I recently received an email from Google on how to avoid phishing, or attempts by criminals to fraudulently collect passwords, credit card numbers, and other sensitive information through email.

Here are some basic tips on how to avoid these scams:

• Don’t reply to or click on links in emails that ask for personal, financial, or account information.
• Check the message headers. The From: address and the Return-path should reference the same source.
• Instead of clicking on the links in emails, go to the websites directly by typing the web address into your browser, cutting and pasting it, or using bookmarks.
• If on a secure page, look for “https” at the beginning of the URL and the padlock icon in the browser.
• Keep your computer’s antivirus, spyware, browser, and security patches up to date, and regularly run system scans.
• Review your accounts regularly and check for unauthorized activity.
• Use a browser that has a phishing filter (Firefox, Internet Explorer, or Opera).

Have you ever considered the amount of money you spend each time you print invoices, brochures, letters, and pamphlets? Then you have to consider the ink, envelopes, packaging, and postage. Why not use electronic correspondence instead, such as email and websites?

Incidentally, U.S. Postal Service rates just increased again, which means rates have gone up nearly 24 percent since 2001.

Save the paper, ink, and postage, and send email with attachments to provide information and documents (PDFs). Use hyperlinks within emails to refer to pages on your company websites. Rather than mass marketing through snail mail, email marketing is more efficient and easier to track.

Any Mozilla fans out there? Firefox, anyone? I’m a huge fan of the ever-popular and secure internet browser, Firefox 2, and definitely looking forward to the release of Firefox 3 this year. Well, Mozilla is hard at work on the next version of its popular email client, Thunderbird … code name: Shredder. Shredder alpha 1 was released on May 13, 2008.

Any application called Shredder has to be good, right? The underlying engine that runs Thunderbird 3, Gecko 1.9, touts more than 10,000 updates related to improved performance and stability and more.

One of the cool aspects of Mozilla products is the ability to customize the user experience by using what they call Add-ons. Thunderbird 3 will make it even easier to customize the application using the new Add-ons Manager.

I’m particularly excited about the update that lets you run Thunderbird 3 natively on Macs and integrate with the Mac OS X system Address Book.

Read more about this Alpha 1 release: http://www.mozillamessaging.com/en-US/thunderbird/3.0a1/releasenotes/

Apparently, there’s a large ISP (Internet Service Provider) called Charter Communications that plans to partner with an ad company to track customers’ traffic on the internet. If the deal goes through, NebuAds will log all of the websites that Charter’s customers visit and eventually serve targeted ads.

Fortunately, two House members have asked Charter to put this deal on hold, as they question whether this “spying” complies with federal privacy laws.

Spooky, isn’t it? It’s creepy just thinking about this ad company knowing exactly what websites I’m visiting, and who knows what else they’ll find out about me? The internet is about the free exchange of information, but is this going too far? I wonder what my ISP is up to these days …

WordPress 2.5.1 has been released. As many of our clients know, WordPress is a great piece of software that we can install for you to give you the ability to run a blog on your website. It’s easy to use and includes plenty of support if you have questions.

Updating software such as WordPress is also a smart way to patch newly discovered security issues. A security vulnerability can leave holes for hackers to enter.

Blogs are an excellent way for you to add timely content to any website. Contact us now for an estimate on your custom WordPress install and become a blogger.