packages have this feature built in. Use it as well as Windows encrypted folders to make your private data secure from undetected Spyware, or short term physical access to your computer by a criminal. Don’t use Windows auto-logon features and always use complex passwords that are at least eight characters long, contain numbers, letters, and both upper and lower case. Never use a common word, name, or other easily guessed password. Something like T8$f~lly can be easy to remember, though very hard to guess and extremely time consuming to hack. Finally, change all of your passwords frequently and use a secure password manager to keep them organized.

The last thing you need to do is monitor your accounts and credit. Keep on eye on your financial account activities and your credit record. If you notice something amiss, call the financial organization or credit reporting agency and report it, change your passwords and pat yourself on the back for catching it early.

My own Yahoo account was recently compromised. While this wasn’t a costly identity theft situation, it did put my name on some rather unsavory low-level spam operations. A password change was all that was needed to shut down the activity.

Follow the directions I’ve provided and you will lower your risk of identity theft and fraud related debts to almost zero. Keep in mind that if you have Bill Gate’s level of assets, you are in a different class of high risk targets and should hire a security team to manage those risks and lower your insurance rates. You can also call me and I’d be happy to help you put that together.

Lyle Sharp - President Advotech, LLC
A small to medium business IT services provider that specializes in affordable secure systems and practices.
http://www.advotechllc.com

The web is experiencing an online revolution in the making with Web 2.0; it is simply and powerfully restructuring it, making information more personalised and centralised.

Since the advent of the internet every user wanted a more personalised environment and this now comes in the guise of Web 2.0, with RSS feeds added, read and tracked right from your favourite search engines’ home page.

RSS is still in its infancy but it seems as if it will become an important component in the success of Web 2.0 as businesses take advantage of giving control to users. RSS is helping the web distribute content in an organised way and, over the next few years, I believe RSS will definitely be seen on every website and blog.

Using RSS, search engines return search results on specific keywords, connecting users with the information they want to read. This process of syndicating content from other websites by displaying RSS feeds is definately catching on with the ability to deliver fresh news to their users as it happens.

Not only are the big companies using RSS to get ahead of the competition but smaller firms like ours are also using it to the fullest extent for ourselves and our clients.

Media Director of V9 Design & Build, providing both local and outsourcing web and SEO services: we provide both brochureware and custom-designed websites, with tasteful design and branding, professional design and build, proven and successful SEO and e-marketing, e-commerce-driven database integration and content management systems.

And why should I care?

Good questions. First, here’s why you should care.

Unlike getting website updates or ezines by email, RSS feeds give you absolute, 100% complete control over the situation.

You don’t have to reveal your email address. If you want to stop receiving content, you don’t have to request to be “taken off the list.”

One click, and poof… the subscription is gone.

Plus, since there’s no email address involved, there’s no way a publisher can sell, rent or give away the means to contact you.

That’s right… no more spam, viruses, phishing, or identity theft. And best of all, no reason to put yourself at the mercy of the publisher’s intentions.

You won’t need to suffer through the legalese in the privacy policy (if there is one) looking for loopholes that will send you deeper into inbox hell. No more setting up dummy Hotmail accounts “just in case.”

Again, if you don’t like the content, you can make it disappear as fast as you can change a TV channel. With just one click.

Pretty cool, huh?

That is cool! Umm… What the heck is RSS?

Alright! Now we’re ready to get to that part.

RSS is a simply an Internet technology standard that allows busy people to receive updates to web-based content of interest.

You might have figured that much out by now. But basically, that’s the essence of an RSS feed - you subscribe and then receive new content automatically in your feed reader.

What the heck is a feed reader?

You may already be using a form of feed reader, and not even realize it. If you use personalized home page services like My Yahoo or My MSN, you’ve got RSS capabilities built in. That’s how syndicated content like news, weather and stock quotes appears on your personal page. You can also add content from any blog or other site that uses RSS to provide updates.

Other web-based tools are primarily dedicated to feed reading only. One of the most popular web-based feed readers at this point is Bloglines, and it’s also free and easy to get started with.

If you use the Firefox browser, you can also receive RSS feeds from your tool bar by using the Live Bookmarks function. The next version of Internet Explorer will add this feature as well.

Finally, there are desktop-based feed readers. These function somewhat like an email program for feeds. Examples include Newsgator and Feed Demon.

If it sounds complicated, it’s really not. And things will get even easier when the next version of Outlook integrates feed-reading capabilities. So, you’ll have the same convenience that email subscriptions offered in the old days, without any of the terrible consequences of giving out your email address to potentially unscrupulous characters.

Sounds good. So how do I subscribe to a Feed?

First of all, look for the subscription or feed options (some bloggers make this difficult for some odd reason). You might see a variety of buttons (amusingly called chicklets).

If the site you want to subscribe to uses FeedBurner to aid in the subscription process (like many popular sites do), you’ll likely see the standard RSS icon, which takes you to a page that will give you an array of the most popular feed readers so you can select yours, and you’ll go from there. Just look around for an orange button and click on it.

Sometimes there will be a chicklet for your particular reader right on the blog that will take you to the appropriate subscription page. You may see buttons for My Yahoo, Google, Feedburner and Bloglines (among others).

Finally, you may also see little orange buttons that say XML or RSS. Often these chicklets will take you to a page that looks like code gibberish. In this case, you simply cut and paste the page URL from your browser window and manually paste it into your feed reader subscription box.

Hopefully this last method will soon disappear, never to be seen again.

In summary: RSS solves BIG problems.

So there you have it… RSS is being adopted at a phenomenal rate, because it’s a good thing for everyone.

The benefit to readers is obvious. And it’s good for publishers too, because we want to make sure that people feel comfortable subscribing, and that our message is not nuked by an overzealous spam filter.

Spend just a little bit of time getting familiar with feeds, and your online experience will get a lot better.

Brian teaches web copywriting strategies for selling with blogs and RSS at Copyblogger.

You probably already know what RSS is - it is a file format for syndicating news and the content of sites, in a very flexible manner. What you probably don’t know is that creating a correct RSS feed is in many cases a very difficult task for webmasters. I am not talking about sites that supply just a few news a day, I am talking about sites that supply tens of news a day.

Let’s take for example a shareware site. For the site to become popular, it has to be always up to date and to contain all the latest releases. So, the webmasters have to search for the new titles and add them to their databases. Many of them offer their visitors the possibility to stay informed about the latest releases using RSS feeds, which contain their names, links and short descriptions of the new releases. Visitors interested in this kind of information subscribe to the RSS feeds, using web-based or desktop aggregators, like Bloglines or SharpReader. All the aggregators query the RSS feeds every couple of hours, which is sufficient for many of the feeds, but not for all of them. It is a common practice that the feeds supply only the last 20 items, but what if, between two queries from the aggregators, appear, let’s say, 43 items? Then, 23 of them wouldn’t appear to the subscribers. Probably you’ve never thought about this, but I can assure you this situation really occurs, and you have to solve it, for you and your visitors’ interest.

I will now show you a solution to this problem, implemented in PHP, one of the most used scripting languages on websites that are led by large databases. The main idea is that we will compare the date of the first and the 20th item, and if they are equal, we will run an extra query, to also add the other items that appeared in the database in the same day.

Lets suppose that the table from which we want to take the last items is named “products” and has 4 fields: “p_name” (product name), “p_added” (date when the product was added), “p_link” (product link) and “p_description” (product description). We have 2 functions, one that adds an item to the feed, and one that adds the standard elements of a RSS file, and then queries the database for the items added to the table on the current day.

function additem($t, $l, $d)

{

$r= “n”;

$r.=”n”;

$r.=”$dn”;

$r.=” $ln”;

$r.=”n”;

return $r;

}
function create_rss()

{

$r =”n”;

$r.=”n”;

$r.=” n”;

$r.=” n”;

$r.=” http://www.coredownload.com/n”;

$r.=” The essential shareware and freeware downloads!n”;

$r.=” en-usn”;

$q1=”SELECT * FROM `products` WHERE 1 ORDER by p_added DESC LIMIT 0,20″;

$result1 = mysql_query($q1);

$i=0;

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result1))

{

$i++;

if ($i==1) { $data1=$row[p_added]; }

$r .=additem($row[p_name], $row[p_link], $row[p_description]);

$data2=$row[p_added];

}

if ($data1==$data2)

{

$q1=”SELECT * FROM `products` WHERE `p_added`=’$data2′ LIMIT 20,1000″;

$result1 = mysql_query($q1);

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result1))

{

$r .=additem($row[p_name], $row[p_link], $row[p_description]);

}

}

$r.=” n”;

$r.=” n”;

echo $r;
}

As you will see if you use this solution on your website, your feed’s subscribers will find out about all your items (products, articles, or anything else), no matter how many they are. You can see this solution implemented on CoreDownload.com, a brand new shareware and freeware directory, that offers its visitors 3 RSS feeds: one for all the products, one for shareware and one for freeware.

Ted Peterson writes for CoreDownload. Visit them to see this RSS
feed system implemented.

Providing security against email related threats has become a burden for most IT professionals in 2006. According to a recent study by Postini, spam and email viruses now make up to 80% of all emails sent out as compared to 50% in 2000. As a result, IT professionals now face a tougher challenge in providing network security for this amount of spam. IT professionals also have the disadvantage of defending against new forms of email threats such as spam zombies, directory harvest attacks, mass mailing trojans, as well as the latest email virus.

In this article, I have listed the seven most effective spam fighting tips for organizations with in-house mail servers. These seven tips are proven techniques I have used for my customers, partners and associates who wish to tighten their perimeter (network) security.

1. Firewall:

A firewall is your first line of defense against hackers, crackers, and spammers. Without a firewall, your network is a disaster waiting to happen and could give any novice hacker free reign over your network. If your organization has multiple Internet users, this tool is essential for securing your network.

2. Block Port 25:

On your firewall, allow outbound traffic on TCP port 25 for all mail servers. Block traffic on outbound TCP port 25 for all other computers and servers. On the Internet, TCP port 25 is used for email traffic through SMTP (Simple Mail Transport Protocol). Blocking this port is a good security practice and prevents mass mailing worms and spam zombies from sending mail from your users’ computers.

3. Managed Email Filtering:

Consider using a managed filtering solution such as Postini, Brightmail, or SpamSoap. Managed Email Filtering services quarantine spam, viruses, and email threats before reaching the email servers on your network. In comparison to desktop filters and server appliances, managed filtering services provide superior perimeter (network) protection by preventing delivery of spam and viruses to your network and servers.

4. Check Relay Setting:

A mail server’s relay setting controls which computers and servers are able to send SMTP email on your organization’s behalf. Check your settings and limit the IP address range to email users on your local network. Some mail servers have settings to limit email relay through authentication. If authentication-based relay is available, setup and configure it too. NOTE: If the relay is not set properly, spammers will be able to send email from your mail server. This exploit is commonly known as an “Open Relay” or a “Spam Relay.” Use the Open Relay test at http://www.abuse.net/relay.htm to check if spammers can relay mail from your server.

5. Black Lists:

Setup your mail server(s) with a black list. A black list (black hole list) is a database or listing of known spam sources. Most modern email servers can be configured to query inbound email against online blacklists. Messages originating from these sources can then be blocked. I recommend configuring your email server with SpamHaus blacklist. Spamhaus.org is an excellent free service to use. Some other good blacklists are DBSL and SpamCop.

6. Reverse DNS:

Reverse DNS (rDNS) associates an IP Address with a Domain Name. Most mail servers, as an anti-spam feature, often use a reverse DNS lookup to compare an email address domain name with its IP address. If the IP address found from the rDNS lookup does not match the domain name, it is probably spam. If you haven’t done so, setup and configure reverse DNS records on your DNS server.

7. Anti-Virus Scan:

There are many tools that provide adequate anti-virus protection for desktops at the workplace. Most anti-virus software is good at detecting viral threats that proliferate email spam such as mass mailing worms, trojans, and directory harvesters. Large organizations might want to use enterprise anti-spam software with management and monitoring tools that will allow tracking of network virus outbreaks.

Recommended Links:

- http://www.spam-x.com [Postini service - managed filtering, 1 to 500 users]

- http://www.postini.com [Postini service - managed filtering, 500+ users]

- http://www.spamhaus.org [Blacklist]

- http://www.dbsl.org [Blacklist]

- http://www.spamcop.net [Blacklist]

- http://www.abuse.net/relay.htm [Open relay test]

- http://www.dnsreport.com [DNS report/open relay test]

- http://www.dnsstuff.com [Spam database lookup and open relay test]

- http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/ptech/02/17/spam.zombies.ap [Spam Zombie Article]

Email viruses and related threats delivered through spam have cost businesses billions of dollars in expenses and lost productivity. Each spam email sent or received from your domain costs your organization money and bandwidth. By implementing these seven tips, your organization can reduce spam and recover costs.

This article: © Copyright 2006 Todd Green and free for republishing.

About the author: Todd Green is a partner of a Memphis-based IT consulting firm. He has over fourteen years’ experience in the field of Information Technology and has managed security on many corporate networks over the years. He is the owner of SPAM-X, a Postini reseller (http://www.spam-x.com) and a partner for Postini’s preemptive spam and virus filtering service.

So you think all of your subscribers are receiving
your ezine? Better think again. With the rise of
Spam filtering software, both by ISP’s and end users,
odds are your ezine may be getting deleted before
it’s even delivered to your subscribers.

There are two main types of filters: those installed
on the end user’s computer and server side programs
used by Internet Service Providers. The most popular
program used is http://SpamAssassin.org

So what does this mean to you as a publisher? If
you want to make sure your ezine is being read
you’ll want to pay close attention to the tips
given here. After all, do you spend your time
writing a good ezine just to have it sent to
the trash? I didn’t think so.

Spam filters work by counting the words in your ezine that fall on
their “target lists,” each of which has been assigned a numeric
value. After they’re done “scanning” your email, they
add up your score. If your total value is above
a set number, it is determined to be “spam” and
sent to the trash bin. Gone forever, and your
subscribers are none the wiser. Filters search
the message, the header, the subject line and
looks at the formatting as well. To see what
Spam Assassin looks at go to….
http://www.spamassassin.org/tests.html

I personally use filtering software due to the
hundreds of unsolicited messages I receive daily. But I
always go through the “trash bin” first and
glance through it before hitting the delete key
to make sure it hasn’t captured something I want
or need. The problem is that most users
of filtering software either
don’t want to spend the time, or don’t know how
to check it to see what was “killed.” So
many of them may be missing your ezine, even
though they have subscribed to receive it.

Now do you see how tough it is just getting
your ezine into the hands of your subscribers?
The trick is to be “smarter” then the filters and
utilize some of the great free tools that have
sprung up to help publishers with this exact
problem.

Before sending out your next issue, run it through
one of these free checkers to see if it will make
it past the filters and find out what your ezines
total score is along with tips on how to improve.

1) SiteSell Spam Check
http://spamcheck.sitesell.com

Go to the above url or submit your ezine to
mailto:spamcheck@sitesell.net with the word TEST
in all caps before your ezine name in the subject
line.

Example: TEST Merle’s Mission Ezine

2) Lyris Content Checker
http://www.lyris.com/contentchecker/

Runs your ezine through a battery of tests used
by “Spam Assassin.” Paste your ezine into the
web based form, hit submit and the results
will be emailed to you.

3) AssuranceSys.com- If you don’t mind parting
with some of your cash, Assurance Systems will
run a variety of tests for you and let you know
how your ezine stacks up against the filters and
if you’ve been blacklisted. Check them out at
http://AssuranceSys.com

So what’s considered “bad” to filtering software
and what can you do to reduce your score? I thought
you’d never ask. Here are some tips to help:

1) Be careful with your subject line- Avoid
the word free or using all caps or excessive
punctuation.

2) Using a lot of fancy HTML formatting can
hurt you. Many filters will kill HTML emails
as a given mistaking them for viruses.

3) A larger size can actually help you. Anywhere
from 20k to 40K is good and will actually subtract
bad points from your total score.

4) Blocking: Make sure your IP address is not
being blacklisted. This can happen if your site
is hosted on an open relay or you’re sharing an
IP address with someone who is a known spammer.
You don’t want to get yourself blacklisted so
be careful here.

5) Avoid the use of the words free, click here,
remove, spam, and any others known to be on
the list. This is pretty hard. Some publishers
have resorted to putting * or ^ in exchange for
letters. For example fr^e or Sp*m- It’s highly
debatable if this will work or not since most
filters will be catching on to this technique
soon if they haven’t already.

6) Set up free accounts at Yahoo and Hotmail
and subscribe to your own ezine and monitor the
boxes to see if your ezine is making it through
their filters.

For further tips I recommend the following resources:

“Avoid the Spam Filter Trap”
http://assurance.sys.com/f/avoid-spam-filter-trap.pdf

“List of Filtering Trigger Words”
http://www.iprofitsystems.com/articles/spamfilters.html

“20 Ways Opt in Emailers can Outsmart Spam Filters”
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt8/spamfilter-avoidance.htm

Nice list of trigger words here:
http://www.sv-cs.spam.html

As you can see, publishing an ezine and getting it
to your subscribers is no longer an easy task. One
practice that has been adopted by some publishers is
to send a follow-up email after your ezine has gone out,
stating that it has been sent, including a url
where your subscribers can go to read the issue online. I do this
and every week that link registers 50 to 100 clicks,
so obviously a lot of people aren’t getting it
the first time.

There’s also a new service called Habeas.com which
is a whitelisting tool. For a large sum of cash
they’ll give you a line of code to add to your
email headers which guarantees your message will
pass through the filters. They have special
relationships with ISP’s and mail filters that
recognize the header labeling you a “good guy.”
It’s not inexpensive. Visit their site for more
info on how it works at http://habeas.com

There’s no way to beat filtering, but by being
informed and knowing what you’re up against and
how to improve, you’ll stand a much better chance
of getting your ezine where it needs to be. And
that’s why you started publishing in the 1st place,
isn’t it?

Merle has been “working” the Net for over
8 years and has a Special Gift just for you.
Download my FREE E-book “50 Easy Ways to
Promote Your Website”. Get your copy now at
http://www.WebSiteTrafficPlan.com

You have permission to publish this article
electronically or in print, free of charge,
as long as the bylines are included.

Spam is the internet’s equivalent of junk mail. Spam is defined as an e-mail message sent to people without their consent or permission. Addresses of recipients are often harvested from Usenet postings or web pages, obtained from databases, or simply guessed by using common names and domains.

Spam is sent to promote practically any product or service ranging from “Adult” products to logo design for websites. It is also used by hackers to spread viruses or links to dangerous websites used to gather your personal information like credit card details or passwords for sites like Ebay or PayPal. To the average user these messages appear genuine. Even the link has a genuine looking domain name. This technique is known as “Phishing.”

Here are some smart strategies and tips you can employ now to start reducing Spam and boost your email security.

- Configure your anti virus software to automatically scan your incoming email for viruses. Email is still widely used to distribute malicious software. Make sure you keep your anti virus software definitions up to date.
- If you are someone that frequently signs up for “freebies” or other stuff on the internet start using a separate e-mail account just for this purpose. Accounts from providers like Yahoo!, Hotmail, and Google’s Gmail all come with generous storage as standard.
- If sites don’t accept free e-mail address from the services listed above then use a free disposable email service like Sneakemail - http://www.sneakemail.com.
- If you are posting your email to a blog or your website then submit it in a way that is only recognizable to a human. For example if your email is johndoe@hotmail.com then post it as “johndoe at hotmail.com”.
- Never open a message from an address you do not recognize - always delete it straight away. This is especially so if there is an attachment. Never reply to a message as this only confirms the email address is “live” to the spammers.
- If you get an official looking message from your bank or Ebay or another site you are not sure is genuine here is what you do. Instead of clicking on the link embedded in the mail log on to the site normally via your browser. If there are any genuine serious problems you should get a message when you log on. Alternatively contact the site’s customer service via the phone if possible.
- Consider using standalone spam filtering software. This software analyses your email for common characteristics of spam email including words like “click” or “teens.” It also compares senders’ emails against a “Friends List.” Try Mailwasher for free here - http://www.mailwasher.net.

Richard Rogers is a owner of a number of computer related sites. One of his sites offers Free Computer Help for Windows XP Users and has just launched his new Registry Cleaner Blog.

I suppose you’ve recently heard of RSS being the King of content. Many marketers and marketing gurus are in fact preaching around about RSS being the replacement for today’s viral marketing strategy.

For those of you who do not know what RSS is, it is by definition - Real Simple Syndication which is used to syndicate news and information, it is usually associated with Blogs because blogs use RSS feed to get the content publish. Some marketers translate it to Rich Site Summary, I personally call it Really Simple Spamming as a joke.

What I see about RSS isn’t the replacement for viral marketing strategy, but merely a TOOL to automate your viral marketing method, boosting its speed of having your words spreading around like a new mutated virus that nobody can stop it in time.

As clearly as you can see, portal websites building is growing so quickly that this occult-like business is infesting all over the search engines. Search results show 40-50% of portal websites on any keyword that you search. This results the war between the sites builders and search engines, which also causing these portal websites even harder to be differentiated with other 100% hand-written websites. As far as I know, the new trend for SEOs and other portal-site-making gurus are teaching their followers to add contents into their portal websites by feeding RSS whether it is news related or articles.

The scene is like having a swamp of locust infesting all over the RSS directory sites, search and digging RSS links in bulk and direct the feeds into their portal websites. It is a great idea to harvest RSS feeds through the directory as the content are all nicely being categorized making them easy for whomever is searching.

What will amaze you more is once your RSS feed catches these builders’ attention, they will add your RSS feeds to their websites, where you’ll gain all those FREE advertising and back links.

As I mentioned they will come in swamp at the above paragraph, I wasn’t joking at all! Ten of thousands of them come to harvest your content feeds. Imagine having 10% of them picked at your RSS and feed into each of their websites. And I have to remind you that they each own more than 10 site domains at a minimum. The traffic that runs to your website will cause an Atomic Bomb explosion effect within a short time! Imagine the amount of traffic that will convert into your newsletter subscription list by just putting a little subscription box in your website.

All you have to do is to have your RSS feed being setup once in those RSS directory sites. Plus, high quality feeds have higher chance to be picked up by webmasters in BULK.

If you notice that almost every ‘Article Directories’ has an option to provide webmasters the feed for those articles that are being submitted. Having such option has already caught many of these portal site builders’ attention. They come, they search and they start feeding your RSS feeds into their websites.

This is like a fresh new gold mine for the builders, RSS feeds have solved all their problems on having fresh new contents being delivered right into their website 24/7. I urge you (article writers) to take advantage of this great opportunity right now and start to blast traffics to your websites. RSS feeding is their gold mine for new content, and now it has become yours

Here are 3 easy steps on how you may get started.

1. Setup a blog with Wordpress from www.wordpress.org, or you can setup a free blog from Blogger.com at www.blogger.com. Remember, you don’t have to be “formal” when comes to posting blog.

[Important]: For Wordpress Users, before you start posting anything to your site, remember to insert a list of ping sites to your ping list to Ping your Blog (for Search Engines to visit your new post and start indexing your blog pages). It is located at Options >> Writing >> Update Services (scrolled down). You can see that “http://rpc.pingomatic.com/” has already been added by default. Blogger.com Users please follow Step 3.

2. When you have done all the above, submit your blog RSS feed to all the top ‘RSS Directories’. The URL for RSS looks like this: http://www.webblogerz.com/feed/. Here’s a list of RSS directory sites for you to get started at www.masternewmedia.org/rss/top55

3. (Wordpress Users may skip this step) After submitting your RSS feed to the directories, for Blog and Ping method, go to a free ping service call Ping-O-Matic. Follow the instruction by filling in the forms and then submit.

I’m sure this will definitely help you to get more traffic by implementing this new revolution of RSS Viral Marketing Strategy.

Remember, business cannot grow for just having new ideas, taking actions is always the turn key to every success!

Edwin Lim is a freelance copywriter living in Malaysia. You can visit his Website at http://www.webblogerz.com.

This article may be freely distributed if this resource box stays attached.