An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us

How to Protect Yourself from Computer Worms
Mood:  happy
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Good afternoon! We will continue with our internet security theme today, an important consideration when promoting your blogs.

John Stith, our friend from Security Pro News, reports the following about the Sober worm: a Sober worm, scheduled to emerge last Friday, January 6, 2006, seems to have been stopped, thanks to the efforts of numerous security software companies. One important one is Security Pro USA.



This particular varient, dubbed Sober.Y, came from Germany and was tied to January 5, the anniversary of the founding of the Nazi Party. Sobers have been around since October 2003, and are often tied to important dates in Germany.

The worm was not created to mess up your computer though. Rather, its purpose was to hijack your OS to send out spam. Spam is now being used to read info from your PC and use it to make money. Hackers used to be destructive; today they're more often greedy.

Mr Stith feels that hacking, cybercrime, and malware is heading the way of big business, stabilizing and becoming organized and structured. Unfortunately for us, as this occurs, the crimes are becoming viewed as victimless, and hence less prosecutable.

In fact, Saturday Night Live last night had a sketch entitled "The Spammies," complete with an award for the Nigerian who will send you a fortune if you send him a couple of hundred dollars. I.E., if something in our society has become so mundane that SNL can parody it, most people would not consider it criminal. But we encourage you to not let yourself be a victim: get quality protection, such as we promote here.

On a final note, if you are looking for a quality post-Christmas gift, or have some money left over from the holidays, consider getting The Chronicles of Narnia. You've seen the movie, now read the book! Aslan still roars in this handsome gift set from the pen of C. S. Lewis. All 7 paperback volumes are packaged in a convenient slipcase for easy gift giving. A fantastic voyage of fantasy that points to the spiritual realities of Christ await young and old readers alike.


The Chronicles of Narnia

CIAO for now,
Randy

TAGS: Security, John Stith, Sober, Hacking, Cybercrime, Malware, worm, Panda, Saturday Night Live, Spam, Spammies

How to Avoid Phishers - Part Deux
Mood:  happy
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
John Stith, of SecurityProNews reports on a new tactic being used by phishers, which he calls the "E-Bay Spear Fishing Scam." The instigators send out forged auction inquiries via email. The email has a "Respond Now" link in it. Some people click on the links, plug in the asked for info and get hijacked. "The spear phishing is a little trickier to deal with though. It's much more focused and goes after specific individuals or groups. They're designed to lull victims into security and then get speared."

Ted Green, CEO of SpamStopsHere, offers a number of tips to protect you from phishing scams, which dovetail nicely with what we have previously mentioned in this blog:




1. If an email asks you to log into your bank, PayPal, eBay, Amazon or other
personal account, you can assume it is a phishing scam.

DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE CLICK ON THE LINK IN THE EMAIL

2. Under no circumstances enter banking information, social security numbers or other
personal info by clicking a link in an email.

3. Never enter your computer user name or password into an e-mail that
asks for it, not even if it says it is from your IT manager or other co-
worker. It is easy for a spammer to forge the sender's name.



4. If you don't know if an e-mail is legit, open an
Internet browser and type in the URL of the institution in question,
e.g. "www.chase.com". Do not use the URL in the email as a reference, as it is probably
a forgery.

5. Any e-mail that asks for personal information is most likely a phishing scam.



CIAO for now,
Randy

How to Protect Yourself from Identity Fraud
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Continuing with the theme of the last post, today we'll learn a little more about identity fraud and how to protect yourself. As you become more successful at internet marketing, you'll be surprised at how quickly phishers and ID fraud con artists want to get your money. Stop them before they have a chance to steal from you.



John Stith of SecurityProNews points out the alarming fact that even the US government shares some responsibility for ID fraud. The Department of Justice published supposedly private social security numbers on its webpage and some 51 million people had their identities compromised yet Congress is preparing to relax rules on reporting these instances.



Furthermore, the Privacy Rights Clearing House reports that many companies in 2005 fell victim to ID fraud as well. Consider Bank of America's loss of a tape with 1.2 million names on it or CardSystems' compromise of 40 million identities.



So what can we do to protect ourselves if we can't trust major banks, businesses, or even the government to protect our personal information? The Securities and Exchanges Commission (SEC) offers the following advice: Protect yourself by having multiple and/or complex passwords, firewalls, and anti-virus software on your computer. The SEC further advises to log out completely each time you access your account online and to not respond to e-mails asking for personal information, even if the e-mails look official. In addition, don't access your checking or investment accounts at internet cafes or libraries, where potential ID thieves could eavesdrop on your passcodes. For further information, the SEC's full guide is here, and Privacy Rights Clearing House has more information here.



Keep it safe, surfers and friends alike! Be sure to check out the Rent My Blog square to the left!

CIAO for now,
Randy

How to Avoid Phishers
Mood:  happy
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Happy new year! In the first post of the new year I want to share some information on the deadly practice of "phishing" and how to avoid its potential ramifications.



"Phishing" is the practice of tricking internet users into revelaing their personal information. E-Bay and PayPal are popular targets for phishers, although Amazon.com and Overstock.com are occasionally used as well.

Traditionally, phishers send phony e-mails stating that you need to update your information and direct people to official-looking eBay, PayPal, Amazon, or Overstock log-in pages, where thay are asked to provide user names and passwords. One that I recently received (allegedly) came from "service@paypal.com," titled "PayPal Notification: Re: Unauthorized Use of Your PayPal Account!" Sometimes the phishers will hijack the accounts and sell phony or non-existent items on eBay or use the information to purchase items on these auction sites.

Recently, several listings were added to eBay's "Totally bizarre" category, which is designed for off the wall items, with the title "Movie!With me and Laura!My best friend!Sexy show!1$". When eBay users clicked on the listings, their browser was redirected to the phony log-in page and a virus was downloaded on the users' computers.



In all fairness to eBay, they have updated their screening tools and have removed these offending links. Following are some practical considerations so that you will not be a victim of phishing.

The web addresses of valid eBay sites have ".ebay.com" before the first forward slash. Examples: http://cgi3.ebay.com/ or http://arribada.ebay.com/ are valid, but beware of anything that resembles http://signin.ebay.com@10.19.32.4/ or http://signin-ebay.com/.

This is an authentic link to eBay:


Also, regularly clean out your "Junk email" so you won't be tempted to accidentally click one of their links. Occasionally my email reader will redirect an authentic email to my junk folder, but the misrouted email always resembles name@domain.com, so they're easy to spot.

It goes without saying not to click on any links in emails that ask for personal information. Go directly to the company's site to see if they actually need any information from you. Verify identities before releasing information, no matter what the reason, whether a potential employer or a lottery winning.



If you do happen to get caught by a phisher, report the incident immediately to the National Fraud Information Center/Internet Fraud Watch, http://www.fraud.org. They have an Online reporting form as well.

These tips come courtesy of Parry Aftab of InformationWeek and www.fraud.org. Read the full articles at ServerPipeline.com and www.fraud.org.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Do What Top Bloggers Do
Happy new year to all! I was just surfing the blogs on Blog Explosion and came across a posting on "What Top Bloggers Do," by Tino Buntic on Virtualaccuracy.com.



1) Freely link to other websites and other blogs. The blogs you link to will have a look at you and some will link back to you. Don't ask for links - freely give, freely receive.

2) Use descriptive words in anchor text of links. When linking to other blogs, use descriptive text in the link. This is the "anchor text." Doing this helps search engines find you.

3) Write about news, current events, other businesses, other people, other blogs, other websites. (Notice the pattern?) STOP writing about yourself. No one wants to hear it. If you find, however, you absolutely must write about yourself, only do so about a fourth of the time.

4) Keep your topics interesting with an interesting point of view.

The original article the above was exerpted from can be found at this blog.

How to Make Money with Stormpay
Mood:  celebratory
Topic: Make Money with Your Blog
Happy holidays to you and yours. I hope you've enjoyed the pix of my family and I. Surely by now you've at least heard of Stormpay, what I term the safe alternative to Paypal. They not only have a safe means of transmitting funds electronically but they also have free auctions (i.e., no listing fees - they get a small percent of the selling price - much cheaper than Ebay), free email, Stormclix (you actually get paid the same day for clicking on ads), Stormpayges (ready-made custom sales pages for your merchandise), a Stormpay ISP (probably available in your area), and if that weren't enough, Stormfun video games. With so much to offer and adding more all the time, I don't understand why everyone is not a member! You can sign up for free at Stormpay.



While I have been pleased with the $5 or so a week I can get through Stormclix, I recently have been investigating ways of increasing my income there. The best program I have found is 12 Daily Pro.

I deposited $6 of my Stormclix money into 12 Daily Pro. Each day for the following 12 days I autosurfed my 12 Daily Pro for 30 sites. You only need to do 12 but I wanted to get some extra traffic, which you can also get from the "Proclicks" section. Then I had amassed $8.64, a 144% profit. Requested my money, and 10 business days later $8.64 was deposited into my Stormpay account.

By this time, I had accumulated enough Stormclix to purchase 2 shares ($12) in 12 Daily Pro. Continue this process, and in a few months time, we can have enough invested in 12 Daily Pro to get some serious money back. Just think...$300 invested would be $36/day, for a total return of $432, $132 profit for a little bit of surfing. What are you waiting for? Join 12 Daily Pro today and start surfing your way toward another source of income!

CIAO for now,
Randy

Discover How to Get More Traffic - part 4
Mood:  chillin'
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Today we willhave a segment featuring the 3rd top searched term as of last Friday, according to Wordtracker, Eminem. You may freely copy the entirety of the following to your website (or use our RSS feed on the right), provided you include the author's name and a link to this site, provided at the end.



All About Eminem

Eminem was born October 17, 1972. His biggest single was 2002's "Loose Yourself," and his biggest LP was 2000's "Marshall Mathers LP. He's even been nominated for 9 Grammies. We'll include more details about his musical successes at the end of this article.

"My insecurities? I'm dumb, I'm stupid, I'm white, I'm ugly, I smell and I'm white...I wanna kill myself...My nose is crooked...um, my penis is small." (Eminem, 2000)

Discounting all that, Eminem has done fairly well for himself, considering his humble beginnings. He was born in Kansas, and raised in Detroit. His interest in rap music came about as a way to escape his teenage years. And who doesn't? Wish we could all meet his successes! During his youth, he move around a lot, didn't have much money, and was constantly picked on by the neighborhood bullies.

His uncle Ronnie was his own age and influenced him greatly, even introducing him to rap. Eminem ultimately dropped out of high school, while Uncle Ronnie shot himself at age 19.

But even all these hardships didn't slow Eminem down much. Starting in 1997, Eminem came in 2nd at LA's Rap Olympics.

Then, in 1998, Dr Dre signed Eminem and he released the (in)famous Slim Shady. In 1999, he was the #83 Singles f the year, followed by #21 Singles Artist in 2000. In 2001, he still made it to the top 200, coming in at #175.

2002 was a banner year, with Eminem coming in at #9 singles artist of the year, Followed in 2003 by spot #14. 2004 continued his slow downward trend in the Singles artist of the year charts, with a #18 placing, but 2005 saw an upsurge in popularity.

Not only was Eminem nominated for 3 Grammies, but he had a number of Top 40 hits, including "Like Toy Soldiers," "Ass like That," "When I'm Gone," and "Shake That." "When I'm Gone" also made it to the top 10.

Randy Hildebrand

You are free to copy the entirety of the above article, provided you include the author's name and a link to this website, An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Discover How to Get More Traffic - part 3
Mood:  on fire
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Today we will go to the 2nd top searched word as of Friday, according to Wordtracker. The keyword "Google" is still in the top 30. You may freely copy the entirety of the following to your website, provided you include the author's name and the link to this webpage.




A Primer on Google

The very term Google is a play on the math term googol, which is a 1 followed by 100 zeros. Google the company was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. The number 1 search engine began as a research project when Page and Brin were PhD students at Stanford. Their hypothesis was that relatioships between sites would produce better search results than what was used at the time.

Dr. Eric Schmidt, formerly CEO of Novell, was named CEO of Google after Larry Page stepped down.

Google is now located in Mountain View, California.
Google's stated purpose is to "organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful," while being "not evil."

Randy Hildebrand


You are free to reproduce this article in its entirety, as long as you include the author's name and a link to An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Discover How to Get More Traffic - part 2
Mood:  party time!
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
As promised, we will provide an article based on WordTracker's Friday list of current top keywords. The Friday list gave Christmas as top searched keyword. You may freely copy the entirety of the following to your website, provided you include the author's name and the link to this webpage.



Christmas Origins

Although scholars are uncertain about the exact date of Christ's birth, December 25 was chosen in 336 CE by the Holy Roman Emperor Constantine, the first Christian emperor.

Eighteen years later, in 354 CE, Liberius, the bishop of Rome, made December 25 official for Christianity and adapted the holiday from a Roman holiday celebrating the birth of the sun.

Due to changing calendars, though, even the year of Christ's birth is unknown. Many scholars attribute the event to 4 BCE.

The December celebration was banned in England and her American colonies in the 17th century by Oliver Cromwell. He was protesting the pagan origins of such Christmas memorabilia as Christmas trees, which the druids worshipped.

Over the course of time, these strict guidelines were beginning to loosen. Sparked by literary works such as "A Christmas Carol," the celebration of Christmas became popular again. Alabama was the first state to make Christmas an official holiday, and by 1907, every contiguous state had a Christmas holiday.

Randy Hildebrand

You are free to reproduce this article in its entirety, as long as you include the author's name and a link to An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us.

CIAO for now,
Randy

Discover How to Get More Traffic - part 1
Mood:  sharp
Topic: Create + Promote Blogs
Welcome to "An Internet Marketing Tutorial for the rest of us"! So glad you stopped in! This is the inaugural post for a series we're doing this week to demonstrate how to get more traffic to your website.




The major part of the series will be devoted to keyword marketing. By far the best source for keywords is Wordtracker. They list the top 30 searched terms over the last 48 hours, updated daily. We will post a series of articles based on the top 5 as of Friday. Those terms are no longer in the top 5 but are still in the top 30. You can copy the articles for your own site, as long as you copy the entire article, which includes a backlink to this site.




The other part of the series will focus on the many ways we currently use to promote this site. Please help support this site by signing up for Monster or Hotjobs! They have 1000s of great jobs in all levels of expertise! You can post your resume for free and submit it to employers with the click of a mouse!

CIAO for now,
Randy