Phone Numbers and Privacy Invasion
by Mike Banks Valentine
There has been a flurry of posts in discussion lists and online articles recently about a new Google feature called Google Phonebook which will now allow you to do a reverse lookup search on any phone number. The results page displays a cute little phone icon beside the name of the owner of any phone number you plug in to Google's search box!
The address of the owner of that phone number is displayed beside that and there are links beside the address which will take you to a Yahoo Maps or MapQuest with detailed and precisely accurate driving directions directly to their home! The only way to make that result more invasive would be to include any known email addresses right beside the phone number, street address and driving directions! Fortunately, Google has made it simple to opt-out of this privacy nightmare.
Here is Google's description of this feature
http://www.google.com/help/features.html#wp
They make it painlessly simple to opt out of the listing and promise removal within 48 hours:
http://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html
and finally a snail mail address to opt out of the listing by postal mail if you like. Google Phonebook Removal2400 Bayshore ParkwayMountain View, CA 94043
"Removing your phonebook listing will not remove your personal information from other pages on the web or from other reverse phone listing lookup services, such as: Anywho.com, Swithchboard.com, Whitepages.com, ReversePhoneDirectory.com, Phonenumber.com, Smartpages.com"
A popular new book for internet geeks called "GOOGLE HACKS" from O'Reilly offers tips for how to use that feature to refine your search further if you know the state or town of the person you are searching for!
One other service provides a clear and simple opt-out from the following link:
http://www.phonenumber.com/10006/remove.xhtml
SO WHAT? IT'S IN THE PHONE BOOK ANYWAY, RIGHT?
When I first discovered this feature, I spoke with a relative whose response was basically, "So what?" All of that information is available in your local phone book and if you don't have that, you can call information nationwide to ask for the listing. Yes, that should be true, but I searched an unlisted phone number of another relative who was nothing short of horrified when they tried the search on their own number and saw their home address, name and phone number pop up on the Google results page. Not only did her unlisted number show up, but so did her full name, which is not available even to her phone provider - because she uses only initials on her account with them. Clearly these services draw from other available sources.
Those additional services don't make it nearly as simple to opt-out as Google does and require jumping through multiple hoops to find your way out of those invasive databases. Whitepages.com privacy policy is linked very subtley at the bottom of the page and was difficult to see, even though I was looking for the link. That privacy policy offers zero option to opt-out of their database or tell you where to look for help!
They tell you that they collect reams of information about how you use their site, what sites you visited in their network, any "voluntarily provided information" (which is required to register at the site) and who they share that information with, but provide no published way to remove yourself from their database once you are listed, no matter where they got their information.
The only hint of an opt-out option is via a simple email address, mailto:privacy@w3data.com This email address is required by their membership in BBBonline's Privacy program, which is available to anyone meeting minimum requirements of posting a privacy policy and providing an email contact to a privacy representative. Oh, and willing to pay BBBonline for the priviledge of displaying the rather meaningless privacy lock logo. Why meaningless? How private is a site that allows easy access to private personal information via a site search feature and why do they deserve trust of site visitors?
When doing a search for any number in the "white pages" of Switchboard.com, it returns a page full of banner ads, some pop-up with pre-filled form fields with the name of the person you did a search for! This allows you to easily search sources elsewhere for someone who has so far been successful at staying out of the online databases! Those paid services will pry into other public records databases to track them down!
MORE INVASIVE PRE-POPULATED FORMS IN ADS ON SITES
Then there is the pre-populated form in an advertisement that leads you to KnowX.com where, if the person you seek is not listed in their publicly availabe free listings, they will search public records for a fee, but only if you are a member of KnowX.com. To become a member, you must (SURPIRSE!) provide YOUR detailed contact and credit card information, which they could file for sale to anyone willing to pay for it. (How would you ever know?) Their privacy policy might better be labled a "Lack of Privacy Policy" when they plainly state within that policy
"CAN I OPT OUT OF PUBLIC RECORDS DATABASES?
No. Public records, by law, must be available from the official public records office to anyone who requests them. Accordingly, because individuals cannot opt out of public records databases generally, KnowX.com does not offer individuals the opportunity to opt out of our public records databases."
Oh well, you're stuck if you are listed by KnowX.com but it's good to know that if you are not listed in the top level of their records, they'll give you options of looking through up to 38 other databases for varying fees! But only if you are a member. Fortunately they allow everyone to see their prices. They provide a very long list of prices for each of the places they will strive to invade everyone's privacy here:
http://www.knowx.com/statmnts.exe?form=statmnts/priceinfo.htm
Curiously, that page is only approachable from within their site from a plainly visible "Prices" link but takes you to a log in screen when approached by an exterior link directly. Take a look at some of those surprising databases that they'll search to scrape up any information they can come up with to expose your personal and private information to the world. (If you are a fan of pop-ups, you'll love the KnowX site. I got nine pop-ups while researching this article at their site.)
WHERE DOES ALL THE INFORMATION COME FROM?
Where do all these sites get their information? Few seem to want to discuss where they get it, but one (ATT owned Anywho.com) tells you that their database is NOT populated by extracting information from your long distance billing records.
Q: Where does AnyWho get the directory information?
A: All of the residential white pages are public information obtained from local telephone records for published telephone listings. Non-Published directory assistance records are not provided and are not displayed. None of the listings contained in the white pages are obtained from AT&T billing records.
http://www.anywho.com/help/faqs_wp.html
to opt-out of their listings
http://www.anywho.com/help/privacy_list.html
TOTAL INFORMATION AWARENESS IS ALREADY HERE
By far the most invasive and extreme of the information services is InfoSpace.com, a clear predecessor to the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency 'Total Information Awareness Office'
InfoSpace returns a results page on the reverse phone lookup that not only lists the name and address of the owner of that number, but those dreaded mapquest.com links to driving directions to their home, the average value of a home in their neighborhood, their email address (if Infospace has managed to get your search target to give it to them), lists of names and addresses of NEIGHGBORS, web sites in their listed city or town, and classified ads from local listings.
There are dozens more links on the page purporting to be to services in the same town which are actually just links to advertiser sites with ability to search for local dates from Match.com or apartments or restaurants, etc. Fortunately, there is one more very important link on that result page if you want to get your own phone number and personal info removed from their database, labled "update/remove" beside your results that you can click to request that they delete your information.
When you do that, they request an email address, so there is some (unearned) trust required in order to ask for removal. This seems reasonable enough since one could otherwise update anyones information. But wait a minute, what's to stop someone from adding false information, providing their own email address for verification, then answering the email to confirm those changes?
GREAT RELATIONSHIPS ARE NOT BUILT ON PRIVACY INVASION
The result page of the reverse lookup at InfoSpace displays a small graphic logo link for "Acxiom" in the lower left corner of some results pages which, when clicked takes you to Acxiom.com, whose tagline is "Great Relationships". A link on the front page takes you to another titled "What we do" where they proudly state, "At Acxiom, we create and deliverÊcustomer and information management solutionsÊthat enable many of the largest, most respected companies in the world to build great relationships with their customers. Acxiom achieves this by blending data, technology and services to provide the most advanced customer information infrastructure."
That seems like a very long-winded way to say that, they too are data aggregators, who make a living by selling consumer information to anyone willing to pay for it. Great Relationships? It takes three clicks from their "Privacy" link to get to a page that tells you that it is possible to opt-out.
Consumers may request an Opt-out Form by contacting Acxiom's Consumer Advocate Hotline, 501-342-2722 (toll free 1-877-774-2094 option #5 in telephone tree and be prepared to leave your information on their recorder, no human contact here and you must trust that they will respect your privacy and protect your information, hmmmm.) or sending an e-mail to optout@acxiom.com
"YOU HAVE ZERO PRIVACY ANYWAY, GET OVER IT!"
In January of 1999 Sun Microsystems CEO, Scott McNealy said, "You have zero privacy anyway. Get over it." and privacy advocates and industry analysts were stunned and surprised by the comment. http://www.wired.com/news/politics/0,1283,17538,00.html
Now reactions from the public on the phonebook feature added by Google to it's long list of available search tools is drawing fire and generating lots of heated discussion online. My own opinion is that we may soon be looking back and wondering why nothing was done to stop this continuing encroachment on our private lives by inevitability of ever converging databases.
Oh, if only Google were the only privacy concern we had to deal with. It is becoming more difficult by the day to stay out of databases that may soon have more information available in one click than anyone ever thought they needed on you. Privacy is becoming a rather quaint notion and, inevitably, unfortunately, may soon disappear entirely. Stalkers, identity thieves and marketers have never had it so good when it comes to finding victims, tracking them down and selling them things by phone at dinnertime.
One positive privacy development is the upcoming "Do not call registry" to debut in July. You can read more about it here:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/donotcall/index.html
That new law puts some teeth into the fight against telemarketers by levying fines of up to $11,000 per violation. Too bad we can't so easily rid ourselves of the stalkers and identity theives.
SUMMARY
Removal Request Links
http://www.google.com/help/pbremoval.html http://www.phonenumber.com/10006/remove.xhtml
http://www.anywho.com/help/privacy_list.html
Online Privacy Resources
The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 (G-L-B)The Children's Online Privacy Protection Act of 2000 (COPPA)The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA)Americans for Computer PrivacyCenter for Democracy and TechnologyComputer Security Institutee-Company Privacy GuideElectronic Frontier FoundationElectronic Privacy Information CenterErnst & Young Privacy InformationFederal Bureau of InvestigationGetNetWiseHealth Privacy ProjectKidsPrivacy.OrgOnline Privacy AlliancePew Internet and American Life ProjectPrivacilla.orgPrivacy CoalitionPrivacy CouncilPrivacy FoundationPrivacy InternationalPrivacy.netPrivacy PlacePrivacy Rights Clearing HouseTRUSTeWebVeilWired News Privacy Collection
More Usifull Links:
ParetoLogic Privacy Controls - New.
PrivacyControl - #1 Privacy Protection! ***Vista Cerified!
Thursday, October 11, 2007
★★Phone Numbers and Privacy Invasion
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
►►►Cool Shopping Sites List
►►►Cool Shopping Sites List
Here is the list of sites that I know about and use.
Travel
Tuesday, October 2, 2007
Creative Commons Replacing Copyright?
Creative Commons Replacing Copyright?
by Mike Banks ValentineThis article is licensed under Creative Commons for public use http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/
Plagiarism is an issue that has always plagued writers online and those of us that offer our stuff for free are most at risk for this. I am testing a program called "Creative Commons" which helps to preserve some of the rights to your articles when they are distributed freely. The idea is to protect you from abuse while offering a stated public license to your work which allows you to specify what rights are reserved, including copyright.
I'll be distributing this article on the concept widely through the various free content lists, including my own at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-content/ where over 1000 list members post an average of 200 articles a month for free distribution.Take a look at the web site for the non-profit Creative Commons organizationhttp://creativecommons.org/learn/aboutus/
Where the stated IDEA is:
Taking inspiration in part from the Free Software Foundation's GNU General Public License (GNU GPL), Creative Commons has developed a Web application that helps people dedicate their creative works to the public domain -- or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions. Unlike the GNU GPL, Creative Commons licenses are not be designed for software, but rather for other kinds of creative works: web sites, scholarship, music, film, photography, literature, courseware, etc. We hope to build upon and complement the work of others who have created public licenses for a variety of creative works.
The part that I find valuable is that line stating"...or retain their copyright while licensing them as free for certain uses, on certain conditions..."
This perfectly reflects the idea of the free-content list of allowing free public use of our articles with the required "resource box links" stated by most online authors seeking wide dissemination of their writing while maintaining copyright and prohibiting commercial use if desired.
The Creative Commons site offers code to place on your site to make your license "machine readable" based on a W3C standard (W3C stands for the World Wide Web Consortium standards body) which links back to the creative commons web site and the appropriate licensing restrictions placed on the work displaying the graphic.
I have placed that graphic on my own site both on my ezine archive page and on several of the article pages themselves. But the key to this is the code placed in the <> section of your site. It looks like the following, with variations based on your own chosen license from among several variables.
< !--< xmlns="http://web.resource.org/cc/" dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" rdf="http://www.w3.org/1999/02/22-rdf-syntax-ns#">< about="">< resource="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0">< /Work>< about="http://creativecommons.org/li censes/by-nd-nc/1.0">< resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Attribution">< resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Reproduction">< resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Distribution">< resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/CommercialUse">< resource="http://web.resource.org/cc/Notice">< / License>< /rdf:RDF>-->
Note that I've placed an extra space after left facing brackets to make the code visible in HTML mail readers or for AOL subscribers and other web based email accounts. You get this code from their site after choosing your license.
Notice that this license has five attributes listed within it:"Requires Attribution""Permits Reproduction""Permits Distribution""Prohibits Commercial Use""Requires Notice"
Each of those are rather clear two word descriptions of what might otherwise be pages of legalese, but the last one may need clarification for some. The link in the code provides this to us."copyright and license notices must be kept intact"
I've toyed with the idea of requiring this to be posted in the head tag at the sites who republish my articles, but this is probably too much to ask of many of the small webmasters who use these pieces since many either won't understand what you are asking them to do or will botch the code while pasting it into their own page. The most obvious drawback is that those who use the articles in email publications or printed newsletters don't have access to the license link within that machine readable code meant for online publication. The obvious solution to that would be simply to require this link within your article resource box next to a BRIEF description of that license.
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/
A condensed license for allowable uses of your work is stated at that URL with a link to the full license at:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nd-nc/1.0/legalcode
If you have a broadband connection, Creative Commons offers an animated 1.5 mb Flash film on the basics of the concept of "cc" over "C" or, Some Rights Reserved versus All Rights Reserved at the following URL.
http://mirrors.creativecommons.org/
Much of the concept centers around pre licensing of certain rights to the public to your creation, writing in our case. The idea is plainly stated within the Creative Commons flash movie that we are attempting to eliminate the intermediaries - mostly attorneys. ;-)
This is interesting since the Creative Commons founders are themselves attorneys. These attorneys include famed Stanford internet legal scholar, Lawrence Lessig, author of The Future of Ideas, as well as Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace. Lessig is well known for battling the Copyright Term Extension Act in a Supreme Court Case against the extension of copyright. CTEA extends copyrights 70 years after the death of the artist and, for those copyrights held by corporations, a total of 95 years in duration. http://www.copyright.gov/pr/eldred.html The actual text of the law is available for download here:
http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/s505.pdfThe Creative Commons license is likely to be at the heart of internet copyright issues for years since it is known and discussed by attorneys, but I have yet to see it mentioned in discussions by Authors. Shall we begin talking about this or simply leave it to the attorneys?
Usefull links:
ViralPDF - Sell EBook(R) Rebrand Rights!
Public Domain And Private Label Rights.
Friday, September 28, 2007
Google Adsense Could Mean Death to Affiliate Programs!
Google Adsense Could Mean Death to Affiliate Programs!
The popular search engine, Google has introduced a dramatic new contextual advertising service called Adsense. This new program could mean death to affiliate programs on those web sites that qualify for the Adsense program. Why would Google advertising affect affiliate programs? Because Google is making Adsense ads available to smaller content rich sites.
Adsense dramatically simplifies the process of choosing appropriate advertising for sections of sites. Since it's all automatic with Adsense, I'm through with searching for affiliate programs to fit my content. It just doesn't pay enough to justify the effort in most cases. While I won't dump existing producers, I'm dropping those affiliate programs that don't produce like hot potatoes.
I've moved house often over the last few years and in that process have struggled to keep affiliate programs abreast of the latest contact and banking information. Several honest affiliate program managers have emailed me after getting my affiliate checks returned from previous snail mail addresses. Adsense will resolve this issue for me as I needn't keep the hundreds of affiliate programs up-to-date on my latest mailing address and/or banking information - only Google Adsense. I'm dropping smaller unproductive affiliate programs.
Allan Gardyne of Associate Programs penned an interesting and insightful article on Adsense this past week where he mentions this as an issue and predicts the death of smaller or weaker affiliate programs.
I agree. http://www.AssociatePrograms.com/search/adsense.shtmlGoogle Adsense simply requires the host site to paste in a few lines of HTML code on their pages where they want those ads to appear. Once Google has spidered your content pages, they can assess what those pages are about. Adsense serves a series of ads that match and compliment your page topics automatically without site owner participation!
I've been impressed how Adsense has performed for me in just the last week. I've actually enjoyed looking at my own sites to see what ads are served to match my content. WebSite101 demonstrates very well how Adsense works. If you visit the HTML tutorial, you see Adsense ads for web page editing software or web hosting. If you visit my email tutorial, you'll see Adsense ads for email broadcasting software and targeted email list broadcasting services. If you visit the Domain Name tutorial, you're served Adsense ads for Domain Registrars and web hosting. If you visit the Anti-Spam Tutorial, you get Adsense Ads for Spam Filtering Software.
http://www.website101.com/email_e-mail/
http://www.website101.com/HTML/
http://www.website101.com/Domain_Name
http://website101.com/SpamFilter/
You get the idea.
I like not having to mess with my own ad-serving software and twiddle with the rates and I absolutely LOVE not having to do any ad sales. I'm sold and wholeheartedly recommend Adsense to anyone with sufficient content to support it.
Between my 3 main sites,
http://WebSite101.com
http://SearchEngineOptimism.com
http://PrivacyNotes.com
I've got over 1000 pages of good solid content that I've built over the last 6 years. I've struggled in vain to get that content to pay by carefully choosing affiliate programs to fit neatly into dozens of topic areas. My two biggest producers have been software sales and health insurance referrals for small businesses. Those have been sporadic producers.
My biggest complaint is that I can't track what is producing clickthroughs. Google simply tells me clickthrough percentage, number of ad impressions per day and average earnings per clickthrough across all of my sites. That makes it very difficult to know where to concentrate my energy to produce additional revenue generating content. But it does seem to offer site owners incentive to maintain quality content and spread the ads across all content pages.
My privacy site runs a variety of HIPAA compliance ads, GLB compliance ads, and DoNotCall List Compliance ads. It seems the money in privacy is in charging large corporations to keep them within the letter of the law so they don't get sued for violations.
It is interesting to see my own site ads to know where the money is in PPC for each of the topic areas. Sometimes it's just not what you expect. I've got an article about Google's reverse phone lookup and how to get out of reverse phone lookup databases that is on the Privacy site and it sometimes shows ads about "low long distance rates". Clearly the keyphrase "Phone number" is triggering ads that are quite off target on this page.
While Adsense won't outperform my total affiliate income from the many programs spread across my sites, it WILL, if current trends continue, match my total affiliate income and therefore double advertising income!
The biggest benefit was the incentive to rebuild WebSite101, which got it's design in 1998.
Usefull Links:
PaidSurveysOnline
Blogging To The Bank
Unlimited Psp Games, Movies, Software, Walpapers & More!
Thursday, September 27, 2007
☞☞How to Qualify for Google Adsense (Part II)
Hello...
Let's continue.
Those sites that exist for sales of their own product or service absolutely SHOULD NOT participate in Adsense contextual advertising because their site content will always show Adsense advertising for competitors! That's the part that strikes me the most. Why would you give away your potential costumer for just a couple of cents? Hm..
While Google has a filtering method that allows those showing Adsense ads to keep direct competitors advertisements from appearing on their site, that method would filter most of those advertisements and leave those sites with no ads at all! When all of your content is about what you sell, you should probably keep your attention focused on those sales and off of contextual ads.
Who should participate in Google Adsense then? Content sites - that is those that see themselves as sort of online magazine that discusses, analyzes, comments, reviews or editorializes. Those who have extensive CONtent, not those who are conTENT.
A client contacted me recently after hearing of the Google Adsense program. He has about three articles on his web site that discuss and analyze issues of interest to those who might buy his products. He'd done his homework by reviewing his site visitor statistics and had discovered that those articles were responsible for the majority of referrals to his site from the search engines. I basked in the warm glow of his praise as he excitedly told me how these pages (that I had recommended he add to his site) were drawing fully a third of his web site traffic!
It always pleases me when clients see the positive results of implementing strategies that I've recommended to them. These pages increased traffic and sales of his products.
This client then leapt to the conclusion that if those articles were drawing most of his search engine traffic, then we should place the Google Adsense code on those pages and capitalize on that traffic with contextual advertising!
I had to let him down easily, explaining that three articles don't constitute significant content. When he asked me what WOULD constitute substantial enough content to qualify for the Adsense program, it made me stop and think.
My answer to him is likely to dismay many web site owners who believe their site might qualify for contextual advertising. After a brief pause, I responded that I thought it would take about fifty articles of 500 words or more to qualify for Adsense advertising.
As he silently digested that admittedly daunting number, it was suddenly crystal clear to me why so many web site owners that don't write, don't qualify for Google Adsense. Web site owners that do write their own articles, opinions and analysis on subject matter that is important to them will have that much content on their site already. My client had struggled for weeks to research, distill and edit his thoughts into those three articles on his site.
During that pregnant pause, I digested the ramifications of my own words, my client gave up immediately and said simply, "I can never write that many articles, so I'll never qualify for contextual advertising on my web site.
Oh, you may not write, but you are wrong about qualifying for contextual advertising-if you really want to. And, by the way, your search engine ranking will go through the roof if you reproduce 50 articles on that topic on your web site. On top of that, your web site traffic will increase dramatically, your sales will go up and you will qualify easily for Google Adsense.
He paused as if I had spoken to him in a foreign language and said, "If I don't write those articles to put on my site, who will?"
I immediately responded with my favorite sources for free web content, one of which I've operated myself for nearly four years.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/aabusiness/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/free-content/
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/article_announce/
There are also literally hundreds of web sites that collect and distribute articles. Their policies and practices vary widely so I'll leave it to you to find those appropriate to your site subject matter, but here a few that immediately come to mind.
Publish101 GoArticles
MakingProfit
Amazines/
IdeaMarketers
Web publishers and authors regularly join these lists to exchange content on popular topics. Writers make their articles available to ezine, newsletter and web site publishers in exchange for that publisher running a small bio at the end of their article with a link to the authors web site. This exchange offers value to both parties. The publisher gains content, the writer gains a web link and that link increases her visibility and her web site search engine ranking goes up due to link popularity.
The content is out there, you simply need to gather it, publish it and then apply to Google Adsense for contextual advertising. You are benefitting those authors by linking to them, your search engine ranking by increasing your own site content and relevance, and finally your bankbook by qualifying for contextual advertising and making all of that content pay.
Don't be conTENT, have CONtent! Then apply for Google Adsense.http://google.com/adsense/
Usefull Links:
Michael Cheneys AdSense Videos - Step-by-step AdSense Videos.
Wordpress Adsense System : Blogging For Profits - EBook(R) Reveals How To Set-up And Optimize Your Wordpress Blogs To Create Profitable Niche Google Adsense Websites.
AdsenseReady - 150 AdSense Web Sites - Instantly Build Your Own Google AdSense Empire With 150 Content Web Sites. 12 Months Free Hosting.
Tuesday, September 25, 2007
☞☞How to Qualify for Google Adsense!
I wrote about Google Adsense contextual advertising innovation that was introduced by the popular search engine to allow "Content" web sites to profit from advertising. Suddenly it has become possible for those who have an intense interest in nearly any focused subject to gather information, resources and commentary to publish a profitable web site.
How? Well, that's the buzz. Just what is content and what will Google approve for the Adsense program? I can't speak for Google, but after my recent article on the popular new Adsense program ran in several high traffic web venues, I've received a string of notes from webmasters who have been turned down by Google for participation in contextual advertising programs.
I'm curious, what constitutes unacceptable content for Adsense? So I visited dozens of domains owned by those that had sent me those emails to see if I could tell, A) Why Google turned away a site that believed they qualified and, B) Whether I agreed with Google's assessment.
Without fail I found that those sites that had been turned down by Google for participation in Adsense simply had no content! Since the key to contextual advertising is having content within which to place advertising in context, what constitutes content?
Here's the http://www.Dictionary.com definition of "Content""Subject matter of a written work, as a book or magazine."
That definition puts web site content in context for me. If you see your web site as an online written work that's like a print magazine or book, then you have a content web site. Emphasis on the first syllable. CONtent.
Again and again I looked at those sites that Google had turned down for Adsense and see either sites entirely self focused and promoting their own products, services and subscriptions, or sites that were entirely outwardly focused and promoting and linking to other sites without writing anything or having anything to say about those sites.
Tomorrow, I will continue and tell you something very important about sites that exist for sales of their own product or service and participate in adsense!! That fact makes me laugh, honestly...
Usefull links:
Make Money With Google: download
HyperVRE - Viral Adsense Software: download
The Definitive Guide To Google AdSense: download
Monday, September 24, 2007
★★A NEW SOLUTION TO SPAM HARVESTING BOTS★★
So here we go continuing on A NEW SOLUTION TO SPAM HARVESTING BOTS...
Many of us have heard about William Bontrager's CGI Script, SpamBot Buster and what it can do to help you protect your email address from harvesters. I encourage webmasters and list owners to read about it, then download a free copy of the script here.
Install it and follow directions to post email links that cannot be harvested on your site. The script will also generate a web URL that allows you to post in discussion lists where spambots regularly trawl for participant emails.
The URL sends a command to your server and seems magically to open your email program and offers up a preaddressed email window for use in your ezine, in articles and in postings to forums when you need to post an email address in any public online places accessible to spambot crawlers.
BAD NEWS FOR OLD PREVENTATIVE TECHNIQUES
Those of you that have heard of the so-called email address cloaking tools that display characters in "unicode" to help prevent email harvesting by the spambots may be dismayed to discover that it no longer works all of the time. The bad boys of spam are fully aware that many of this use that, now old, technique and have written new software to harvest those addresses displayed in unicode characters. If you haven't yet seen this technique used, I invite you to read another article on the unicode email address cloaking method.http://website101.com/SpamFilter/spambot_unicode.htmlAn additional recommendation for hiding email addresses has been to use a form on your site for public contact instead of posting a mailto: link. Once again, bad boy spammers have worked out this technique too, and adapted harvesting software to gather the address from the form field in your contact form. The same is true of the old javascript email link technique.
The dramatic and secure feature of this new technique of hiding your email is that the address doesn't reside anywhere in the code on the page, in javascript or in form fields in your contact form. When it's not on the page or anywhere in the code, the spambots can't get your email.
This new technique will, by no means, solve the spam problem but does go a long way toward reducing the sometimes almost maddening hide-and-seek game we all play with spammers. That anti spam tutorial is the first place I'll implement this new technique.Here's my new unharvestable email link :-) http://privacynotes.com/cgi-bin/M/msb.cgi?3
Some Privacy Programs:
Friday, September 21, 2007
▓▓Craigslist Code - HTML Templates▓▓
The new website is www.craigslistcode.com!
This site allows you to get some HTML code and use it when you post a craigslit ad. I didn't realy care about the templates, but those signes that you can add to your posting title can be very usefull... Example: ▓◆★♥☞
You know what I mean?
Here is the link(old website, doesn't work anymore): http://www.geocities.com/craigslistcode/templates.html
Go to the bottom of the page...
... let me know what you think!
◆◆Protect your email address from the email harvesting Spambots!!◆◆
There have been a flurry of anxious discussions among email list and newsletter owners recently about spammers stealing their email identity by spoofing the "from" field of spam mailings. They know they are being spoofed because they are suddenly getting an avalanche of bounce notices returned to their email when they didn't send the email that bounced! Those webmasters and list owners that have their email identity stolen in this way are most often those that have the most to lose if their business is reported for spamming.
List owners whose income is dependent on advertising that runs in their newsletter or ezine cannot afford to be shut down by a host that responds to spam complaints without any serious investigation. Automated reporting systems often list the domain, or worse, sometimes entire IP blocks, of accused spammers - whether or not those accusations have any merit.SPAMMERS DISLIKE ANTI-SPAM ADVOCATES
I've been the victim of these faked addresses for a couple of years because I have an anti-spam tutorial at Website101 and it must attract spammers looking for something. It's pretty well ranked in the search engines for several spam terms and gets a lot of traffic for Website101. They lift my email address and use it in their spam campaigns.
http://website101.com/SpamFilter/
When I started getting those bounced emails from sources I hadn't sent to, I was so alarmed at the implications for the integrity of my online businesses that I quickly sent a copy of the bounces to my host to let them know that it *WAS NOT ME* sending those emails that were creating the bounces. They took a look at the headers and could see that it was spoofed and not really from me, since they host my site, I guess they can tell easily. I was relieved, but continued to send those bounces to them whenever I got them to let them know I was not the source of the spam causing those bounces and that they may get spam complaints about them.
Eventually, one of my host "abuse" techs sent me an email letting me know that they could tell I wasn't doing it and that I needn't be concerned about being shut down since I had pointed out my anti-spam tutorial and my own articles about the issue in my tutorial.
LIST OWNERS AND WEBMASTERS ARE SPAM SPOOF TARGETS
If you suddenly start receiving multiple bounce notices with quoted spam emails bearing your email "from" address, send them, including headers, to your host "abuse" address and proactively protect yourself from false claims. I've even had email discussion with anti-spam Gestapos about the problem and made certain they know my stance on spam and that I am not the source of those bounces when they got complaints through their reporting & automated blacklisting system.
Sorry, I'll have to stop here today...
Tomorrow, we'll talk about A NEW SOLUTION TO SPAM HARVESTING BOTS
Here are some usefull links:
Registry Cleaner - FREE download.
Search & Destroy - FREE software (don't need lisence)
Anti Spam Filter - Click Here
Thursday, September 20, 2007
Simplified SEO for Small Business Webmasters - TEXT!
by Mike Banks Valentine
Small business webmasters often believe search engine optimization is a complex and mysterious art that they must struggle to understand and master. It couldn't be further from the truth. SEO is basic and simple - TEXT.
As a search engine optimizer, I'm faced daily with the errors of well-meaning webmasters who have unknowingly done their best to hide their site and its topic from the search engines. They do this by naming image files with numbers or word fragments unrelated to the image. They have splash page with an image named "product.gif" containing no "Alt" tags, no text and a link to their inside page named "intro.html" which is full of images!
Even if you use the most basic of web authoring software, SEO can be built in to your site simply by naming your HTML files with important keyword phrases, naming the image directory with more important keyword phrases dropping those same keyword phrases into headlines and body text. Oh, and let's do have body text of at least 500 words. Many site owners seem to believe that a few product photos and a nice looking logo will suffice.
Wrong. You must have text using keyword phrases within your site or the search engines have no way of knowing what those products or services are that you sell.
Text is all that the search engines have to determine what your site is about. Text in your metatags, text in your headline, text in your body copy, text in image filenames and text in your domain name and directory names. SEO is all about words on the page NOT images of words in gorgeous graphics created by your designer and displayed in IMAGES of words in fancy fonts. This includes those menu links from image maps and buttons.
I have a new client whose resort has been positively written up in dozens of national magazines. I was glad to see links to those articles within their site until I clicked on one and got an IMAGE of the magazine page instead of text from the magazines. Many magazines do not allow reproducing their content without licensing, but all allow a limited quote with attribution along with links from the quote to the article on their site.
Those quotes would serve as dramatic testimonials for the client and there are dozens of important keyword phrases in those rave reviews that would be good stuff for both the search engines and the site visitors. Even if there were only one paragraph from each of the dozen great reviews on a single page, that TEXT would be just what the search engine doctor ordered. This will be our first move in working with this new client.
I've got another client that sends out press releases on a regular basis discussing their latest partnership or new product. These press releases are chock full of keyword phrases and important industry lingo and buzz- words. The catch? They distribute these press releases as PDF files and serve them to visitors via FTP, which essentially hides them from the search engines! Their partners then distribute them via FTP as well because that is how they received it. This strategy cheats my client out of links from their partners because those press releases are NOT posted as HTML pages anywhere!
The thing that I always emphasize to new clients is that search engines read text that appears on their web page only. Search engines don't read images or pretty graphics, they can only make assumptions based on those image names and the image "alt" tags. Try doing an image search at Google for "logo" and see what you get. Now try an image search for common words to compare the filenames used to describe those images. Search for any number combination and you'll see how common numbers are as image filenames.
Try another image search for keyword phrases that are important to your industry and I'll wager that is your competition. If you take an extra step and review the filenames in the URL that appear directly below those results describing where that keyword named image turns up. I'll bet the competitors who are tops in non image searches for similar important keyword phrases use those phrases in image filenames, directory names and domain names.
I've had clients that get their site redesigned soon after I've done site optimization who come back to me asking why their search engine rankings dropped.
Inevitably their site designer has not only used word fragments or numbers as image and page filenames, but removed hyperlinks from important keyword phrases in body text, text that was maintained at our instruction. Text hyperlinks are another important ingredient to SEO that designers dislike because it changes text colors in order to help visitors know it's hyperlinked phrase.
Although designers and search engine optimizers rarely work together, they should be required to. Even though the SEO's job would simply be to type keyword phrases in the "save as" box because designers won't do it on their own. If a copywriter is hired, they should work with the SEO as well, although the SEO's job would be only to convince the copywriter that it's OK, indeed is necessary, to use keyword phrases more than a single time. Copywriters don't like repeating themselves and often pride themselves on saying the same thing in various creative ways. Search engines don't yet fully support using a thesaurus to determine page content.-------------------------------------------------------Mike Banks Valentine is a Search Engine Optimization specialist practicing ethical small business SEO Search Engine Placement, Optimization, Marketing http://SearchEngineOptimism.com/SEO_articles.htmlhttp://SEOptimism.com/
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Products for Search Engine optimization:
Boost Search Engine Rankings!
Improved Search Engine Rank
Hello, World.
Hello, world! This is PC blog! Will share my knowledge and hopefully get some good feedback here. Please always leave comments - I want learn from this blog, too.
