Archive for the ‘Staying safe on the internet’ Category

How to tell the difference between Good, Bad, and downright Dangerous.

We sometimes have clients contacting us in desperation when it comes to SEO – either because they have no idea who to trust, or worse, because they’ve been ripped off by what’s know as ‘black hat’ SEO fly-by-nighters. Black hat means they are the ‘dodgy brothers’ of the SEO game and best avoided.

But how do you know who’s honest Joe? And who’s going not only rip you off, but may also get your site black banned on Google, or worse, destroy your good name and leave your online reputation in tatters? Read the rest of this entry »

A client of ours recently employed the services of an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) company. They sent her a “report” of the work that they had done to date which she sent to us and, as a result, prompted us to do a bit of digging, as the info in the report just wasn’t quite right… Read the rest of this entry »

There’s been a lot written in the media over recent months on Senator Conroy’s idea of filtering the internet, so I thought I’d write an article to explain some of the issues and to talk about what you can do to protect your family right now.

Firstly, does the proposed internet filter protect our children? In short – no, in fact, and perhaps surprisingly, it makes it much harder to do so! Let’s talk about why that’s so in more detail – because in a lot of ways that runs counter to what you’d think. Read the rest of this entry »

Have you ever tried to start your car with your house keys? How about using your office key to unlock the front door of Westpac afterhours? You’d never think of it right… or would you?   [Don't answer that!] … Read the rest of this entry »

An important word of caution – White Dog Green Frog will never send you a mailed letter about your domain renewal. Our customers have been getting a fair amount of these letters lately from other organizations such as Domain Renewal Group or one received just the other day from Domain Name Group… Read the rest of this entry »

We were recently somewhat shocked to receive a “DMCA takedown notice” for a site hosted with us by a friend of ours, a designer who has been using our services for 4 or so years! Read the rest of this entry »

The internet is changing in a big way today (May 5th 2010) – security is being added to the domain naming system (DNS).

It looks like it won’t affect most people as the ISPs will “insulate” people’s routers from seeing the changes. However, if you’re in IT, this is essential knowledge…

Read more here.

The intention is to add further security validation to the domain naming system so it’s harder for the baddies to “take over” websites such as your favourite banking site. For the next month or so, they’re effectively running a trial and they’ll be turning on the real thing in about 30 days – see the article for more information.

If you’re anything like me, and not a great tech-head you may struggle with the concept of passwords like I have!

One of my “learned colleagues” put it into language that made great sense to me recently: “You wouldn’t use the keys to your Porsche to start your Mercedes would you?!!” As if! It occurred to me though that to liken the password to my car keys was a good analogy … well at least one my small brain could understand.

I now have a small notebook in which to jot down my various passwords – probably not a great and secure idea but one that I can manage – just don’t make it too obvious that’s what it’s for! Some people use KeePass or Sxipper to remember their passwords but again only a good idea if your PC or Mac is secure or password protected. There are all sorts of things people do to remember their passwords. One that worked well for me when I had one randomly generated by and ISP was to ask my kids to come up with a word for each letter. It made a quirky sentence that was easily remembered.

One important and simple tip is not to use the same password for your internet banking sites as you do for other sites – in fact, one password per internet banking site is a great, simple idea!

One simple way to make good passwords is to run a couple of syllables from different words together and add a number or a punctuation symbol.

Here’s a password generator site that makes up the reminder for you!

Spam is normally caused by Spammers getting hold of your email address and adding it to their lists.  They then include you in their regular emails, trying to sell you stuff.  There’s not much intelligence there; they add you to the list and keep you there even when you don’t ever read their emails.

And if you should ever try to unsubscribe, they take that as confirmation that there’s a live person there and double the amount they send to you!

Large amounts of money exist for the taking in the Spam area – the Spam kings make tens of thousands per month, with some of the larger ones turning over in excess of $40,000 – $100,000 per month!  However, as time goes on, most people have wised up to Spam and their response rates have dropped.  As a result, they are sending larger numbers of messages per month in an effort to retain their income – which in turn is making the spam problem worse!  Spam has become a huge problem for webhosting companies and ISPs, with over 90% of email now being spam.

One possible solution has been discussed, involving charging a fraction of a cent per email sent to make Spam unprofitable (Spammers sned millions of messages, looking for a fraction of a percentage response).  While a variety of possible solutions have been discussed, the bottom line is that there is no overarching solution now.  As the problem grows over time, it’s likely that something like this will come into vogue.  Part of the problem is that our current email protocols were designed 40 years ago, in a different world where email forgeries and spam just did not exist.

On our email servers, we run a multi-layer anti-spam approach.  Messages from known spam sources are not allowed to enter our email system at all, which stops over 50% of spam before it gets anywhere near you.  We then score incoming emails, assessing the spam-worthiness of each email using hundreds of spam characteristics in a database that is regularly updated.  Our system will delete optionally “definite” spam and can also be set to deliver or delete “probable” spam, based on these factors.  Also, all email is scanned for known viruses and blocked when a virus signature is found.

What can you do to solve the problem now?

1. Don’t list your email address on your webpage

If you list your email address, it’s only a matter of time before the spammers see it and put your email in their databases.  Once on their lists, you’re pretty much there for life so it’s easier to not get on the lists in the first place.

There are many solutions that can be used instead of putting your email address on your webpage in cleartext.  One of them is to encode the email address using one of a variety of techniques – a trick which renders it invisible to spammers, but makes it visible in normal web browsers.  Another option is to make your email address into an image, which reduces spam – though some spammers can now read these too with OCR techniques!

2. Use a contact form instead

The absolutely bullet-proof solution is to use a contact form which collects their email, phone number and a short message and emails it to you, without making your email address visible on your webpage.  Once the first message has been received, you can directly use email to correspond – it’s only the first message that is sent via the contact form.  A contact form

While a contact form is a good solution, it has to be done properly or spammers can try to trick it into giving them access to your server account or using it to send spam on your behalf.  We have a solution that has worked well over the years since we developed it and stops nearly all of these tricks dead in their tracks.
Read the rest of this entry »

Keep your antivirus up to date – a good free one is Avast, many also like AVGDon’t click on unexpected email attachments

Use openDNS to block phishing sites

Update your internet browser to the latest version

Use Firefox to browse sites – there are many addons that can help protect your computer such as a NoScript which blocks 3rd party websites