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O.K., before I get into any trouble, what I am about to teach you does not break any spam laws. This is a completely legit way of inviting people to learn about you and your business, and it is also a very creative way of doing so. If you do this the right way, people will actually thank you for what you have to offer them. But with the pros come the cons: if you do this the wrong way, then you can seriously damage your own reputation as well as the reputation of your business, and this is because if you do this the wrong way, people will view you as a SPAMMER.

This whole concept of “legal spam” stems from the idea of inviting people to get to know you as a friend. This is made possible in today’s online world through the growing popularity of social networking websites. You are going to be able to “legally spam people” by actually becoming a more social person, instead of a hungry businessman just looking for the sale. You will contribute to the better good of our online community by sharing your expertise with others. You are going to initially share your expertise for free, and naturally, people are going to want more. Lucky for you, you will then have an opportunity to sell to these new found friends of yours.

Out of all of the social networking sites on the web right now, MySpace and FaceBook are your easiest ways to target a market and start growing your list of friends. I personally find that doing this on MySpace is much easier to do, but I have also dabbled with FaceBook and found some success.

Here’s a quick explanation of how you would “legally spam” people on MySpace: You will first need to create a “normal” MySpace account. You can mention your businesses, but you want to keep the focus on yourself as a real person. You will want to tell your own personal stories, put up pictures of yourself, and include interesting facts about yourself. Believe it or not, many people like to get to know a person before they do business with them.

After creating your MySpace page, you will then need two important things in order to successfully accomplish your MySpace marketing: a target market, and an “offer.” Depending on what you have to sell, you will need to search the MySpace groups, blogs, and friends of “important” people in order to invite people in your target market as your friends. There is software that you can use for free that will automatically allow you to invite friends within your target market. I suggest inviting no more than 100 friends per day on MySpace because if you invite too many friends, then MySpace will think that you are a real spammer and will shut down your account. But, with the “offer” that you are about to create, you will see how what you are doing won’t be viewed as spam to many of the people that you extend a friend invitation to.

So, here it is, the all important offer. You are going to need to craft the perfect offer (reason) for people to want to be friends with you. I enjoy inviting people in a target market to contribute to a blog. For example, if I was targeting people who want to save money on groceries, then I would tell people that I have a blog in which I talk about great grocery deals and even some grocery items that they can get for free. I would say something to the effect of “Hey! Let’s be friends and when you find great grocery deals, add that deal to the blog. Before we know it, we will have our own little community of grocery savers!” In some of my blog posts I could then mention additional free resources that I offer on my website. When they click from my MySpace page or blog to my website, then that is 100% free traffic.

Other examples of great offers could include: Offering a free mini course or free eBook to everyone who becomes your friend on MySpace, sharing informative videos for free with your target market on your MySpace page, or you could even just say something like, “Let’s be friends and we can occasionally swap ideas with each other.” Before you know it, you will be driving free traffic and obtaining free leads for your business, because you have learned how to “spam” or approach people the right way.

About the Author

Daniel Pereira is an expert at driving free traffic to your website. For 2 free eBooks, free weekly conference calls, and a free mini course, just head on over to www.TheFreeTrafficFormula.com . You can also visit “The Free Traffic Blog” at www.TheFreeTrafficFormula.com/blog

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Email marketing is one of the most effective marketing methods nowadays simply because virtually almost all people use email for help visit www.autoresponder-money.com. Check on those email fields or blanks required to be filled up on various forms needed in processing different transactions. A person without an email address is tantamount to a person without an online home, which is one big shameful truth for this generation.

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To build a highly profitable opt-in email list, start with the basics, a solid foundation to build on by getting your business online and ready to accept new customers.

A crucial first step in getting your business online is to select and purchase your own Domain Name. This makes it easier for potential clients to easily remember your web address and gives the impression that you are operating a serious, for more detail go to: www.mailing-lists-manager.com. reputable and professional business.

The benefits of owning a domain name are numerous. It costs roughly two cents a day and for that measly two cents, you can drastically increase your site’s traffic volume.

Search engines are a great way for subscribers to find you and you want to be found. Many search engines will only include you in their results if you have your own domain name and you need to be listed in the results of search engines.

Purchasing a domain name is one of the best investments you can make for your online business and after you expense it to your company, it will cost a fraction of a penny!

Be creative in finding a domain name. Write down a few good keywords and piece them together.

This service gives you the option to search for and create a domain name using primary and secondary keywords, hyphens, and rhymes.

The second step is finding a hosting service. Building huge lists needs a lot of disc space, so I recommend choosing a hosting company that gives you room to growNext, you will need to automate your business with an auto responder, which is a way to capture the contact information of your visitors and automatically send them your marketing messages.

Most web hosts provide a single auto responder service which works like this: you send an email and instantly you get a reply that says something like this: ‘Thanks for your email. I am currently away and will return on such and such a date and will respond as soon as I get back.’

What you should want and need is a sequential auto responder, which allows you to plug-in any number of pre-written messages and have them sent out at various sequential times as determined by you.

There are many benefits with an auto responder; for more detail go to: www.autoresponder-money.com. benefits that include the ability to personalize your messages and broadcast the same message to your entire list, regardless of where you are in your sequence.

After choosing a sequential auto responder, another decision to make is purchasing a client-side software, third-party software or server-side software.

I will tell you that the server-side software is better because you or your programmer can install this software directly onto your Web host’s server.

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Tillman Knudson has created a multi-million Internet business teaching others how to build a highly receptive email opt-in list and a key component to his success is teleseminars. For a time though, for more detail go to: www.autoresponder-money.com.Knudson’s was mainly successful in starting businesses. Over an eight year period he started no less than eight businesses all of which, in his own words, “failed sadly”. However, this did not deter him.

One of his handicaps is that he is suffers from Attention Deficit Disorder. Knudson describes himself as being highly creative and having loads of weird ideas. At the same time, he finds it difficult to focus on one thing. In the past, he always wanted to do his own thing and this almost led to financial wreck.

He attained a measure of success with hypnotherapy. He describes himself as a “incredible hypnotherapies” and built a business that saw him working with 12-14 clients a day, six days a week for one to one and half hours at $75 per hour. However, he was exchanging his time for money and there are only so many hours in a day. Ironically, even although on one level this business was thriving, he was still stressed to pay his rent and was in debt.

Knudson knew he had to make some radical changes to the manner in which he conducted business and turned to Internet Marketing. He also decided to focus on list building because he noticed that this topic was a returning theme in much of the marketing material that he was receiving.

Bob Proctor says that if your goals do not excite you as well as scare you then you haven’t set yourself a goal that is worthy of you. Knudson had no problem with this. He set himself the audacious goal of getting one million subscribers in six months or less. He felt this goal would excite his subscribers as well as get the attention of a few JV (Joint Venture) partners.

He identified a list of potential JV partners and offered them a proposal. The first scenario were not as established as those he would later approach and they just laughed at him and told him that it couldn’t be done. Who could blame them? Knudson wasn’t exactly approaching this challenge from a position of strength. Knudson had no product plus he:

He was turned down 63 times before he received his first yes. For more detail go to: www.email-auto-format.com.When heavyweights such as Joe Vitale and Jay Abraham agreed to come on board others followed suit. It is ironic that those who agreed to support him were more accomplished Internet Marketers than those who originally rejected him. Perhaps they had greater vision than the initial naysayer or may be the long string of rejections enabled Knudson to refine his pitch. No matter, he was up and running.

However, it certainly wasn’t plain sailing. He persuaded seven other individuals to work with him on a percentage basis and work they did. They were putting in 30-50 hour weeks and bringing in about $10,000 per month of which 70% went to Knudson’s partners and the remainder was ploughed back into the business to pay for systems such as Instant Audio, Ask Database and further education, all of which helped the business to run more efficiently.

A major turning point came when Knudson took Alex Man Ossian’s Teleseminar Secrets mentoring program. Halfway through the program he made just by following through on all of the action points.

Going through one training program at a time, very, very thoroughly and implementing every single technique, every single tactic, every single thing that you had to implement.”

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www.list-management-secrets.com

An interesting footnote to this case study is that Tell man Knudson didn’t achieve his target of one million subscribers but do you think he cares? He is now a highly respected Internet Marketer known for his proficiency in list building. His business turns over seven figures annually something which he attributes to the power of teleseminars.
and Tell man Knudson has achieved the best of both worlds.

http://www.mailing-lists-profit.com

http://www.list-management-secrets.com

When most people start out cutting their teeth in a home based business, they often end up buying their leads from a leads list. This is fine for the novice that is still feeling their way around and learning how to progress.

However, there comes a point where buying leads becomes a burden, not only financially but mentally as well.

Most names that are purchased from a leads list are people that have been constantly hounded by scam artists and phone bullies who are trying to pressure their potential customers into buying their product. For more details logon to www.mailing-list-gold.com. So when you finally get that person’s name, they are not open to what you have to offer. Maybe you have the best product or services for your possible customer, but they are guarded and closed off because of the constant pestering from being on an overused list.

This is where building your own list is so important.

When it comes to list building, I constantly hear the phrase, “Your Power is in Your List.” This doesn’t mean that if you have a big list you will be able to lift cars or leap tall buildings in a single bound. Actually, it means that the more people who are on your list the more people will receive your direct marketing or business opportunity you are offering .

Let me tell you, that is a good thing. The more people that know about what you are marketing, the larger the potential for you to make money. So when your list continually grows, so does the margin for you to reap serious benefits. In the resource box mention that you are running a newsletter. With the knowledge you just presented, expect a substantial growth.

Your ability to pull power out of your list is realized and revolves around the fact that you are the only one marketing to your specific list. Since you are the owner of your list, you are the sole person who can contact your unique list of prospects. for more information visit to www.craigs-list-profits.com. By cultivating your own list, you relieve your list of having to deal with endless spam from different companies. So when you finally get that person’s name, they are not open to what you have to offer. This gives you customers who keep an open ear and mind to your business, which translates into more for your business.

Make your list work for you. Don’t be afraid of reaching out to your list. They have signed up with you and are already interested in what you have to offer. The benefits that come with raising up a list of your own will allow you to market with the resolve and confidence you never had before.

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Nowadays, many of us receive e-mail invitations to join social networking websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace. These services make it easy for members to send out invitation emails complete with response links, and it is in their best interests to do so – as more friends sign up, these sites register higher visits and page views, potentially leading to increased advertising income.

While only a few well-known social networking sites used to exist, this number has skyrocketed, resulting in many more invitations in your e-mail Inbox. Even if you know the sender and name of a social network to which you’ve been invited, before you click on an invitation response link, take a second and consider that not all invitation e-mails are what they seem. Some fraudulent “friends” and “social networks” could have drastic consequences to your security and privacy:

1) Make sure the invite link actually goes to the social network website and not somewhere else trying to “phish” for your personal information! It ’s better to copy and paste URLs into your web browser instead of clicking invite links, as there are many sneaky tricks to hide the true web addresses in e-mail messages.

Even when you copy and paste URLs into a web browser, before actually visiting the websites, look in the browser ’s address bar for any text such as “redirect” or “goto”. These may be signs of someone trying to redirect you to a nefarious website.

For example, imagine getting the following link inside an e-mail message for a hypothetical “Google Social Networking Service”:

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=stopbadware.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=es&tl=en

Since the e-mail claims to be from “Google”, and the web address contains “google.com”, this will take you to a page on Google ’s website, right? If you visit the above link you will go somewhere else…

This misdirection link was just an example and fairly easy to detect. Real spam e-mails use lots of other tricks for obfuscating (hiding) true web addresses. Instead of copying and pasting links, it may prove even safer to just visit website homepages directly, skipping invitation links, and then asking senders to be re-invited as their friend.

2) Do you know the person sending the invite? Do you know the name of the social networking site? If you’ve never heard of neither, there ’s a high probability the site or the member is spamming. Sign up to the site and be placed on the user ’s “friend” list and your mailbox may be subjected to all sorts of unsolicited e-mail.

Just as responding to junk e-mail alerts spambots that your e-mail address is active, responding to junk social networking requests does the same thing.

If you do know the friend but not the social networking site, what ’s wrong with sending a quick e-mail to your friend and asking them if their invite was legitimate? If it was, no big deal, but if it wasn’t, you might have alerted your friend to a problem they need to fix on their end.

3) Nefarious websites may be breeding grounds for spyware distribution. Visit the website with the wrong browser and/or wrong software installed, and your computer may become infected.

Think your computer, even with antivirus and anti-spyware software installed, cannot be infected? These software packages may be installed on your system, and the wrong version combined with a 0-day exploit (a previously-unknown bug that has not been patched) can allow spyware / malware to be installed (this is not an exhaustive list):

Internet Explorer
Macromedia Flash
Mozilla Firefox
Opera
QuickTime for Windows
RealPlayer
Safari
Shockwave
Windows Media Player
… And the list goes on.

4) When you access the social networking website, does it ask questions such as the following during the signup process?

* Social Security Number (a big NO-NO!)

* Name and password to another e-mail account so the site can notify all your contacts to join the social network (or nefarious sites can use your account to send e-mail spam to all your contacts UNDER YOUR NAME!)

* Mother ’s Maiden Name (while legitimate networks may ask this for a “Security Question”, I would not provide it. This is one type of information miscreants can use to possibly get more information about yourself or sign up for credit or other offers in your name).

* Credit Card or Bank Account Number (unless it ’s a LEGITIMATE SITE, you know it ’s not a phishing site, and you’re signing up for subscription/premium services, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER PROVIDE THIS INFORMATION! This can cost you money, time, aggravation, and your credit rating.)

These are just four techniques nefarious social networks and/or members can use to violate your privacy, cost you time and money, and possibly harm your credit rating. While I’m not saying you should never join social networks, just be a little careful when you get invitations. Know who is sending you the invite and the legitimacy of the social network. Confirm the invite and visit the social network ’s homepage directly. Plus, never provide too much information when signing up. Follow this advice to help increase your safety on the Internet while having fun joining your friends in social networks.

About the Author

Andrew Malek is the owner of the MalekTips computer and technology help website at http://www.malektips.com . MalekTips offers tips and advice to help keep you safe on the Internet, including how to detect e-mail scams, detect and remove spyware, and adjust web browser security settings.

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Ten or fifteen years ago, we didn’t need any fancy anti spam software, we got most of our lottery scams by snail mail. If all that dead paper was not so bad for the environment, I might wish we still did; because the lottery spam that sneaks past my anti spam filter and into my inbox is the pits. At least those Publisher’s Clearing House “You have Already Won!” letters used to be sort of entertaining. They were brightly colored, and even came with fun stickers you could play with or give to your kids. I always enjoyed sticking that big “NO” stop sign sticker you know, the one intended for those who did not include a magazine subscription with their entry on the back of my brother’s head. It was a much more innocent time.

Today’s lottery spam is pretty similar to its low-tech cousin. It begins with that all-exciting email: You’ve won! or, if they’re going for a business like tone, “Regarding Ticket Number 127289-56-8938.” When you click to open it, hands shaking in excitement, you read:

We at EuroLotto are happy to announce that you are one of the winners of our recent Euro-Asian International Lottery draw, held on 24 June, 2008 in Stockholm, Sweden. Your email address was attached to an entry ticket numbered 123289-56-8938, which is being awarded a prize in the Third Category, in the amount of $1,000,000.

At which point you break out the champagne, hug your husband or wife, and promptly follow the instructions given. You have to pay $500 for processing fees in order to get your prize? Who cares! You’re a millionaire!

Dealing with Lottery Spam

You don’t actually do any of that, do you? You’re smart enough to see the lottery spam that sneaks past your anti-spam filter for what it is: a cheap scam that plays upon our most sacred desires, namely, money. But while you’re probably pretty adept at recognizing most lottery spam (“send to me email for to claim your money” is a pretty obvious indicator, after all), with the bazillion versions of this email out there, there are still a few that might catch you off guard.

Has a “Congratulations, you’ve won!” email sneaked past your server’s anti spam software? First, keep this in mind: if you haven’t bought a ticket for something, you can’t have won anything. Traditional lotteries work when people buy tickets in order to be entered in a drawing for a pool of money. But if nobody buys, where does the pool of money come from? A fifth dimension that’s brimming over with money trees? Probably not.

Remember this: nobody gives anything away for free.

You can also identify lottery spam by examining the email. What kind of email address did the email come from? If it’s a free Yahoo or Hotmail address, you can guarantee that it’s spam; reputable companies do not use free email providers. It’s also spam if it mentions fees anywhere in the email, or requires you to give personal details.

So you’ve used your highly evolved powers of deduction to determine that a particular email is lottery spam. You’ve put away the champagne glasses and put down your checkbook. What’s next? Generally, you should just delete the message. Never reply to it, as this will tell spammers that they’ve hit upon a valid email, and you’ll be overrun with spam. But there is one more thing you can do if you’d like to be a good Samaritan.

While lottery scammers work hard to sneak past even the best anti spam programs, they also depend upon their victims’ ability to email them back in order to ‘obtain their winnings’ (spam-speak for ‘get scammed’). If you report any lottery spam to the free email provider from which it originated, the email provider can pull their account. Try it; it’ll feel great to do your part to stop (or at least slow down) a lottery spam operation; sort of like an anti spam superhero.

Then you really should break out the champagne: you will have earned it.

About the Author

Jesmond Darmanin is a freelance writer whose main interest is in corporate email security, for other related articles visit his business anti spam blog

Article Source: Content for Reprint

Email marketing is a very affordable marketing tool for a small business. It doesn’t matter is you are an international internet marketer or just run a small mom-n-pop shop down the street, email marketing when used properly can boost your sales to new levels.
Think of email marketing as an “automated marketing rep”. When used properly it can turn reluctant prospects into interested buyers and buyers into satisfied customers. Email marketing it the art of calling attention to yourself and your business with the use of email messages.
Your email messages can take a variety of formats. They can be short one paragraph teasers (think digital post card) that basically lure readers into clicking on a link to finish reading the rest of story on a webpage. One format is the full pledged, full color HTML “news magazine”.
Another format is a breezy conversational style letter. Still another is the hardcore, plain vanilla text-only “business how-to” newsletter. Pick a format that suits your style, your business model and the information you want to delivery.
The real art behind email marketing is relationship list building. No matter how technologically savvy, we humans become it still boils down to the simple idea that people like conducting business with like-minded people, who they know, like and trust.
Email lets subscribers get to know you. Through your emails they find out fast if you are a greedy egoist, always pushing the next big thing, always doing the hard sell. They will also discover if you are good mentor, teacher or coach and whether or not you want to help them solve their problems. They will also know if you are “faking it” and are just “parroting” back what they have heard instead of sharing what they that have learned either through study or from personal experience.
Email also helps subscribers to learn to like you. Don’t have to win any contests for Miss or Mr. Congeniality or anything but you do have to be yourself. Don’t be a faker. Just write your emails the way you talk. Actually type along as you talk so your true rhythm and voice can come through. Sure some people won’t like you, others won’t care one way or the other and another group will become your fan club! It’s this group who will buy your products and become repeat customers.
Also your email list will let your readers learn to trust you. The core foundation in any business is trust. Trust has been called the “lubricant” between the gears of commerce. Without it, the massive machine of business and trade quickly breaks down and locks up.
Trust can’t be rushed although marketing gurus hold fast to the 7 to 9 rule. That a prospect has to be exposed to your marketing message anywhere from 7 to 9 times before they will buy. This maybe true, but I believe without trust, the exposure numbers (from introduction to purchase) would be much higher than 9!
Email marketing is as much an art as it is a science but now that you understand much how this underutilized business tool can affect your income, you should be ready to start using it to increase profits for your business.

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Whether you have a “bricks and mortar” business or run everything exclusively from the web, you need to have an email list. If you have ever wanted to start an email list but didn’t know how to begin then read the following tips on how to grow a mail list for free.
(1) Ask for the Email Addresses of Your Customers
Put up a sign up form on every page on your website. Ask them for it when talk to them over the phone. Get their permission to add them to your list when they send emails to your office. Send postcards to old customers, asking them to go online and sign up. Send out business-reply cards and ask customers to update their profiles for your records (which should include their email addresses).
(2) Contact the “Not Interested” and the “Not Yet” Crowd
Send them printed samples of your newsletter asking them to sign up for it. Send out reminder post cards offering a discount on a product or service if they sign up for your newsletter. Keep sending post cards until you have that email address, and then keep reminding them how you can help solve their problems.
(3) Collect Business Cards
Always exchange business cards with people at face-to-face meetings, presentation or conferences. If you don’t see an email address, ask “How can I contact by email?” Don’t be like most people can come home with your pocket and purse full of cards only to dump them. Add them to your email list. Send them a “personalized” email mentioning where you got their card and ask them to sign up for your regular newsletter. Offer to do the same for them!
(4) Contact Former Associates and Co-Workers
Email everyone in your personal email contact list. Ask how they are doing, etc. and tell them, you are trying to build up your mailing list and would they be interested in signing up? Give them a link to a sample newsletter (with a sign up form prominently displayed). Be shameless!
(5) Bug Your Vendors
Contact all your vendors, suppliers and the family vet and your local M.D. Like with your personal list send them a personal note and ask if they would be interested in joining your email list. Surprising, more than you think would be willing to sign up.
(6) Piggyback on Other Newsletters
Contact other local businesses and sign up for their newsletters. Lurk for a few issues and then offer to write a “guest column” with a link back to your website or ask them about an ad swap, where you would give them a free ad in your newsletter if they would place on in theirs.
(7) Host a Bulletin Page
If the professional association, club or church group you belong to doesn’t have a website of their own and is reluctant to setup one, then you can offer to host a single “bulletin” page on your website. You can then place a discrete link from the bulletin page to the rest of your website in exchange for this free service.
Of course you don’t have to use all these techniques for building a mailing list, but you can pick the ones you like the most and implement them. Then just sit back and watch your mailing list grow!

This article with useful information about the importance of <a href="http://www.downlinebuilderdirect.com">list building</a> and <a href="http://www.downlinebuilderdirect.com">downline builder</a> to increase your bottom line and ultimately your profits was brought to you by Michael Murphy. Try visiting also his list building site at http://www.downlinebuilderdirect.com

Nowadays, many of us receive e-mail invitations to join social networking websites such as Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace. These services make it easy for members to send out invitation emails complete with response links, and it is in their best interests to do so – as more friends sign up, these sites register higher visits and page views, potentially leading to increased advertising income.

While only a few well-known social networking sites used to exist, this number has skyrocketed, resulting in many more invitations in your e-mail Inbox. Even if you know the sender and name of a social network to which you’ve been invited, before you click on an invitation response link, take a second and consider that not all invitation e-mails are what they seem. Some fraudulent “friends” and “social networks” could have drastic consequences to your security and privacy:

1) Make sure the invite link actually goes to the social network website and not somewhere else trying to “phish” for your personal information! It’s better to copy and paste URLs into your web browser instead of clicking invite links, as there are many sneaky tricks to hide the true web addresses in e-mail messages.

Even when you copy and paste URLs into a web browser, before actually visiting the websites, look in the browser’s address bar for any text such as “redirect” or “goto”. These may be signs of someone trying to redirect you to a nefarious website.

For example, imagine getting the following link inside an e-mail message for a hypothetical “Google Social Networking Service”:

http://translate.google.com/translate?u=stopbadware.org&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&sl=es&tl=en

Since the e-mail claims to be from “Google”, and the web address contains “google.com“, this will take you to a page on Google’s website, right? If you visit the above link you will go somewhere else…

This misdirection link was just an example and fairly easy to detect. Real spam e-mails use lots of other tricks for obfuscating (hiding) true web addresses. Instead of copying and pasting links, it may prove even safer to just visit website homepages directly, skipping invitation links, and then asking senders to be re-invited as their friend.

2) Do you know the person sending the invite? Do you know the name of the social networking site? If you’ve never heard of neither, there’s a high probability the site or the member is spamming. Sign up to the site and be placed on the user’s “friend” list and your mailbox may be subjected to all sorts of unsolicited e-mail.

Just as responding to junk e-mail alerts spambots that your e-mail address is active, responding to junk social networking requests does the same thing.

If you do know the friend but not the social networking site, what’s wrong with sending a quick e-mail to your friend and asking them if their invite was legitimate? If it was, no big deal, but if it wasn’t, you might have alerted your friend to a problem they need to fix on their end.

3) Nefarious websites may be breeding grounds for spyware distribution. Visit the website with the wrong browser and/or wrong software installed, and your computer may become infected.

Think your computer, even with antivirus and anti-spyware software installed, cannot be infected? These software packages may be installed on your system, and the wrong version combined with a 0-day exploit (a previously-unknown bug that has not been patched) can allow spyware / malware to be installed (this is not an exhaustive list):

Internet Explorer

Macromedia Flash

Mozilla Firefox

Opera

QuickTime for Windows

RealPlayer

Safari

Shockwave

Windows Media Player

… And the list goes on.

4) When you access the social networking website, does it ask questions such as the following during the signup process?

* Social Security Number (a big NO-NO!)

* Name and password to another e-mail account so the site can notify all your contacts to join the social network (or nefarious sites can use your account to send e-mail spam to all your contacts UNDER YOUR NAME!)

* Mother’s Maiden Name (while legitimate networks may ask this for a “Security Question”, I would not provide it. This is one type of information miscreants can use to possibly get more information about yourself or sign up for credit or other offers in your name).

* Credit Card or Bank Account Number (unless it’s a LEGITIMATE SITE, you know it’s not a phishing site, and you’re signing up for subscription/premium services, NEVER, NEVER, NEVER PROVIDE THIS INFORMATION! This can cost you money, time, aggravation, and your credit rating.)

These are just four techniques nefarious social networks and/or members can use to violate your privacy, cost you time and money, and possibly harm your credit rating. While I’m not saying you should never join social networks, just be a little careful when you get invitations. Know who is sending you the invite and the legitimacy of the social network. Confirm the invite and visit the social network’s homepage directly. Plus, never provide too much information when signing up. Follow this advice to help increase your safety on the Internet while having fun joining your friends in social networks.

Copyright 2008 Andrew Malek.

<p>Andrew Malek is the owner of the MalekTips computer and technology help website at <a href="http://www.malektips.com">http://www.malektips.com</a> . MalekTips offers tips and advice to help keep you safe on the Internet, including how to detect e-mail scams, detect and remove spyware, and adjust web browser security settings.