Phishing is rapidly becoming on the largest threats to your personal, financial, and emotional wellbeing. No I am not talking about Saturday afternoons out on the boat with your grandfather, listening to stories that being with “When I was your age…”—now while these probably conjure up horrific childhood memories of such stores, they in no way come close to the horror felt by victims of Phishing.

Phishing (fish’ing – to trick people into providing their personal and financial information by pretending to be from a legitimate company, agency or organization) is a fairly new scam propagating itself on the internet in many different forms. Each has the same sole purpose of convincing you to volunteer your personal and financial information and hand if over to these crooks.

One such attack was targeting PayPal (www.PayPal.com) customers, by sending out mass email (spam) stating that there had been a security breach and the account has been suspended until you verify some information. Well this may sound reasonable, but the truth behind this was it was not from PayPal; rather a carefully orchestrated scam to capture your PayPal username and password, credit card information, debt card pin number, mailing address, and social security number among others. What made these even scarier was the fact that the message was designed so well—using PayPal’s logo and website layout perfectly—that even I had to take a second look. This convinced people of the legitimacy of the message and prompted individuals—estimated in the thousands—to happily provide their information over to the scammer.

There were a few items that made this email message stand out as a fraudulent spam message rather than legit communication:

• Greeting: The greeting at the top of the message was “Dear PayPal Member”. This should alert you as PayPal, along with most major companies will address you by name or company associated with the account. EX: Dear Steven

• Website address: The website address that was being linked to from within the message was not www.PayPal.com, but rather a very clever hoax. When you look at the link in the message it appears to go to PayPal’s website, but when you click on it a different address (one of the scammer’s website) loads.

Now that I have scared you enough for one article, which this is not my intention to do so, but you must also realize the severity of this issue; there are a few simple things to keep in mind. Do not trust email messages. Let me say that one more time DO NOT TRUST EMAIL MESSAGES. If something seems fishy (no pun intended), do not trust it. If it tells you to update your information, call the company up that it mentions or login to your account as you normally would. In this example, you could call PayPal’s customer service number or login at PayPal’s website (visit it by opening your web browser and manually entering http://www.PayPal.com–not through the link provided in the email). Doing so will verify that you are not falling victim to Phishing.

Steven Carlson is an expert in identity theft and issues relating to credit restructuring solutions. He is serves as the President and CEO of Digital Intelligence Group, Inc. (www.DigitalIG.com) a company that provides identity theft and credit restructuring services through its brand eCreditRx (www.eCreditRx.com).

While we all agree that there`s way too much spamming/junk-mailing going on in our email boxes, there are a couple of things we can do to reduce the amount of mails we actually have to sift through, without having to resort to paying for expensive software that can be a real pain to set up properly.

Firstly, and this is a great, little known tip. You can get yourself a free email account, (the bigger the better) which is a great thing to have if you use a lot of FFA`s, Classified sites, Search Engine Submittals etc. When you create the junkmail account, be sure to save the information you`ve used to create it with into a Wordpad/Notepad file.

When the account is full, flit through it quickly, just to make sure there`s nothing of real importance there. If there is, copy and paste it to your favourite text document. Then just go ahead and delete the whole junkmail account. You`ve saved the info you used to create it with in the first place, so it`ll only take a couple of minutes to re-create it.

Next, whenever you join a program or a site, have your email client open at the same time, so you get the welcome mails immediately. Confirm the welcome immediately, then put the mail into a special folder, created for all emails from that particular address.

That way, different emails go to different folders, without getting too mixed up. If and when you decide to leave that program, delete all the mail you`ve saved from them, but please make sure that you DO actually opt-out before doing this.

Another thing to remember is if you`re getting mails from someplace and you`re pretty darned sure you have absolutely no reason to be getting them, DON`T click on the remove me link! What you`re really doing, is letting the spammers know that they`ve mailed to a real, used address, and they`ll mail more and more, and never stop. Some of the more unscrupulous ones will even sell your address to be used as part of a mailing list, which in turn with result in even MORE spam.

A lot of people seem to have forgotten where the delete button is, and scream the dreaded word "SPAM!!" as soon as an unfamiliar looking email drops into their inbox. This can be very damaging to legitimate business owners, so please, don`t ever say spam, unless it well and truly is.

If you really don`t have time or inclination to follow these tips, there IS software out there that can filter your mails automatically for you. The biggest drawback with these is that they can actually stop you receiving mail that you WANT to get if you don`t set it up properly.

Setting up the software filters can also be very confusing and time consuming, so if that`s the way you choose to go, make sure you set aside some time for it, and don`t get distracted by anything else until it`s done.

May you be prosperous in everything you do.

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For years I didn’t worry much about spam.

But lately it’s got out of control. Over half of my email is now spam, and it was growing by the week - until I took action.

This article shows you some strategies for winning the war on spam.

————————————————

How Do They Get Your Address?

————————————————

In the old days, spammers got their addresses mainly from Newsgroups - if you didn’t post to Newsgroups, you were reasonably safe. But they’re now using a much more efficient method to build their lists - email harvesters.

Email harvesters are robots that roam the Internet collecting email addresses from web pages. Examples are EmailSiphon, Cherry Picker, Web Weasel, Web Bandit and Email Wolf, to name just a few.

How can you protect yourself from email harvesters?

By ‘munging’ (mung = ‘mash until no good’) or cloaking your email address.

There are many ways of munging your address - the easiest technique is to use ASCII code for the punctuation in your email address (instead of symbols).

For the colon after mailto use : and for the @ symbol use @ and for the period use . . With this method, your email address would become:

mailto:yourname@yourdomain.com

but it will display as:

mailto:yourname@yourdomain.com

Your email address will appear exactly as it did before, and it will still be ‘clickable’, but email harvesters will ignore it and move on.

There are also JavaScript’s that you can insert into your web page that will make your email address visible to humans but invisible to harvesting programs. Here’s one that works very well: http://pointlessprocess.com/JavaScripts/anti-spam.htm

—————————–

How To Fight Spam

—————————–

The most important thing is never, ever, reply to spam.

Most spam contains an innocent-looking ‘remove me’ email address. Do not use it. Here’s why:

Spammers typically buy a CD containing a million or so email addresses, but they have no idea how many of those addresses are active. So before beginning their marketing campaign in earnest, they send out a ‘test message’ to the entire list.

The test message contains an email address for removing yourself. When you reply to that address, it confirms to the spammer that your address is active and therefore worth spamming.

Worse still, the spammer may be distilling from that CD a list of confirmed active addresses that he will then sell to another spammer.

The key to dealing with spam is to report it to a 3rd party: (1) the affiliate program that the spammer is advertising, (2) the spammer’s web host, or (3) the ISP the spammer used to connect to the Internet.

When you report spam to a 3rd party, remember to be polite - they didn’t send the spam and they’re probably just as anti-spam as you are.

(1) Reporting to Affiliate Programs

Many spammers are affiliates advertising someone else’s products or services. So look for a website address that contains an affiliate link, something like this: www.affiliateprogramdomain/841526

Then just send an email to the affiliate program (abuse@affiliateprogramdomain.com), informing them that you are receiving spam from one of their affiliates.

Most affiliate programs have zero tolerance for spamming and will remove an affiliate spammer without warning.

Now, affiliate spammers don’t want you to see their affiliate link, so many of them send their email as HTML. All you see in the message are the words ‘Click Here and Order Now’.

But in your browser just click on ‘View Source Code’ and search for the letters ‘http’. That will take you to the spammer’s affiliate link.

(2) Reporting to Web Hosts

If the spam doesn’t contain an affiliate link, it’s likely that it is coming from the owner of the domain name. In that case you’ll have to report it to the spammer’s web host or their ISP.

To make a report to the spammer’s web host just go to Whois, the directory of registered domain names: http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois

Type in the spammer’s domain (the website address that appears in the spam) together with the extension (.com, .org, .net etc).

The host for that domain will usually be listed as the Technical Contact in the Whois record and there will be an email address for contacting them.

(3) Reporting to ISPs

To report a spammer to his Internet Service Provider, you’ll have to look at the spam’s ‘extended headers’.

Extended headers show the servers that the message passed through in order to get to you. The instructions for viewing extended headers will vary depending on what email client you are using.

=> In Pegasus Mail, open the offending message and then

right-click and choose ‘Show raw message data’.

=> In Eudora Light, click on ‘Tools’ in the top menu

bar, and then ‘Options’, and then select the

checkbox option that says ‘Show all headers (even

the ugly ones)’ and click OK.

=> In Outlook Express, open the offending message,

select ‘Properties’ from the File menu and then

click the ‘Details’ tab.

Reading and understanding extended headers is quite a detailed subject. Here’s an excellent free tutorial on how to decipher extended headers: http://www.doughnut.demon.co.uk/SpamTracking101.html

As an alternative to these reporting techniques, you could use a web-based spam reporting service such as SpamCop (www.spamcop.net). SpamCop deciphers the spam’s message headers and traces the mail back to its source.

Wishing you every success in the fight against spam!

————————————————————
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
here to find out more: http://ezine-writer.com/
————————————————————

What is spam ?

Spam is text or URL, in one or several exemplars, neither being waited nor wished, not having, neither directly nor from its shipper, no relationship neither with the recipient nor with a possible
resource related to the recipient.

How does spam appears in blogs ?

• Through the comments’ body and commentator’s URL.
• Through trackbacks’ excerpt and permalink’s URL

What are the anti-spam methods?

• Authentication by connection
• CAPTCHA
• Black List
• Bayesian Filter

Other methods to minimize spam :

• Time Interval between submissions / Number of submissions per hour.
• DDD.
• Secure Form Mode : force page and submission to be manual.
• Rank Denial : Directs hyperlinks an intermediary server.
• Autoclose after N days: entry stops accepting comments or trackbacks.

Which data are analyzed by these methods ?

Active methods do analyze the shipper to check if it’s:
• a spamer by coparing its IP address with blacklisted ones.
• authorized by authentication
• a human by CAPTCHA

Passive methods do analyze :
• comment’s data:
  • nickname
  • eMail address
  • URL
  • message
• trackback’s data (concerning the shipping blog):
  • blog’s name
  • entry’s title
  • entry’s excerpt
  • permalink’s URL

What are the limits to these methods ?

Cross use of several of these methods allows excellent results concerning comments, but weak results concerning trackbakcs.
Difference between comments and trackbacks is that comments are sent from the recipient’s blog, which allosw all above methods to be used, whereas trackbacks are sent from the shipping blog (this avoids the use and need of 2 interfaces).
- Consequently it’s not possible to use CAPTCHA, authentication and Secure Form Mode methods with trackbacks.
- Another big problem, when all the trackback’s data are unknown, especially the IP address, it is quite impossible to avoid spam, mainly because the blacklist and the bayesian filter are becoming inefficient.
- Last inconvenient, trackback autodiscovery is usefull for bookmarklets but also to spamers to who it gives the trackback URL.

Glimpse on futures anti-trackback-spam methods

Copyright © 2004 - Reflexive-Blog - Bobby Masteria
Webdesigner - WebMaster - MetaBlogger - Multi-Blogger - BlogMaster
Licence - Reflexive-Blog - Anti Trackback and Comment Spam Methods - Méthodes Anti Spam de Trackback et de Commentaire
Always use the URL Associated with this article. - Always use and mention my full name. - Never mention my eMail address.

No. I’m not talking here about the outdoor activity enjoyed by many. And no again; I did not misspell it. Phishing is the name given to the latest online scam where millions of unwary Americans are getting their identities stolen.

This fraudulent activity is considered the fastest growing crime of modern times. The favorite target groups of phishers seem to be very young children and senior citizens, as they do not often ask for credit reports, fill out credit card applications or solicit loans. This allows the thieves to go undetected for longer periods of time; but still, be careful. We all are potential targets.

Remember when throwing away unshredded documents with personal information in the trash bin was considered a big risk for identity theft? While this still happens, identity thieves have become more sophisticated in recent times, and this is how they do it…

Phishers create bogus e-mails that look as if they came from large, well-known institutions and banks, such as eBay, Paypal, Citibank, EarthLink, and Wells Fargo among others. These e-mails claim that you are due for an account update, or that the account number, password, social security number or other confidential information needs to be verified. Then they warn you, stating that if you do not do it within a certain period of time, that your account will be closed, terminated, the service discontinued, or something to that effect.

They even provide you with links to websites that look legitimate, because they hijack the real logos of these well known banks, and trusted institutions and companies. And that is the scary part… these e-mails look 100% legitimate, but they are not.

In some cases it goes even further… some of these phishers are installing spyware on your computer to monitor your online activities. So… should you leave the online world for good? Not necessarily.

These are a few things you can do to protect yourself from these scammers:

1. Do not respond to any e-mail that asks for personal information from you, such as account number, credit card number, user names, passwords, etc. If you suspect that the e-mail, indeed, be legitimate, contact your bank or institution to verify this.

2. When in doubt, visit the Anti-Phishing Working Group for an update of the latest scams, and tips to avoid becoming a victim. The website’s URL is www.antiphishing.org

3. Websites like www.Paypal.com, www.citibank.com, and www.ebay.com, offer security tips and tell you what information they’d never ask for in an e-mail.

4. Get anti-virus software and keep it up-to-date.

5. If you suspect you have received a fraudulent e-mail, do not click on any links within it, and forward it to the FTC at uce@FTC.gov

Finally, if you suspect you’ve been a victim of this fraud, get a copy of your credit report immediately to check for unusual activity. If you discover that you’ve been a victim of identity theft, close your account at once and…

- Call the Credit Bureau.

- File a police report.

- Call the FTC ID theft hotline at (877)IDTHEFT.

- Alert other financial institutions where you have accounts.

According to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, phishers send millions of e-mails a day, getting about 5% response. Even with this low response, it is estimated that about 150,000 Americans have fallen prey to these scams since May of 2004. Get informed. Do not become a victim yourself.

==============================================

You have permission to publish this article electronically or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.

E-mail: marketingplanet1@aol.com
November, 2004.

==============================================

Tamara Baruhovich is the author of "Straight Talk about Network Marketing" A no hype, no B.S. e-course that shouldn’t be missed if you are serious about starting a successful career in Network Marketing! Get your complimentary copy here… e-course04@aweber.com

A friend asked me: I don’t get it. Why do spammers have such a hard time spelling things properly? I get mail trying to sell me "viagggra", increase my "brest" size, or save me money accessing "pr0n" sites or buying "seks toys". Even more puzzling, there are plenty of spam messages where it takes me a few minutes to even figure out what the subject actually is, with subjects like "sa vem oneyo n vviiiaaagra" or similar. What’s the story? Why can’t these people use a spell checking program??

I have often wondered this myself, with spam messages like "YOU JUST WONT A GREENCARD" (don’t they mean "won"?), "Morgage ref id last opportunity" (don’t they mean "mortgage")? and, my favorite "earn a college degre instantly" (they presumably mean "degree", but if they can’t spell the word degree, how can I have confidence in the legitimacy of what they’re offering??)

But anyone who has spent more than about five minutes looking at the problem and attempted solutions to spam knows why there are such rampant misspellings: to try and sidestep spam filters. In additional to individual spam filtering systems, there are now many Internet Service Providers who filter your email before it even gets to your mailbox, weeding out the most idiotic and easily recognized of this junk.

Of course, if you are a physician and have patients who are concerned about that Merck Vioxx prescription you wrote for them two years ago, it is theoretically possible that their message won’t make it to you. If you’re a mortgage broker, well, news of your competitors offerings might be something you do want to receive. But overall, most people don’t want this junk, so the people clogging up the Internet with the billions of spam messages sent daily continue to try and sidestep these filtering mechanisms, and the misspellings, typos, and oddly presented words (like "0ffer" with a leading zero rather than "offer" with a letter o) presumably offer some minimal ability to do just that.

The irony of all this, in my opinion, is that the more spammers try to do overt and stupid tricks to try and sidestep the filters, the less effective their messages are. They might measure 1 sale in 250,000 messages a success, but better targeting, legitimate offers, well-written ad copy and genuine opt-in distribution lists might just improve those odds quite a bit. And if you’re selling something, wouldn’t you like to avoid having 95% of the Internet spontaneously hate you because of your marketing techniques?

Dave Taylor has been involved with the Internet since 1980, and has written sixteen different technical books. His latest projects are College Finances and Ask Dave Taylor, where he’s happy to receive questions from readers.

Am I Just Being Paranoid Or Are The Robots Out To Get Me?

It all started in the early part of the twenty-first century.

In the early days of email we were thrilled with its speed and reliability, far superior to "snail mail" but there’s always somebody who has to go and spoil things for everyone else. In the case of email it was the purveyors of the namesake of a certain pork-based substance. They became such a nuisance that large teams of robots had to be employed to keep them under control.

As the porkers got smarter, the robots had to become smarter still. At first, everybody agreed that stringent measures must be taken to defeat the porkers. Ever hear the phrase "throwing the baby out with the bath water" or "the cure is worse than the disease"?

The number of spam merchants multiplied over and over. Eventually, the only way of controlling them was for every email user to have his or her own robot to filter their mail. I did not want a robot filtering my mail but I didn’t have much choice: nobody was allowed an email account without a robot to monitor its use.

Every time I log into my email, I pause and listen for the faint metallic scraping and a slight pneumatic wheeze as the robot wakes and prepares to filter my mail. No matter how quiet I am, he always knows and is instantly awake and alert, ready to do his job. I did not request robotic help, don’t want it, don’t need it but the robot is here to stay.

I think my robot is like the paranoid android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: slow moving and depressive, so I call him Marvin (not to his face, of course). I don’t suppose my Marvin feels that censoring my mail is a suitable occupation for a robot of his caliber, any more that his namesake thought attending the car park at the end of the universe was a great career for a robot with a brain the size of a planet. On my part, I am sure that I am old enough to take full responsibility for my own correspondence. There is no need for Marvin to wear out his circuits on my account but it appears that we are stuck with each other for the duration.

The extent of Marvin’s power first caught my attention when a regular newsletter which I enjoyed failed to arrive. Delivery just stopped altogether.

I asked my email provider if there was a problem with this particular mail and they said there was nothing wrong with my mailbox, it must be a problem with the sender. I asked the sender why delivery had stopped and they said it hadn’t, it must be a problem with my mailbox. I gave up and just resubscribed myself to the newsletter. Every time delivery stopped after that I wondered what else I might be missing in the way of interesting mail.

It was shortly after this that it became apparent to me that Marvin has a bad attitude. Now I can sympathise with him because I know how it feels to be stuck in a boring job while the brain cells shrivel. That doesn’t mean I think he should behave badly, he should do the job to the best of his ability (even if it is beneath him) and not make mischief.

Everyone seems to believe that the robots keep changing the rules in an effort to keep ahead of the porkers but I don’t believe that. I think they keep changing the rules mostly out of boredom but, in Marvin’s case, I sense a certain underlying malevolence. This surfaced recently when I sent an email to a friend I had not heard from for a while. My mail bounced back with a message to the effect that spam would not be delivered. How dare they, Spam indeed! From that day on, every mail I tried to send bounced straight back at me.

Angrily, I contacted the email company support desk to complain. They helpfully told me that this problem was nothing to do with them, I must have used forbidden words in my emails and that was why they bounced. The forbidden words included "friend", "free", "you", "internet", "remove". The list of forbidden words is long and growing longer by the day, it is difficult to make up proper sentences without using the forbidden words, soon our only way of emailing will be by inventing a new language.

My problem now is that I cannot get email through to my friends and they cannot get email to me. Too late I realised that we neglected to exchange phone numbers: there seemed no point when email was so quick and easy. Now I can’t send email, can’t receive email, the robot has isolated me.

Only one way left to break out of quarantine and it’s a long time since I sat with pen and paper to write letters. I won’t use the word processor as I am convinced Marvin will recognise it as a means of communication but I don’t think he will know what the pen is for and I doubt he’ll be suspicious if I take some envelopes with me next time I go out. A glorified email filter is hardly likely to know the purpose of a mailbox which is not of the virtual variety.

I hear Marvin stir even though I have not switched on my computer, he seems to have the ability to read my mind. There is a faint clanking sound, the smell of ozone, an electrical crackle in the air. His hand on my shoulder is heavy and cold, the steel joints creak as his fingers tighten. I don’t think I will be going out to post any letters.

This is one of a series of articles published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons) at http://www.HuntingVenus.com The author’s monthly newsletter is available free from mailto:networkerhvm@ReportsNetwork.com

Spammers get email addresses from web pages using programs called spiders which tour the internet capturing letter strings with the "@" character in it.

Signing up for extra information at some sites and giving your email address can also get you a flood of unwanted mail, but although it feels like spam, it is, or started as, "Opt-in" email.

However, recent legislation in some countries can redefine this as spam if it fails to have certain features, like return address and physical address (of course, just what is required depends on country).

Overcoming that kind of spam is a challenge after you have signed up in a weak moment, although there are a number of programs that attempt to solve the problem. Just one is K9 from http://keir.net/k9.html

But consider this situation: you have a web page and you expect a flood of visitors, and need to put your email address there.

But how do you keep it clean?

Well remember the spiders look for an @ in the string.

We can put an alternate symbol in its place. So meandherATthere.com sits on my web page. With that particular one, we assume that the visitor has the nouse to preplace the AT with an @ and not think it is a new way to write email addresses, and the program would take care of it, and they needent do anything!

Rather than go through all the alternatives here, you will find a list of different methods and some comments about each one, on the site www.takeyoursiteup.com.

May your site not send you any more unwanted visitors!

David is a former Medial Scientist who got into programming and web development and lives in South Australia. His yahoo box gets a regular stream of spam, and doesn’t want any more!

We receive so much information on the Internet, especially via email, that many times we have difficulty separating the good "stuff" from the junk. Most of us put unsolicited email (spam) in the junk category. By the time we weed through all that "stuff" however, we are approaching information overload, and may give "short shrift" to the really good information we receive.

One way to overcome this very real problem, is to create email filters for things you may wish to read at a future time. For example, create a generic filter for the ezines or newsletters you subscribe to, or one for each. This will then automatically separate this good "stuff" from the junk. You can then keep your "inbox" clean and read the information at your leisure when you are less harried.

Use your email filters to weed out the junk. It only takes a moment or so to create a filter, and this will keep all the repeat spam out of your inbox. The best way to filter spam, is not to filter on the senders email address. Most of these are forged anyway, and are different every time. Pick out some "key words" contained in the body of the message. "Stop Snoring, Own an offshore retirement fund, $16,000+ with ONE $20 gift" just to name a few. Filter out those emails that match your key words.

Some of the spam is one time only and you don’t need to be concerned with that. One way to do it, is to create a folder titled "Spam". Every day, instead of simply deleting them, transfer them to this folder. If you see a pattern developing, you can easily pick out the worst offenders, and create a filter for them.

When you subscribe to an ezine or newsletter, don’t make a summary judgment that you don’t want it. Most publishers try to provide a "variety" of items, and it may take several issues before you both click. Like a baseball player, don’t expect a "homerun" every time at bat. Give it a half-dozen or so issues before making up your mind. You may simply get an issue that doesn’t appeal to you, but the next might be a winner.

Some people go so far as to set up a separate email account just for their personal use, and another for their ezines, which is not a bad idea. But, if you do this, for goodness sake remember which one you used. Most publishers use list servers for their mailings. You can’t unsubscribe from a publication except from the address that they have on file. To prevent the "cranksters" from running amok, they require you to be signed on the address they have on file in order to be removed.

If you decide you don’t want a particular publication any longer, try to unsubscribe, and if you get a message that you are not on the list, it does little good to rant and rave. If you’re not there, you’re not there - period. While most publishers don’t want people on their list who don’t wish to receive it, they have no idea what email address you used when subscribing.

Most publishers will make an honest effort to remove you from their list, and threats to report them for spamming, will not help them to remove you. The majority of the time the people who complain are using a free email account, and are automatically forwarding the mail to their main address. To compound matters, they forgot they are doing this, and get aggravated when they can’t unsubscribe under their main email address.

If you are receiving a publication and cannot unsubscribe, filter their publication automatically into your trash basket. This will save you and the publisher a lot of aggravation.

There is a great deal of information on the Internet. If you approach it wisely, you will benefit. If you don’t, you may be suffering from information overload, and deleting some really good information mixed in with all the junk mail you receive.

Did you know that subscribers to Bob Osgoodby’s Free Ezine the "Tip of the Day" get a Free Ad for their Business at his Web Site? Great Business and Computer Tips – Monday. Wednesday. and Friday. Instructions on how to place an ad are in the Newsletter.

Subscribe at: http://adv-marketing.com/business/subscribe2.htm.

It’s no secret that the US economy has slowed down, and many jobs have been outsourced overseas. Thousands of companies are still and are being forced to cut costs, decrease benefits, and even lay off employees. Many of those who lost their jobs, wil l try their hand at doing business on the Internet.

It seems however, that lately I’ve been hearing a great deal about the difficulty of doing business online. Put aside the talk about the hype and the scams. They existed from the first day the Internet was commercialized. They are becoming more sophisticated with their promises of earning millions, but as people become more experienced, they quickly see through them.

Fake email addresses, spam and broken dreams will continue to abound until either legislation forces them to do business ethically, or the well of suckers dries up.

Sounds pretty negative doesn’t it. Under other circumstances, it would be enough to put someone off trying to do business on the net. But let’s look at the positive side. I don’t know about you, but I’ve met some pretty fine people on the web. They are honest, hard working and a pleasure to do business with. While there are a few "bad apples" (and aren’t there offline as well), it’s amazing how many friendly, helpful people there are out there.

In the early nineties, before the entrepreneurial invasion of the Internet, the only game in town was the proprietary bulletin boards such as run by Prodigy. Anyone who "dared" become commercial was summarily banned from the boards, and "blacklists of offenders" were actually shared between the board moderators.

But, as commercialism crept in, and the old bulletin boards joined the ranks of the dinosaurs, a whole new strategy started to evolve.

People have learned that you don’t have to create something new or re-invent the wheel to make money online. You can join an affiliate program to get started with a minimum of capital outlay, and a decent income can be made. But the old saying "there’s no such thing as a free lunch" is even truer today.

Sure, you can advertise online for free, but except for isolated instances, there is a catch. Forget the FFA (Free For All) sites where you can post a free ad for your business. They get thousands of submissions hourly, and most only keep the latest hundred or so current, so your ad has a life measured in seconds.

How about the free ads you find in newsletters? If the newsletter has content and a decent subscriber base, they are a great deal. However, many times the only subscribers who receive it are those placing the free ads, and once they check to see if their ad is there, they "click away" and don’t even see anything else.

While you might not immediately learn how to advertise your business, you quickly learn how not to. Email spamvertising is simply a waste of time and money. If it is annoying to you, and the ads are summarily deleted without being read, why waste your money on a similar campaign.

Those who want to do business on the web, and are succeeding, are evolving into a whole new breed of entrepreneurs. They learned from the mistakes that are being made, and have developed a business plan that is working.

So, what is the secret. It really isn’t a secret, and it is as obvious as the nose on your face. People are not stupid, inexperienced maybe.- but not stupid. Treat them with the same courtesy and respect you would like to receive, and you will be amazed at the results.

Unfortunately, many would be entrepreneurs don’t take their business seriously, and will fail. This is not something you can do when bored, and there is nothing good on TV that night. If your bottom line is to succeed, you must take your online business seriously, and the returns you receive will be in proportion to the effort you exert.

Did you know that subscribers to Bob Osgoodby’s Free Ezine the "Tip of the Day" get a Free Ad for their Business at his Web Site? Great Business and Computer Tips – Monday. Wednesday. and Friday. Instructions on how to place an ad are in the Newsletter.

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