Federal Bureau of Investigation
J. Edgar Hoover Building
935 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, D.C. 20535-0001

From: Agent Thomas Green
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)

(IC3 accepts Internet crime complaints from either the person who believes they were defrauded or from a third party to the complainant.)

My name is Agent Thomas Green of the FBI, I’m using this medium to inform you that we recieve a complaint about some internet frauds attempt which involves you and some culprit. Your complain has been reviewed and approved for immediate actions.

After our thorough scrutiny, we realise that you have been defrauded in one way or the other by some people claiming to have huge funds waiting for you. Some of the culprits reside in your country while some are outside of your shore. We have so far arrested atleast 6 people involved in these schemes and further investigation is still in progress.

Meanwhile, the FBI compensation department has agreed to refund a partial amount of the money recovered from the culprit totalling the sum of US$250,000.00 (Two Hundred and Fifty Thousand US Dollars) to be returned to you. To avoid any illegal/fraudulent act, these money has been preloaded into an ATM card for your own conveniences and you can cash it at any ATM machine in your country.

To utilize your claim, we request that you provide the following information for proper filing:

Your full name:_____________________
Your mailing address:_______________
Your mobile number:_________________

Fill appropriately and send to our paymaster via email:

Agent Fredy Simon
e-mail: fredysimon@aol.com

For security reasons, your Personal Identification Number (PIN) code has not yet been activated until your final review.

Best regards,

Agent Thomas Green
Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3)
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)

While I post this here, I want you to know that I know at least 3 instances where people have fallen prey to this Nigerian scam and lost their money. They feel bad not because of losing money only but more because they were well educated and knew that there is no dead relative, old banker, Iraqi General or Oil Baron who would leave money for them.

Greed!

I got an iPhone because I wanted to see what is it in the phone that people don’t mind waiting in queue for weeks to buy it. I got it last November and used it for a couple of days, finally realizing that it was meant for my wife who is a casual techie. I wanted my Windows Mobile back, which meant getting the all new HTC HD2, the powerhouse!

When I heard about iOS 4, which is funnily termed as the world’s most advanced mobile OS by Apple, I wanted to see what was in there. I connected my jailbroken and unlocked phone to iTunes and it was quick to offer me the upgrade to the World’s most Advanced Mobile OS!

The *primary* features that iOS4 offers are Multitasking, Folders, FaceTime, app Platform, performance and stability, security and the fact that it works World over. Is it all that is required to make an OS the world’s most advanced mobile OS? I have been using all these (except FaceTime) on the Windows Phone platform since the first phone I bought!

I call Windows Mobile OS a platform because I think it is not an OS but actually a platform that allows people to develop on it and improve it. Any of the above features, which are a part of the OS (not hardware dependant like the phone works world over), have always been available on Windows Phone. The ability to manage apps in folders sounds as if we are getting something still in it’s infancy, Windows allows you to manage the entire file structure! You can manage all the files, applications, pictures and whatever is there on the phone in an explorer like structure.

XDA-Developers and HTC make a great software and hardware combination for the Windows platform. The fact that I can change anything, even the OS flavor on my phone, in max 30 minutes without thinking about anything, gives me the satisfaction that I own what I paid for!

I think the openness (and I have not used android yet) of Windows Phone makes me love the platform. Apple may make great products and they may be ‘cool’, I want something that works according to me and not according to the manufacturer!

The ESPs can be used in conjunction and I believe most people have more than one email account, with virtually unlimited storage and almost every feature under the sun. I have been using Google Apps, Live Mail and Yahoo, for my email needs. I think Google and Live mail are the ones that I would want to talk about in this post. I wrote off Yahoo when it tried to imitate Outlook in its web interface. 

When I heard about Gmail in late 2005, I was very excited. I thought this was what I wanted for my email woes. I was using Hotmail since 1997 and was not happy with it. I found Microsoft mean to give a 2MB and then 5MB storage space, finally making it 250 for customers in UK. I still lived in India! I remember changing my location to UK, waiting for MS to give me 250MB storage, and then changing it back to India! I was still in college and had only that much money (nil, to be precise).

I happily used Gmail for a pretty long time. I even hosted my domain’s mail to Google Apps as soon as it was available. Prior to that, I was using a forwarder to send my email to Gmail. I hosted my emails with Google for about a year when I realized that there was something called Windows Live Mail and Windows Custom Domains. I think there is no other company that understand email better than Microsoft. Be it the Web Interface or the desktop access, Microsoft has excelled the technology and has proved that they know it best!

I have my mails hosted at Google Apps and at Custom Domains. I find Microsoft’s solution much better because I can use Outlook to access my mails, with the Outlook connector. The mails remain synchronized with the server and I do not have to download them multiple times just because there was a change at the server. When I sync my mails via IMAP, I do not know what does Gmail do to my mails. There are so many folders and trees that the mailbox becomes very confusing. When I delete messages, they go to All Mails folders I guess, and also to the Trash folder. If I create a folder in Outlook, it will be treated as a label in my mailbox on the web.

Gmail also had a lot of privacy issues in the past and I am not sure if I find my data secure with Google. While I still host my email there, it is only for the purpose of archiving, zipped and secured. I use Live Mail as my email service provider. Live Mail has unlimited storage, excellent Junk mail filters, best PC sync, best Mobile sync, an average mobile web interface, good security, Live ID synchronization, WL Messenger, Contact Management, all that you would want from a Mail server, and more. Best of all, they are FREE!

I can help you get your emails on Google Apps and Live Mail so get in touch if you want to host your domain mails for FREE!

Social Media on Internet has become too many of ‘me too’ type websites. With the improving bandwidth and technology, it has been easy for companies to get inspired by Facebook and start websites to ‘connect’ people. VCs have been investing the money and the Entrepreneurs have been burning it on crowd-sourcing. No doubt there are various web communities that have added value to the people. I have been really impressed by the likes of Mint, which have helped people in learning from the best practices of others and improve their financial situation.

Twitter have become a place for link building and sourcing more and more traffic to the websites. Every time I login, I find people sharing websites and content that is mostly not developed by them, but is RT or just shared. There are less people who are getting into a conversation, and even if they have conversations, they can always use IM, which is real-time! Why would someone use a service to shout out to the world, ‘what have you been doing’ and then raise all the hue and cry about privacy with Buzz.

Facebook, which started as a place to connect people, has turned into an online gaming site. There are more people who login only to play games than to reconnect with old lost friends. More and more people are getting on to Facebook but probably they do not know what is the purpose of signing up. They are getting on to the Facebook bandwagon because everyone they know is already there, or signing up. Most people on my friend list have not responded to any wall posts or messages because they do not login that often. It is easier to call them!

Social Media has to have a purpose. It is supposed to be an aggregator where people from different walks of life can come together and create, discover, collaborate and contribute. Websites that are only a place for people to signup and forget why they created a login are no good for the internet or for the society. Email has a purpose, IM is for real time conversations, VoIP is cheap telephony, Social Media similarly has to prove its mettle before it can be considered a medium. Social Media should be used as a facilitator to provide the solution to a problem. We have not identified any problem but are creating websites for people to come together and… do nothing!

Social Media is about engaging visitors in something that is productive for them. It is about providing a service, a solution to the visitors’ problem. It is not the ultimate panacea and neither is it the solution itself. It is only a medium for providing solutions.

My point of the post is: If you believe that a particular website or web-app can solve one of your problems, signup. Rest all is noise.

1. Announcing the launch of the website

2. General promotion of the website on the internet

3. Specific promotion of the website at relevant locations for lead generation

4. Specifically targeting the consumer for business generation

5. Business

6. Regular maintenance

Announcing the launch:

This needs to be done to ensure that the website is indexed quickly and is available in search results. It also gives the ‘big business’ feel to the customers who are researching for due diligence. The easiest way of such announcement is via Press Releases. A good strategy for press releases is ‘three’, where a release is issued before the launch, one on the launch day, and the last a week after, to celebrate the ‘fabulous’ launch. It completes the full circle. There are multitudes of free and paid PR sites, which can release the News Article. It is suggested to use a mix of free and paid agencies for the release.

Expected Budget: $350

Frequency: one time

General Promotion of the website on the internet:

This includes Pay per Click campaigns on search engines. It is particularly good for an e-commerce website, to know what the target market is looking for and to analyze the direction of business. The traffic from particular keywords can give an idea of the future of business and the demand. It also helps in designing the strategies for ‘Featured Product’ on the website.

Expected Budget: range from $600 to $3000 per month

Frequency: continuous

It also includes Search Engine Optimization. I consider it to be a general promotion category item as the SEO cannot be specifically targeting your customers. It is a means for generating traffic and optimizing the website for user interaction. The target of any SEO activity should be to ensure that the user can find the website at relevant locations, and not to improve the search engine rankings. For example, one of the newest ways for a user to find the website is via the image search options. It is important the ‘all’ the images in the website have an identifiable name, and they include the right tags (alt, title etc).

Expected Budget: $1200

Frequency: one time, annual suggested

Specific Promotion of the website

It is important that the website is promoted at specific locations like trade directories or online trade magazines. It gives the relevant exposure to the business and is a good way to generate leads. There are various trade websites for the purpose and it helps to get a paid account at the best performing ones. If required, advertising inventories can also be purchased at these websites to stand out among the crowd.

Expected Budget: $800

Frequency: annual

Specifically targeting the consumer

There are various ways of targeting the end customer. The most frequently used is via newsletter and email. There are various email lists available for mass mailings, and if the website has a newsletter, the list can be used. Trade magazines also have a periodic newsletter which should be used for promoting the business. The website should be designed to create a mailing list, which can be used to send promotional material.

Expected budget: $300

Frequency: Monthly

Business

It includes maintaining the website’s ecommerce system, to ensure that the system will respond in time and also tracks the buyer behavior on the website. It helps in learning about the business opportunity in the future and also allows for removing the non-performing items from occupying precious screen space.

Regular Maintenance

This includes blog posts, twitter and Facebook pages, and other social media applications, to crowd-source visitors. It is beta testing changes and also gives an opportunity to business owner to get an opinion on new product releases. It is an ongoing process to keep the visitor engaged and to ensure repeat visits from users, who are looking for new content on the website. It helps in making a fan-following, which results in word of mouth publicity and business generation in long run.

The first rule for any business remains the same. There has to be an inherent value in the proposition and the visitor to the store/website should learn about it in the first 30 seconds. There has to be an activity for visitor engagement (like designing your room in this case), which makes the user come back and ask for more.

The Windows Site has ‘Highlights’ – Small Business: Upgrade to Windows Vista with Confidence

Funny a company like Microsoft forgot to mention Windows 7. Having said that, I guess even MS would not know what web properties they have around the world! Elephants can’t Dance Saala!

PS: As you can see from the screenshot, I happily use Windows 7, Live Writer, and I love Microsoft!

Put your mouse on the “Settings” button in the top blue bar, towards the right side.

You do not need to click this button/link, there will be a drop down menu like below. Click the “Application Settings” link.

You will see the most recent applications, and a drop down menu to select more views.

Select “Allowed to Post” from the list. 

You will see a list of applications that are allowed to post updates to your stream, without asking for your permission. Prepare to be surprised, I keep checking this portion and still didn’t know that I had one other application that could post without prompting! Go ahead and click “Edit Settings” for the applications that should not post updates without Prompting.

  You need to change the “Additional Permissions” for the application.

Revoke the “Additional Permissions” and you are good to go.

You can revoke the additional permissions from all the applications that you do not use, or you do not want to allow to post to your streams. I know of people who allowed over 300 applications to post without prompting. This meant that anything that they did on Facebook, or even their desktop in some cases, was available for the entire world to see, without their knowledge.

Protect yourself. Start now!

When you are playing the game, there is a time when the game asks you for special permissions. We do not read the fine print and accept whatever is asked for. This is where the problem starts. With Farmville, the problem begins when one takes a Picture.

Here is a sample of what happens.

When we take a picture, the Farmville asks for special permissions. If you allow Farmville to allow publishing automatically, you will not be asked for permission in future before posting anything in your update stream. For people who spend quite a lot of time on Farmville (or even other games), this could mean filling their streams with updates of ribbons, like below. You may not want everyone to know every time you spend time helping 5 friends, or you are a level up!

What are your options in such a case?

I will tell them to you in the next post, to avoid making this one unnecessarily lengthy.

Internet has made information so accessible that if someone is looking for it, it is readily available at all times. Google has become a verb and life’s so easy with information a couple of clicks away, I wonder why did they have books in the first place! I realized in the past few weeks that it was much easier to find out what’s happening around you, by using twitter! For those who joined us late, Twitter is a website that lets users share 140 character messages with the entire world.

Unlike SMS, twitter is a broadcast service. SMS is meant for an intended list of recipients, while twitter messages are for everyone to see, making it public, and therefore social! It is funny the way the meaning and definition of ‘Social’ has changed. Anything, which is not private, can be considered Social. The more open you are, the more Social you are.

If you can share the dirtiest of your secrets in public, chances are that you will have a good fan following!

Websites like Facebook, MySpace etc have brought everything in the users’ life in public domain, all in the name of Social. It is easy for people to know things about others that otherwise would never be in the public domain.

What makes life worse is the number of companies that use the API of these Web Applications. In user language, these companies are providers of the numerous quizzes, cute quotes, comparison reports, photo tools, games and all that jazz on Facebook and MySpace.

People continuously add these applications, opening up their profiles to the providers, and also allowing the provider to access the information of all their friends.

This means that if I want to protect my profile from potential spammers, ID thieves or just want to keep my private life private, I will have to ask my friends to not use these applications. With the increasing number of people getting on to the Social Networks, it gets all the more difficult to keep a tab on how and where can your information be distributed. Currently, I do not know how many people read the TOS and Privacy Policy and all the other fine print of these applications. I think most people don’t even realize that these parts require any attention.

The next posts will have the details of protecting profiles in Facebook for a start.

Please protect yourself and help others.