by Paul Wilcox

Along with spam advertisements hawking prescription medicines, ‘cheap’ mortgage rates and online gambling sites, there are a number of common scams whose sole goal is to separate you from your money.

One of the most common is the Nigerian bank scam. Someone sends you an email pretending to have some kind of relationship to a government official who has recently died, most often in Nigeria. They claim to know about money that was deposited in a secret account that is not accessible to them. In exchange for paying the “transfer fees” and accepting the money in your account, you get to keep a large portion of it. Of course, there is no money and they just want to get your bank account information and the transfer fees you send them.

Another fairly common scam is investments with extraordinary returns. They’ll claim to be risk-free but this is obviously not the case. Once you send them your initial investment, it’s highly unlikely you’ll ever hear from them again, unless it’s to ask for more money.

These fake offers are particularly bad for legitimate businesses who use email for doing business. Because so much email is spam, the internet service providers and email hosting companies work hard to filter it out. But these filters can sometimes stop legitimate email from businesses you want to hear from.

How To Sidestep These Scams

First, never reply to spam. This just tells the spammer that your email is in fact valid and the amount of spam you’ll receive will quickly multiply. Some spam will even include a link at the bottom for removing yourself from their list. If it’s a true spam email, don’t use this - it just confirms your email address as well. If you did sign up to receive the email however, this is a legitimate way of removing yourself from future mailings.

Never send any private information like credit card numbers or username & passwords by email. Legitimate companies like Paypal or your bank will never ask for these things directly through email.

How do you know whether it’s spam? Since, one man’s spam is sometimes another’s welcomed advertisement, there’s no perfect answer. But there is one good rule of thumb: if you don’t recognize the sender, it’s probably not someone you want to hear from. After all, how many former dictators in Nigeria are you likely to know?

About the Author:

Do you know how to fully protect yourself from email scams and other internet security threats? Find out how to stop spam and other security attacks on the Online Security Toolkit website. Visit http://www.onlinesecuritytoolkit.com for more information.

by Paul Wilcox

These days, most computer users realize they need to be using antivirus software. The trouble is, there is a lot of equipment providing services to these users on the internet. What is being done to protect them from virus infections?

Computer viruses attack servers - web, file, ftp and e-mail, along with routers and other network gear - along with individual PC’s.

Many of these servers are really not that different from a desktop PC. They may have more memory, multiple processors and larger hard drives, but they’re still more or less the same type of equipment when you get right down to it.

Because they really run the same kind of stuff as a desktop system, they’re also vulnerable to attack and need to be protected with similar methods. They need to be running antivirus software and firewalls to avoid being infected.

What else can be done?

Since servers and routers provide services to multiple, sometimes thousands, of user systems they’re more frequently attacked. Users can help administrators of these systems by keeping their own systems clean and refraining from passing on viruses to others across them. Administrators can help themselves by forgoing the temptation to use them as personal computers with full e-mail clients, word processing software, and fully enabled browsers.

Users can help administrators and themselves by being more careful in browser selection and configuration. Most could profit from better self-education in how to minimize the ‘target area’ for hackers by changing browser settings. Users and computer professionals have made strides in voicing concern over security vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer. Adopting other browsers in greater numbers will help to get the message across.

Avoid booting from or loading software from CD’s, DVD’s or other disks that haven’t been scanned for viruses, if you’re not sure of the source. If a single file on one of those disks contains a virus, it can spread like wildfire.

Finally, if you use FTP for transferring files, you need to consider switching to a more secure alternative. FTP sends all passwords unencrypted so if someone is able to intercept your internet connection, they can easily get your password.

Users need to take responsibility for making sure a network is secure - not just the system administrators. System admins have many tasks on their plate and they’re not always able to respond to security risks as quickly as they should.

About the Author:

Is your PC as secure as it should be? Find out what you should be doing to keep it safe from viruses, spyware and other online security threats at the Online Security Toolkit website. Visit http://www.onlinesecuritytoolkit.com for more information.

by James Conner

A tremendous amount of information can be found on the internet. Search engines crawl the web searching for sites with good information. The only thing that counts on the websites is text. If your page is short on text, your page will probably not rank well. Also, if your page has a considerable amount of text, but it’s haphazardly put together, it will probably not rank very high as well.

Enter private label articles. PLA’s are bundles of articles which consist of broad categories that are available for purchase in bulk from someone who brokers articles. Usually there is a choice between buying a monthly subscription whereby large groups of these articles are emailed to you or or you are sent a link where you can download them. Single purchases of groups of articles can also be made.

Most of the time, the articles are already optimized for the search engines using keywords that have been arranged properly, with correct grammar as well as spelling and a reasonable generic focus. The best thing is that they belong to you to do with as you want. You will have purchased all of the rights to the use of the article, and you can change it in whatever way you want to. You can add or remove content and you are able to put your name to it as the author if you want to.

After you have chosen the best keywords for your website, and your way of selling, you are allowed to put the private label articles on your site. When you use the optimized keywords in the appropriate places, your pages rankings with the major search engines will very likely start to rise.

Have You Considered the Use of Free Articles?

I’m sure you’ve seen some article directories that allow you to download as much content to use on your website as you want. The only requirement is for you to leave the resource box with the author’s information and links in it, unchanged.

These articles can be used for free. Monetarily free, that is. They will however cost you in other ways. You might lose some of your prestige, customers, and sales. If you only use a couple of these articles from subject matter experts, you shouldn’t have any problems. If the only thing that you use is nothing but free giveaway articles, you are giving the wrong impression. Specifically, you are sending the message to your customers that you are not very knowledgeable in the subject to be able to compose articles that are your own.

You are also providing all who visit your website a fast way out and onto your competitor’s website. They only need to click that link in the resource box to go onto the author’s website. If the article is written well enough to garner your attention, it most likely will capture the attention of your customer as well. It’s likely that they will go on to search for that same author.

The resource boxes can steal your sales as well as your customers. You aren’t even aware of when it is happening.

Other Ways Of Improving Your Search Rankings

Using the article directory method combined with the private label articles should increase your ranking in the search engines. This is the way that others use. The vast majority of articles which are submitted to article directories will be accepted if they are written competently by those who have followed the guidelines of the article directories. Make sure to give the private label articles that you have written under your own name- including your resource box, to the article directories also.

The first thing this does is set up another link to your website from the article directory. Every time someone links to your website, your ranking goes up just a little bit. This works especially well if the link includes your chosen keywords as well. Since the resource box is yours to set up, you can ensure that the keywords used are exactly what you want.

About the Author:

Bill Jones requests that you submit your best articles to his Where To Find Article Directory. After you submit your articles they will be available for ezine publishers as well as article directories to use, significantly increasing your exposure across the internet.

by Russell G. Stuart

These days, no matter how good your product or service is, the one thing that makes all the difference between success and failure is visibility. Having a website can make that difference, but getting started can be a bit confusing and a bit overwhelming,at times. First and foremost, you need to choose a web hosting service.

A web host is the interface between you and the World Wide Web. They have servers that are part of the internet and they will rent you space on their server; and so connect your website to the net as well. Once you have that space and are connected, anybody from anywhere with an internet connection can access your site.

Web hosting services are dime a dozen now. Choosing one from this huge list can be a daunting task, especially if you have to go to each of their sites and look through everything, trying to find the fine print - you always have to read the fine print. Web hosting directories can make this a lot easier for you.

Clearing out important facts such as server types, uptimes, experience level, support etc is very important when you are selecting a web host, because these are things that will directly affect your site.

The easiest way to do your web hosting services hunt is to get a complete, organised list from a web hosting directory, which will give you a methodical and practical way to narrow down your choices.

A web hosting directory is capable of providing you with a summarised list of companies, individual costs and each company’s contact details. You can take these facts in to consideration before deciding on the right web hosting service for you.

Also, remember to find out about their space capacity, security measures and technical support and whether these are provided with the purchase package.

A web hosting directory can make the initial stages of setting up your website for all the world to see much easier than it would be otherwise. Choosing a web host is a crucial step to take, especially if you are a novice.

About the Author:

If you are searching for web hosting, take a peek at a great web hosting directory packed with information. Good web hosting is important for your internet business so obtaining the right deal and the best prices is imperative. Value for money is very important.