Here Comes the SPAM…

By Irina

=========================================================== The author grants permission to publish this article, in its entirety, electronically or in print, as long as the bylines are included. A courtesy copy of your publication (or, at least, an e-mail notification) sent to irbonness@ureach.com will be appreciated. ===========================================================

I exercise regularly and follow a healthy diet. My weight is right on the money. So every invitation “to loose 30 pounds in 20 days” insults more than just my intelligence and literary taste. Yet until now I managed to treat Unsolicited Commercial Email (UCE) or simply SPAM as a nuisance that wastes my time and resources, but does not represent a serious problem. Not any more!

The message that changed my attitude looked rather innocent: “Hello [fname], I am so-and-so. You are receiving this message because I saw your online business site…” The next day I got another similar message from different so-and-so. Soon, the number escalated to a dozen a day. Very disturbing was also the fact that the messages were arriving to my “strictly business” email addresses reserved exclusively for my customers and business partners. A little research quickly revealed the name of my new enemy – Spam Bot.

Spam Bot is much like a search engine spider. Twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week it crawls from page to page looking for email addresses. Even single Spam Bot is able to quickly produce huge list of addresses (only addresses – that’s why they called me [fname]!) which are used to send SPAM. Unfortunately, there are many of them… Another problem is that being extremely easy to generate and thus very cheap, these lists are sold and re-sold over and over again to nave (obtuse?) “netrepreneurs”.

Looks like a serious self-perpetuating problem for anyone with business email address posted on the Internet. Is there a solution? Well, yes – you can completely eliminate this type of SPAM by making your email address unrecognizable for Spam Bots. Here are several possible approaches:

1. Use the FORM MAIL whenever possible. This not only conceals your email address, but also makes it easier for real visitors to contact you. Here is a working example: http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/ Anyone can email me a question by typing it in the window right on my page and hitting the “Submit Query” button. Yet the address itself is hidden from my human visitors as well as Spam Bots.

2. Replace your “mailto:” link with an IMAGE of your email address. To see an example go to http://www.pcpages.com rafficy/links.html Feel free to examine the HTML code of the page by right- clicking anywhere in the window and then scrolling to “View source” in the drop-down menu. Instead of my email address you (and Uncle Spam Bot as well!) will only see a link to “emaddress.gif”. In this case additional security brings about some inconvenience – the address is not “clickable” and thus one has to memorize it or write it down. This slight disadvantage is circumvented in the next approach.

3. Replace several REAL characters in your email address with so-called SPECIAL characters. These special characters always begin with “&” and end with “;”. Whatever is in between determines how the browser will interpret that particular special character. For example, typing “&” “#” “6″ “4″ “;” (without quotation marks and spaces) is equivalent to using the real character “@”.

If you are skeptical that this replacement alone is enough to fool the Spam Bot (that, by the way, makes two of us) – proceed with replacing other characters in your email address. Here is your cheat-sheet to substitute all vowels: a=#97, e=#101, i=#105, o=#111 and u=#117. Remember to start every special character with “&” and end with “;”. You can see how it works by going to http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/links.html

My human visitors can see and click on my email address by using “Click here to get my email address” link. When viewing the code of the little window, you will not find the address in an explicit form – just a long string of special characters with some letters in between. This (hopefully!) is enough to confuse Spam Bots visiting my site.

We will never be able to totally eliminate SPAM that seems to come with the cyberspace “territory”. Yet I should feel just a little better if the above suggestions at least partially shield your inbox from unwelcome (and often very badly phrased) offers to consolidate the debts you don’t have or safely enlarge a part of your body that… well, you do not have either.

Copyright (C) by Irina 2003.

=========================================================== About the Author: Irina helps people save on healthcare and create steady stream of residual income working from home http://www.megaone.com/hbb/savemoney/ http://www.megaone.com/hbb/makemoney/ ===========================================================

When referring to emails, according to the NCES (National Centre for Education Statistic), “Spam refers to electronic junk mail or junk newsgroup postings. Some people define Spam even more generally as any unsolicited e-mail. In addition to being a nuisance, Spam also eats up a lot of network bandwidth. Because the Internet is a public network, little can be done to prevent Spam, just as it is impossible to prevent junk mail. However, the use of software filters in e-mail programs can be used to remove most Spam sent through e-mail.”

Some search engines use the term to describe websites that try to attain a high listing rank by submitting identical or mirror pages. In this article I am going to give you a few tips about email Spam.

If we give a too general definition to the word, we might end up taking for Spam perfectly legitimate emails. Not “any” unsolicited mail is Spam. Spam means unsolicited bulk email.

If a message is unsolicited that doesn’t make it Spam. The same goes for bulk. A message is Spam only if it is both unsolicited and bulk. When you receive an unsolicited job enquiry, you do receive an uncalled-for email. But is that Spam? No. What about a newsletter? That is bulk, but no Spam if you are a subscriber.

Why Do You Get Spam?

Have you posted your email address online in forums, chat rooms, on your website? Than why do you marvel? Spammers gather the addresses from the Internet; so no wonder your own found its way onto a spammer’s list. Besides, spammers use different other means to get what they want: viruses, Trojans, buying from other spammers.

Spam Scams

How many times have you received an “update your account” email from paypal, a bank or ebay? How many times have you received a “warning message”? Maybe it didn’t look suspicious to you as it came from an institution you work with, but was it really that way? This kind of emails is referred to as “phishing scam”. There is not much you can do when this happens. Just don’t click on any links in that email, don’t give away any confidential information such as social security number, bank account or credit card number. There are some free tools that can protect you against known phishing websites. For example download the free EarthLink toolbar and report the scam to the Anti-Phishing Working Group.

What about the emails from different Nigerian (or other nationalities) citizens offering you a percentage of a vast sum of money? Yes, you’ve got that right: scam. You’ll only loose your money on this one. Better don’t be curious. They will ask you to pay a fee in advance – a so called transfer tax, and guess what: some complications will appear, you have to pay more and more and end up with nothing. And don’t believe the “you won money” lottery sweepstakes either. You’ll only spend. The same goes for the Nigerian purchase scam: they want to buy something from you, pay by check and they wish the goods to be sent in Lagos, Nigeria.

A Major Don’t

Don’t reply to spammers… ever! Don’t send any “remove me” message. By doing so you confirm your address is active, you show you read bulk messages, you prove your ISP doesn’t use Spam filters. You are the perfect candidate. You will never be removed. On the contrary…

Spam Fighters

If Spam really bothers you and you want to fight against it, than you have plenty of possibilities. If you are an American, join Cauce at:
http://www.cauce.org/
If not… check out Cauce’s international partners (example: EuroCAUCE for Italy, Spain, Germany, Holland, France, Norway).

Associations such as to the Anti-Phishing Working Group, the American Federal Trade Commission (FTC) or other volunteers’ organizations are there to help protecting you against scam or other illegal emails (children pornography for example). Detailed information about Spam, Spammers and ways to fight against them you can find here:
http://spamhaus.org/

Mihaela Lica is a skilled journalist and PR consultant, founder of Pamil Visions – http://www.pamil-visions.com/

Previously she used to work as a military TV redactor for Pro Patria and the Military Media Trust within the Public Relations Directorate of the Romanian Ministry of Defence.

Publisher: Jonathan Peter Darwich

The type of Internet hosting service you chose for your business will determine if you fail or are a success as an online business. Planning to venture into the world of Web, the first step for a company will be to have a reliable service for Internet hosting which understands all its needs. An Internet hosting service meets a wide range of customers requirement ranging from website launch to posting of blog for online promotion. Actually, selection of Internet hosting service counts heavily in the success of any online business. Or one may say that a better website host is the underlying difference between a a successful and failed online business.

There are several types of hosting services. These services are basically confined to the web, like web hosting service, reseller hosting service, shared web hosting service, dedicated web hosting service, virtual private server, managed hosting service, home servers, collocation web hosting service, etc.

It is a common conviction of some companies that simply establishing a webpage with custom log, contact details and a brief detail of services would be enough to solve their purpose. However the perception may hold true in some cases, but not always.

For instance, if a business has a wide range of products to sell, then merely a home page for online business will not do. In such a case, the business should explain all its services and products through customized web pages that give it prominence on the Internet. For accomplishing this task, application hosting service will be the best option since it fulfills all the business requirements.

Normally, people show concerns for other services such as e-mail hosting services, mail list management and DNS hosting services that are associated with web-based applications. Thus, for best results, application hosting services need deep and comprehensive technical expertise and support.

Thus, businesses should hire a professional to run hosting services who not only understands their requirements but also provide appropriate solutions. Before hiring an Internet host, a business should take into account other factors since all depends on the selection of website and the kind of presence it wants to make online. Selecting a decent web hosting service guarantees that the concerned business is eventually able to get value for money.

While the selection of Internet hosting service solely depends on business hiring it, security of that service need to be on the top priority list. It is a must for every online company to have an appropriate firewall, pop3 spam filter and other security software in place. These solutions will protect the company from all sorts of malicious attacks. This becomes even more crucial when online financial transactions are performed through the company’s website. Ensuring the complete safety of the website will also help the company earn a good name among customers as they will feel their transactions safe on their website.

The idea of having a working broad band line anywhere is surely an interesting idea to people, especially those who more and more connect with their computers not from home. Business people who often travel for work are the obvious target for mobile broadband since they will love the concept of not having to look for a WiFi public hotspot for a quite reliable connection. Mobile broadband goes further than that, and if prices soon start to come down and connection lines is faster we will see most of broad band clientele applying for mobile high speed internet.

Mobile high speed connection works by linking a modem to a computer, often referred to as a ‘dongle’, from which your computer is then able to use whichever mobile high speed internet line the users have registered for. Telecom companies are offering mobile high speed internet deals and coverage of the networks, very popular as third generation networks, which covers 90% of the United Kingdom.

Broad-band speed has been an important issue for any broad band line and mobile high speed connection telecoms at first had some problems to market potential clients that their mobile broad band could compete with conventional, ADSL landline high speed internet. Fast speed connections are improving, since Vodafone has announced mobile high speed internet speeds of up to 7 mb, which is as fast as some of the ADSL landline internet connections. Most of the western countries, including England, are ready to put huge resources in fibre optic cable networks, in order speed up broadband line to up to 100 mb. Compare Broadband UK allows you to compare mobile broadband online.

In New Zealand, however, an important telecommunications provider has claimed that mobile high speed internet networks will soon increase rapidly over the coming years and they have predicted that mobile high speed connection is going to deliver connections of up to 100mb by end of 2011, the year the GB’s fibre optic network is going to be delivered. This could create an important shift in industry thinking, with the development of a super fast mobile broad-band connection network with remarkable advantages over the cabling of thousands of kilometers of fibre optic cables, not least from a practical point of view.

RSS is an acronym that is short for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a type of XML (eXtensible Markup Language) that is used for syndicating content. XML is used to describe data and is basically a markup language – like HTML.

Before I go into the list of items that are needed to make all of this work, I will mention that the details outlined in this article apply to websites that support PHP. PHP is a popular server-side scripting language that is used to create dynamic website content. If your website is running on a Unix-based operating system (like Linux), chances are your web server supports the PHP scripting language. Check with your web host to be sure.

Now, I can make this a long drawn out article on the technical details behind RSS, XML and PHP, but that would result in a boring article that hardly anyone would read! Instead, I’ll just layout the necessary details for an entrepreneurial minded individual to setup a website using these technologies in a quick and least confusing fashion, I hope.

Task: Let’s say we run a website on gardening and we want to use an RSS feed to add changing content to our site on a regular basis without us having to do any work.

Our goal is to make this new content readable by the search engine spiders. In order to do that, the content needs to be returned via server-side scripting – not client-side scripting (i.e. JavaScript). This is a mistake that a lot of websites that use RSS make.

You see, JavaScript is executed by the client; PHP is executed on the web server. When a search engine spider comes across a JavaScript ’script’ tag, it stops spidering until it moves beyond the closing ’script’ tag. On the other hand, PHP converts the script to HTML on the web server and sends the results back to the client (browser). So when a search engine spider comes across a web page that uses RSS with PHP, the spider only ’sees’ the returned HTML – as if the PHP script were never there. So, PHP with RSS is definitely the route to take for SEO conscious website owners.

Here’s what we need to accomplish our task:

1) An RSS feed link
2) An RSS Tool (PHP script) that can convert an RSS feed into HTML

3) An HTML output-template

Getting an RSS feed link…

A good place to start looking for an RSS feed is 2rrs.com, where you can execute an ‘RSS Search’ for the keyword ‘gardening’. You’ll likely see a bunch of results. Click on any of them. You’ll now find an RSS2HTML link under the ‘Details’ section – which is your RSS feed link. Copy the full HTTP path to this link; we will need it for configuration in later steps.

Now we need to get an RSS Tool (PHP script) that can convert an RSS feed into HTML, and we also need an HTML output-template…

So, we need a method to take our RSS feed and convert it into HTML so we can insert it into our web page. The best way to do this is to use an awesome little PHP script called rss2html.php.

You can download this script here: http://www.feedforall.com/more-php.htm
(Choose Option two -> Download)

Unzip the download file and you’ll find a sample HTML output-template file called sample-template.html and an rss2html.php file. These files will eventually need to be moved to your web server, but before you do that, let’s configure everything…

The PHP file is the work horse and does the RSS XML to HTML conversion, so there are some configuration settings within this file that need to be set. Open the file in a regular text editor (like Word Pad) and make the following 3 configuration changes:

Configuration change #1:
Find the following line of code: $XMLfilename = “sample.xml”;
Change it to: $XMLfilename = “Your-RSS-Feed-Link”;

The above line of code tells the PHP script where to get your RSS XML feed (file). Remember, the RSS XML feed contains the content which you are trying to add to your website. The website that you get your RSS feed from will update this feed as new content becomes available from the website. (Note: be sure not to download the XML file and specify a local path to it – this will result in your website always using the same XML file – which means your website will not be updated with new content from the RSS XML source.)

Configuration change #2:
Find the following line of code: $TEMPLATEfilename = “sample-template.html”;
Insert your HTML output-template name in place of sample-template.html.

The rss2html.zip that you downloaded from the feedforall link above comes with a sample-template.html that you can use. However, the template from feedforall encompasses the entire HTML code for the entire webpage (from the opening ‘html’ tag to the closing ‘html’ tag). If you’re inserting this content into your pre-existing webpage, then you’ll likely only want to use the HTML code between the opening ‘table’ tag and the closing ‘table’ tag. This will allow you to insert a table into your webpage where each row represents an article from your RSS XML feed source.

Configuration change #3:
Find the following line of code: $FeedMaxItems = 10000;

The number ‘10000′ above represents the number of items that you want to retrieve from the RSS feed – which works out to be the number of rows in your HTML table from the previous step. You can leave this setting as is, or you can change it to any positive number your like. For example, if you change it to 5, then the PHP script will display the top 5 RSS feed articles from your RSS feed source.

When you’re done with these configuration settings you can upload these files to your scripts directory on your web server and add the following line of code to your website’s HTML file where you would like the RSS feed content to appear:

include (‘path_to_scripts_directory/rss2html.php’);

Make sure to prefix the above line of code with a ‘less-than’ symbol followed by a question mark, as well as, postfix it with a question mark followed by a ‘greater-than’ symbol. Also, remember, if your webpage was initially an html file (i.e. filename.html) then you will want to change it to filename.php in order for the web server to know how to handle the above PHP script.

There you go… an easy way to add changing content to your website without any extra work on your part.

Sincerely,

Michael Ellis

Michael Ellis is an Internet technology expert that specializes in marketing products and services online. Be sure to visit Michael’s website http://www.VictoryKey.com for FREE Internet Marketing articles, tips and discussion forums.

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