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There are so many success stories you will hear about businesses making it good in the Internet. The troubling thing is, there are maybe a tenfold or even a hundredfold of stories contradictory to theirs. Many have unsuccessfully launched a business enterprise that is Internet based but only a handful shall succeed.

Is this through luck? That is even more remote. It takes good business sense and a lot of help and team effort. Most importantly, it is the eagerness to succeed and the determination to learn and the willingness to invest in a lot of hard work and some money.

The Very Basic

Like Neo, traffic is The One. Without traffic, all your effort would just go to waste. Every business needs customers, without them you wouldn’t have anyone to sell your products to. In the Internet world traffic is the walk in customer. The more traffic you have the more people would be able to sell your products to.

But like any business that’s in every corner building or in the mall, not everyone who goes in will buy, but the greater number that come in to browse your merchandise, the greater chances that people will buy your products. It is a simple and known fact.

But, how do you get traffic, traffic large enough that could make a small percentage of eventual buyers enough to make a good profit. Many big companies generate traffic of tens of thousands a day and a merely 10 to 15 % actually buys, but that small percentage is enough to provide them a good business.

Many of these success stories get their traffic from paying others. Yes that’s right; you have to spend money to make money. Advertising is the key. The more people who know that your site exists; the more people would visit your site, that’s common sense!

While there are many ways that can get you advertising for free. But this do not generate the same high volume as those methods that are getting paid. These paid advertisements include advertising schemes by Google and Yahoo. Both of them are the biggest advertising agents in the world of internet. Google provides so many good services that too for free. From Where do you think google earns money to maintain its server and pay the bills? It is from the advertisers. People have to pay google to advertise their site.

The Value of Searches

The search and will be the easiest and fastest medium in finding what a person needs in the Internet. Search engines have been very popular because they provide a vital service to many people. They are free and easy to use. With this popularity, they get many visitors and clicks that they are the most common sites that people go to. It is easy to understand why so many companies would pay to advertise with these search engines.

Search engines provide information to the millions of users that they have each day. They provide links to many sites that a user may be looking for. If your sites link pop up in the high ranks of the search results page, you get a great chance that the visitor will go to your site. While search engine optimization is a cheaper and low cost way to get your site a high rank, paying for advertisements will ensure that you will be on the top ranks.

When you pay for your advertisements, it is like paying for your traffic. This may sound like not such a good idea, but the payoffs would tell a different story. When you pay for your traffic, you are guaranteed of a consistent traffic flow to your site. You will never go with an empty sales day.

Paying for your Traffic

Usually, you will be charged with the number of hits a link gets when your ads is clicked, this is called pay per click. For some search engines, you will be charged with the number of times your ad shows up when a certain keyword or keyword phrase is searched. It is imperative that you have good keyword content in your ad. There are many tools that aid you in using the right keyword at the right moment.

All the money you spend in paying for your traffic will not be for naught. You will get an impressive boost in traffic which will also result to a great boost in your sales figures. Paying for your traffic would be a really good idea and you will get all the benefits it has to offer.

Technorati Tags: overture, adwords, google, traffic

Nilesh

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Just what is Intelligent Explorer? For your safety, you really need to know.

Consider this hypothetical situation:

I recently hit, by mistake, what I thought was an Explorer upgrade option. It turned out to be a pop-up appearing legitimate but really was not. It uploaded a product called Intelligent Explorer on my machine. What a nightmare!

I did some research on the web and found messages like this one from a BullGuard Antivirus Forum,

“PLEASE HELP!!! I HAVE A SPYWARE, TROJAN AND HIJACKER ON MY COMPUTER. I HAVE RUN BULLGUARD, CWSHREDDER AND AD-AWARE. ALL HAVE PICKED UP THE VIRUSES AND SAID THAT THEY HAVE BEEN MOVED/REMOVED BUT WHEN I LOG ONTO THE INTERNET THAT DAMN INTELLIGENT EXPLORER TOOLBAR IS SHOWING”

Another message from spywareinfo Forum goes something like this:

“Hey I’m having issues with something called Internet explorer toolbar - Intelligent explorer. I can’t find a way to remove it from my comp and I really don’t want to reinstall windows. I’ve used spybot, ad-ware, and cw shredder but nothing seems to work.”

It appears that Intelligent Explorer allows other software to be downloaded to your machine and this is where the problem occurs. What is even more remarkable is that by downloading Intelligent Explorer, their license grants them the right to install software add-ins on your computer at their will. Take a look at what the software license for Intelligent Explore says (go to http://www.ieplugin.com/terms.html to read it all):

“You grant to us the right, exercisable by us until you uninstall the Software or this agreement is otherwise terminated, to provide to you the Service of downloading and causing to be displayed advertising material on your computer, through ‘pop-up’ or other display while you use your browser. You acknowledge and agree that installation of the Software may automatically modify toolbars and other settings of your browser. By installing the Software you agree to such modifications.”

The company, IBC incorporated, is incorporated in Belize. I really can’t believe this license!

One end user found highly objectionable pop-up advertisements generated by this software bundled with Intelligent Explorer in the form of extreme pornography.

I have yet to break this.

Intelligent Explorer is a plug-in, which can create a new home page, as well as start up and endless loop of pop-ups. You can remove the view bar, but then starting up Internet Explorer will cause it to reappear. I asked some friends to help, and no one could tell me what to do.

This is what I did:

I bought a copy of a program called XoftSpy and it removed the software. It took two scans and a reboot to do it. This is not an advertisement for this product. They advertised it was free, which it was to run, but then I had to buy it to actually fix anything. It cost me $40 and I am sure that there are freeware products out there as well, but that is what ended the nightmare for me. Other spyware products I have seen out there include spybot, NoAdware, Spyware Eliminator, Pal Spyware Remover, and Spyware C.O.P.

Let the buyer beware!

Although above situation is not real for me but this shows the modus operandi of spyware.

Nilesh

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About Encryption and Making your System Secure.

What does encryption do for me?

Encryption and cryptographic software has been used in many different ways to make systems more secure. This article discusses only a few ways that such software can make your system more secure, including:

1) Encrypting your email

2) Encrypting your files

To programs are mentioned that will help encrypt information. There are many more programs out there that will help, but these programs are good and a good place to start as any. They have the added benefit of both being free with source code available.

Will encryption stop people from accessing my information?

Encryption simply makes it harder for people to gain access to important information, like passwords or sensitive information in a file. The first thing you should know about encryption is that the algorithm that is used to encrypt can be simple or more complex and that affects how securely what you have encrypted is protected. Encryption systems have been broken when the method of encryption is understood by hackers and is easy to break.

Why bother to encrypt my email?

It should be noted that email is far less secure than paper mail for two very good reasons: first, electronic data can be accessed easily over an Internet and secondly, electronic data is really simple to copy. There is a very good chance that someone has snooped around in your email despite your best intentions to stop it.

How do I go about encrypting my email?

There are many programs out there that can help you encrypt your email. A very popular one is PGP (Pretty Good Privacy) or its Gnu offshoot GPG.

PGP (http://www.pgpi.org/) self-describes itself this way: This “is a program that gives your electronic mail something that it otherwise doesn’t have: Privacy. It does this by encrypting your mail so that nobody but the intended person can read it. When encrypted, the message looks like a meaningless jumble of random characters. PGP has proven itself quite capable of resisting even the most sophisticated forms of analysis aimed at reading the encrypted text.”

Why bother to encrypt my files?

The answer to this boils down to what you store on your computer. If you have financial data with important information like social security numbers, email addresses, account numbers and passwords, then you open yourself up to losing very valuable information. Most corporate Internet security employees will attest to the widespread theft of very valuable information. As long as you are connected to the Internet you are vulnerable.

How do I go about encrypting my files?

AxCrypt File Encryption Software (http://axcrypt.sourceforge.net/) Self-described as “Free Personal Privacy and Security for Windows 98/ME/NT/2K/XP with AES-128 File Encryption, Compression and transparent Decrypt and Open in the original application.”

Nilesh

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Hi friends,
There is a lot going on in the information security space. 2006 looks to be an interesting year in these regards. Below are some things to watch for in 2006, some of them are good and, unfortunately, some aren’t-

First the good news:

- We are getting a lot more serious about our security. This has a lot of reasons behind it. For example, new privacy laws are mandating organizations to tighten their security. Look, see more number of consumer privacy laws are being passed in the coming year and tightening security systems.

- Authentication requirements are increasing. This is closing large security holes. Corporations are requiring a great deal more of authentication to get into secure systems (this also is on the bad news side)

- There is a plethora of sophisticated programs to help us be more secure and they will continue to get better. Competition right now is most strong in the security industry sparking a lot of innovation.

- ISPs are now taking on the responsibility to help us with our security. Take AOL’s recent commercials as a good sign that others will follow the trend.

Now the bad news:

- Securing our networks is costing us. Most companies are globalizing their organizations and making them secure involve a lot of money. It will get worse before it gets better.

- Authentication requirements are increasing. This is getting claustrophobic. Corporations are requiring a great deal more authentication to get into secure systems (This is also on the good news side) Unfortunately, for the end user, it is one more thing to be unhappy about, not unlike airport security lines.

- Hackers are getting more sophisticated. For example, Botnets are becoming more complex and harder and harder to catch and stop. Do a search on botnets on the Internet. They really are causing a whole lot of problems, but it does not stop there. The number of viruses and malware out there is staggering.

- Spammers keep finding more creative ways to fill our email boxes. Don’t look for this trend to stop anytime soon.

Nilesh

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Dear Friends,
I am posting this so that you can be updated with
some of the VERY DANGEROUS viruses created daily by hackers to create
havoc on our computers. Below there is a list of 10 viruses currently
cited as being the most prevalent in terms of being seen the most or
in their ability to potentially cause damage. New viruses are created
daily. This is by no means an all inclusive list. The best thing you
can do is to remain vigilant, keep your anti-virus software updated,
and stay aware of the current computer virus threats.

Virus: Trojan.Lodear
A Trojan horse that attempts to download remote files. It will inject
a .dll file into the EXPLORER.EXE process causing system instability.
The explorer.exe is the main process in Windows without which even the
desktop can be displayed.

Virus: W32.Beagle.CO@mm
A mass-mailing worm that lowers security settings. It can delete
security-related registry sub keys and may block access to security-
related websites.

Virus: Backdoor.Zagaban
A Trojan horse that allows the compromised computer to be used as a
covert proxy and which may degrade network performance.
Virus: W32/Netsky-P
A mass-mailing worm which spreads by emailing itself to addresses
produced from files on the local drives.

Virus: W32/Mytob-GH
A mass-mailing worm and IRC backdoor Trojan for the Windows platform.
Messages sent by this worm will have the subject chosen randomly from
a list including titles such as: Notice of account limitation, Email
Account Suspension, Security measures, Members Support, Important
Notification.

Virus: W32/Mytob-EX
A mass-mailing worm and IRC backdoor Trojan similar in nature to W32-
Mytob-GH. W32/Mytob-EX runs continuously in the background, providing
a backdoor server which allows a remote intruder to gain access and
control over the computer via IRC channels. This virus spreads by
sending itself to email attachments harvested from your email
addresses.

Virus: W32/Mytob-AS, Mytob-BE, Mytob-C, and Mytob-ER
This family of worm variations possesses similar characteristics in
terms of what they can do. They are mass-mailing worms with backdoor
functionality that can be controlled through the Internet Relay Chat
(IRC) network. Additionally, they can spread through email and through
various operating system vulnerabilities such as the LSASS (MS04-011).

Nilesh

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