Search Engine Optimization

Viruses, Worms, and Bad Decisions

The good news is, they have caught the author of the Sasser worm. The bad news is, that internet worm successfully crippled several large international organizations, and hundreds or thousands of smaller companies and banks and personal computers. This wasn't one of the email worms that savvy computer users can easily avoid; Sasser snuck in through backdoors of computers without adequate firewalls, or with no firewalls at all, and spread like wildfire.

More good news: They believe the suspect may be the one who authored all 28 variants of the Netsky virus. I get on average about 100 versions of Netsky every day in my email (all blocked by anti-virus software). Having that virus shut down will be a personal blessing, and with any luck, the infected computers will slowly get cleaned up, and that one will disappear into the sunset.

The bad news is, shutting down one 18-year-old computer whiz from Germany will not solve the problem. As software and security grows ever more advanced, so do the authors of the worms, viruses, and Trojans that plague us on the internet. Many of these authors are in their teens or barely out of them, and one thing heard almost universally is, "I didn't think it would do this much damage." Almost all of them insist that they didn't mean to harm anyone. Maybe they really didn't. People do a lot of things they shouldn't out of a sense of curiosity. "I wonder if I could write one of those worms," the computer whiz thinks, and decides to try it, feeling pride and excitement when it works -- which changes to horror as it spreads across the world and shuts down major corporations, and suddenly they're looking at a Federal jail sentence. I can actually believe in this scenario. I could see myself at age 18 thinking it was kind of fun and dangerous, a cool challenge, and never in a million years imagining how out of hand it could get (I would never have gotten to the point of actually launching it, though, fearing repercussions on even a minor scale).

So what can we do to protect ourselves, at home and at work? The advice remains the same: Install anti-virus software and keep it updated; install a good firewall; keep your internet security settings high; keep your Windows updated; avoid questionable websites; don't open email attachments from anybody you don't know; scan your computer regularly with anti-virus, anti-Trojan, and anti-spyware software, in case something got past your barriers. The Netsky virus is carried via email, with a standard set of subject lines, and is easily blocked with anti-virus software. The Sasser worm was stopped by patches from both Symantec and Microsoft. None of my computers have been infected by these common threats.

The warning: Take the threat seriously. Stop thinking that you can avoid computer trouble by simply not opening email from unknown senders. The viruses, worms and Trojans get more sophisticated every day, in response to the ever-increasing efforts to block them. Taking routine precautions won't stop everything, but not taking them could be a nightmare.

There's a deeper level which is perhaps more philosophical, but here's the dilemma: How can we channel the creativity and intelligence of these worm authors in a more positive direction? With their obvious skills, they are probably capable of creating great software programs that could be useful and innovative. They'd be great in tech support. They'd be great internet detectives, helping track down other authors of harmful internet bugs. They'd be great for product testing, to identify these potential weaknesses and plug the holes before the product ever goes on the market. How do we convince them that putting their talents to good use will ultimately be more fun than testing a computer worm that wreaks havoc across international borders in a matter of hours, maybe costing them years of freedom?

18-year-old Sven Jaschan is almost certainly facing jail time. I wonder if he thinks it was worth it.

Google Ranking For New Sites: Is There A Delay?

There has been much discussion in recent months about an interesting phenomenon that seems to show up with new websites on Google: They will get indexed, get good rankings for their keywords for a month or so, and then completely disappear for awhile. After about 3 months, rankings for many seem to start a gradual climb up the mountain.

Obviously, there has been much speculation about whether or not new sites are receiving "special" treatment on Google, or if these fluctuations are just part of the normal shifts that take place on re-indexing. Since Google has made many major shifts to their ranking algorithm during the past few months, it was difficult to really gather statistics on the behavior of new listings.

At this point, it seems fairly certain that Google does, in fact, give a different type of treatment to new site listings. Many different reasons have been suggested, but no one knows for certain. Many webmasters believe that it is another attempt on Google's part to discourage spam: Affiliate domains, doorway pages, and template sites have long been popular ways of getting a lot of traffic and getting it quickly. However, if they will drop from Google for a period of months and then have to "prove" themselves, then it may no longer be cost-effective to spam Google that way.

This is certainly one possibility, and it makes sense to some degree; however, it also penalizes legitimate new sites. This seems a high price to pay for trying to slow down spam, and goes against Google's stated intentions of providing equal opportunity for all legitimate websites that meet their requirements. I think it's possible that we may be seeing nothing more than a new site being rewarded for offering fresh content. After a few spider crawls, if the content does not change, then rankings will adjust appropriately. It's well-known that Google does reward sites for routine updates and fresh content. Many newer sites do not make these types of routine updates, and therefore will need to compensate by building the same types of valuable backlinks, and higher page ranks, that every other site needs.

So, is there anything special that webmasters or marketers should do for new sites, to try to ensure strong Google rankings? In my opinion, the same rules apply that we have stated numerous times in this blog: Your best bet is always to design an informative website, with good navigation and a lot of useful information for the visitor. Write good solid content with a reasonable number of keywords. Pursue sound, legitimate marketing practices such as relevant backlinks, and consider doing some email or some PPC if you want to give your site an early boost in popularity. You won't rise to the top of Google immediately and stay there, but you WILL get the rankings you need if you can just be a little patient -- and you'll get good rankings in other places too. After all, Google does not rule the world!

Second-guessing Google has become practically an industry in itself. In this case, it's fun to speculate, but in the end it really doesn't change anything from a practical standpoint.

Yahoo! Search After April 15, 2004

As any current/former subscriber to Inktomi knows, Yahoo! planned to stop using Inktomi's old database on April 15, 2004. The idea was to switch over to Overture Site Match results, along with free results from their own search spider. Current and former Inktomi subscribers have been receiving emails for several weeks warning them that their current Yahoo! rankings would expire on April 15, unless they upgraded to Site Match.

Not surprisingly, this has led to a lot of curiosity and no small amount of concern about what would happen to some sites. Some sites that had been relatively anonymous found newfound popularity, and were really enjoying that traffic. Would that disappear after April 15?

Another concern was how Yahoo! would set up their new algorithm. Although Yahoo! representatives in several forums stated that they would not give preferential weight to the Site Match results, I'm not the only one who wondered just how that would work out. After all, Site Match, although cheaper than traditional PPC, is not exactly inexpensive, and is well beyond the budget of many companies. Ideally, they could attain great rankings without having to pay for them, if the spider viewed their site kindly. However, if that is the case, then what motivation do people have to pay for Site Match? I sympathize: If I were paying Site Match fees and saw free sites ranking higher than mine, I wouldn't be a happy customer, and I certainly wouldn't feel that was money well spent.

Several of our clients had benefitted from increased rankings, and many of these same clients cannot afford to upgrade to Site Match at this time, so I watched nervously as April 15th came and went. Right now, I have to say I'm not seeing a whole lot of action, although I have no doubt that Yahoo! fulfilled their promise and has switched listings. Customers have called to ask me about this, and ask me what my take is on Yahoo!'s new algorithm.

Although an SEO professional is not supposed to say this, right now I'm just not sure what factors they are using and how they are weighting them. I'm certainly doing my best to sort it out. I can say definitely that right now, free sites are still enjoying some nice listings. Whatever the long-term plans, Site Match right now does not seem to have universal dominance. The current rankings seem to combine those from the Yahoo! Directory with some Site Match and some spidered results, although at this time, it's a bit tricky to tell which are Site Match and which aren't. On the other hand, some sites which have decent Alexa rankings and decent Google PageRank don't seem to be ranking very highly.

All that means is that it will take a lot more time than I have currently invested to figure out what the future will hold for Yahoo! rankings! For now, it seems that Yahoo!'s latest big change is causing far less of a stir in SEO than some of the recent Google re-indexings. We'll be working hard to figure out the best approach for our clients, and keeping our eyes wide open for any new developments.

Doteasy Hosting, and Copyright Issues

It is sad to report that Doteasy.com has finally responded to our complaint of copyright infringement, and shown no intention to cooperate. My third email to the company, threatening legal action, finally received a response -- obviously a template response. Essentially, unless we sue the owners of the website in question and send a copy of the legal papers to Doteasy, they will not pull down the site.

First of all, an earlier email of mine not only plainly stated the infringements, but gave the hosting company exact links to each offending page. Second, this site is being used to defraud citizens of the United States and the UK; by refusing to pull it down after being so notified, Doteasy.com has just become an accomplice to this fraud. Third, the site owners used fake names and addresses, and hence, it is NOT POSSIBLE to directly contact them and sue them.

Although we respect the right of Doteasy.com to protect their clients and to give them the benefit of the doubt, this is a very poor decision on their part. Our attorney will be contacting them on our behalf, and further action will be pursued. In their attempt to give their customer the benefit of the doubt, they are allowing them to continue abusing SharpNET by their blatant theft of our copyright-protected website content, and are aiding and abetting in an international fraud scheme. Monster.com and other job boards, upon learning of the situation, immediately pulled the links and job listings. It's unfortunate that Doteasy.com did not see fit to do the same.

Again, we caution everyone to beware of InsyncSoft, a website using stolen content which is perpetrating fraud. And we also advise caution in all dealings with Doteasy.com, who has proved themselves less than ethical.

Privacy on the Internet

The outcry over aspects of Google's proposed new "Gmail" has brought an old argument back to life. Privacy advocates are opposed not only to the ads that Google proposes to place in personal emails, but also by the fact that these same personal emails will not be deleted -- even if the user attempts to delete them.

What does this mean, in practice? It means that: A) Your personal emails will be available to someone, somewhere, for an essentially indefinite time period; and B) Your personal emails will be put through a spider and altered by the addition of ad content, based on your personal communications. In practice, it means that if you're writing something confidential, self-incriminating, or inflammatory, you'd be well-advised to pick a different email service (or of course reconsider writing it in the first place). It also means that you could be sending emails back and forth with a friend, perhaps discussing a visit to the dentist, and suddenly find a paid advertisement for toothpaste showing up in them. If you'd find this unnerving, annoying, intrusive, or all of the above, this is not the email service for you. So in the small picture, people can avoid potential privacy issues by simply not using Gmail, or corresponding with those who do.

What is the bigger picture? The very strengths of the internet become weaknesses where privacy is concerned. You can easily share information with literally millions of people with just a mouse-click, but the down side is, that information is now available to any number of people. Those other people might copy it, steal it, or use it for malicious purposes, and most of the time, you wouldn't even know.

Free and open email communication, sending information across the world in seconds, also carries risks. Spam permeates email inboxes everywhere, pounding recipients with useless and unwanted information. All of it carries the risk of a hidden virus bomb which will detonate on your computer, doing everything from sending out spam to your friends, to hijacking your browser and implanting spyware on your computer. Some of that spyware can be put to malicious use, stealing passwords, PIN numbers, and personal information, leaving you at serious risk of being stolen from or defrauded.

Privacy issues are dominating many discussion forums and articles, both in the internet industry and in the general public. Identity theft is becoming a serious problem, along with the other less dangerous but still annoying hassles.

But is privacy really even possible on the internet? Is there really any way to patch all the holes, and protect yourself from every potential risk? The unfortunate truth is, probably not. An intelligent and malicious hacker will almost always manage to penetrate your defenses, particularly if you are a private citizen, whose computer is not protected behind the massive firewalls of the major corporations (which are by no means impenetrable). Almost everyone has been on the receiving end of virus attacks, and many people have found spyware on their computers when a more-knowledgeable friend suggested they run a check. Most of the spyware is neither harmful nor malicious, but it sill comes as a shock if you don't know it's there. I am an internet professional, and my home computer is guarded by several layers of firewalls and protection software -- yet last night, with one careless mouse-click, I got my browser hijacked, my anti-virus shut down, and bought myself almost 3 hours of computer cleansing before I got rid of it all.

In an imperfect world, the solution is to protect yourself as best you can by being proactive. Just as those who don't want their emails saved indefinitely should probably not use Gmail, there are other things you can do to protect yourself:

1. Don't have your passwords and PIN numbers saved on your computer, no matter how well-protected you think it is. It's better to take the time to type in the password every time than to have some stranger with bad intentions getting into your bank account (besides, that way you won't forget it!).

2. Don't use the same password for everything either, and don't write them down where they can be found.

3. Make sure any site you are going to purchase from has clearly posted privacy policies, and read them. Otherwise, you might find yourself on an unwanted mailing list faster than you can hit "send".

4. Don't save personal financial information or credit card information on your computer.

5. Never, ever, place orders through unsecured websites, from companies that you have not heard of.

6. If you have any reason to believe that your computer has been compromised, immediately change any and all passwords, both locally, and online. Do it IMMEDIATELY. Don't wait. And keep a close eye on all of your credit cards and bank accounts for the next few weeks.

7. If you're a business, make your site as secure as possible, including using secure servers and certificates, and encryption. If you are made aware of a violation, take immediate and aggressive action to combat it.

Protect yourself and your customers as best you can, but be aware that at some point, you too will probably be a victim of some sort of internet privacy violation.

Internet Issues, Close to Home and Far Away

Today just proves that the issues facing an internet marketer can be very diverse!

Google has once again set tongues a-waggin' in the internet industry with the announcement of their proposed new free email service, Gmail. Now first of all, the announcement came on April Fool's Day, so not a few people thought it was some kind of joke. Considering that Google further stated that each user would get 1GB of storage space, and that emails would never be deleted. They also stated that all messages would be scanned, and appropriate advertisements inserted. The same press release mentioned applying for jobs on the moon...

Except for the lunar outpost, everything was, in fact, actual fact. Google really is debuting a new free email service to a select group of users, and it does indeed have all of the features mentioned above. This has created a veritable firestorm of posts on forums and blogs throughout the industry, along with an instant condemnation by privacy advocates. Issue #1 is the "forever" aspect of your emails: If they are never deleted, then personal messages will always be available somewhere, for prying eyes to see. Whether or not this is likely, it IS possible, and reaction ranges from disapproval to outright fear. Issue #2 is the ads being placed into the emails. Many people feel that humans will be reading their emails, even though Google insists it is just their spiders that will do the reading. Even so, do we really want to see our personal messages peppered with paid advertisements? Google says this very advertising is necessary to pay for the service. I will say only this: Extra storage space is nice, but this "free" email service seems to charge a high price in return. If you have any privacy issues at all, or if you are already turned off by the advertising that has permeated every corner of the web, then this service is probably not for you.

On another front, we have found yet another case of someone basically stealing one of our websites. In this case, they replaced virtually every word on the site with "pancake". Not every word, though, and using the company name was enough of a coattail to ride on, to get them a nice high Google ranking under one search term we tried. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, then our ears are certainly burning over here. Much more flattery of this nature, and we may start changing our websites every single day!

Finally, we have been having internet issues. Specifically, bandwidth and connection issues. This is not a good situation for an internet marketing company. At certain times of the day, our connection speeds were getting extremely slow, and when we added two more users, we even started getting service interruptions. A review of our DSL contract showed that we should be getting 1Mb, more than enough for our needs. Investigation showed we were getting more like 256K, and discussions with our provider were unhelpful, to say the least. Accordingly, we investigated alternate internet providers, and have hooked up our cable internet today on a test basis. So far, it's about six times faster.

There are business lessons to be learned from this experience, which carry through to all types of businesses, in all circumstances. The first thing is to watch where your money goes and make sure you're getting what you pay for. If we hadn't added the two extra users, we would never have investigated the DSL service, and never would have found out that we were, essentially, getting cheated. This just proves, again, that it's worth following up on things that seem wrong. As an internet-based company, we should have known better.

The other thing is the policy of keeping good business relationships. Our former internet provider has lost not only a client, but a company that referred business to them. This is a direct result of how they chose to address the situation of of promising us 1Mb when they in fact only delivered 256K. Instead of trying to make good, they instead basically claimed that we should be happy with what we were getting, which was substandard service, and refused to promise that it would improve in the future.

April 15th -- The Deadline Looms

April 15th looms on the horizon, and while for many Americans that means the dreaded tax deadline, it's a deadline of a different sort in the internet world. Here in cyberspace, we are waiting to see what happens when Yahoo! officially quits using the Inktomi database, due to occur on April 15th.

On that date, presumably, Yahoo! will officially start using the database for Overture Site Match. The interesting thing is that Inktomi sites are supposed to be grandfathered into Site Match until their official expiration date, but Yahoo! has made it clear that those sites will not be favored with a Yahoo! listing, unless they happen to be picked up by the free spider. Unless you've upgraded to Site Match, you're out of luck when it comes to a guaranteed listing. It remains to be seen just how and where those listings will show up in the Yahoo! search results. The fate of the Yahoo! Directory, with its $299 annual submission fee, is even more unclear. The Directory will probably continue to exist, but is it really doing anyone enough good to warrant the investment? Unless that too is somehow integrated into the new web search results, the answer is probably no.

Some sites which had good listings in Inktomi, but indifferent or poor listings elsewhere, have enjoyed a month of sales growth and strong rankings as a result of their temporary Yahoo! prominence. Those sites will be hit hardest by the imminent shake-up, taking away their day in the sun. Although they still have the chance of MSN listings through Inktomi, that too has a finite life span, lasting only until MSN debuts their own crawler and database later this year.

Other sites, those with strong Google rankings for example, will notice the change less. Although they will miss any traffic they might have gotten through an Inktomi listing, their own more solid rankings across the board will work in their favor to keep traffic levels more steady. Although they will be curious to see what the new crawlers from Yahoo! and MSN can offer, they don't have as much to lose. They'll mostly be watching to see if their sites rank well there too, so they can benefit from even more exposure.

Those who have paid for Overture Site Match will probably be the ones watching Yahoo! most closely in the coming weeks. Although Site Match's flat-fee per-click service can be considerably less expensive than other PPC options for competitive keywords, it does not come cheap, as many people discovered when they subscribed to LookSmart's almost-identical service over the course of 2003. Costs can mount rapidly, and it remains to be seen whether or not the traffic bought is worth the price. For many smaller businesses, the answer, again, is probably no.

Site Match customers, not surprisingly, will be hoping that their listings rank highest in Yahoo!'s search results, a reward for their investment. Smaller businesses, unable to afford Site Match, are hoping hard that free search listings still have the opportunity for favorable rankings -- as are the internet purists, who hate to see every search engine overtaken by paid listings. Inktomi subscribers are crossing their fingers that MSN will continue using Inktomi's old database and sending them traffic for as long as possible, and additionally hoping that losing their Yahoo! rankings will not damage business too badly. They are also hoping that the new free crawlers from Yahoo! and MSN will look kindly on their websites,.

We have customers who fit into all of the above categories, and we will be watching their campaigns closely in the coming weeks, to see what is the best search engine strategy to pursue at this time. In a year of almost-constant search engine shake-ups, this is just the latest in a long line of challenges for internet professionals and their clients.

And that's what keeps us on our toes!

InsyncSoft, Doteasy, and Plagiarism

I am sad to report that the hosting company Doteasy does not abide by their own posted policies, but instead permits websites to remain live that contain plagiarized materials, which futhermore are using those plagiarized materials to commit fraud.

Doteasy is the hosting company for InsyncSoft, the company I exposed in an earlier post as an internet scam artist committing fraud, who openly plagiarized 4 pages of their website from our SharpSoft website. Doteasy was notified by email not once but twice last week that their client was in abuse of their own policy against "Content that infringes or violates any copyright, patent, trademark, service mark, trade name, trade secret, or other intellectual property right of any third party." (from the Doteasy website, under "Service Terms & Conditions", item #13). We not only informed them of the copyright violations, but I personally supplied them with links to every page on the InsyncSoft site that was in violation, along with a link to our website. We requested that they abide by their stated terms and conditions, and pull the website immediately.

So far, we have received no response whatsoever from Doteasy, and the InsyncSoft site, full of pirated web copy and perpetrating fraud, is still live.

It's bad enough that there are so many dishonest people out there, who are willing to steal what is not theirs, and are willing to use the stolen material to commit fraud and theft on a grand scale. It tarnishes internet commerce, and makes it that much harder for legitimate businesses to gain the trust of the consumer.

How much worse is it that hosting companies and providers refuse to enforce their own policies, and apparently do not care that they are aiding and abetting in such theft and fraud?

MSN Unveils Their Search Strategy

At long last, MSN has revealed their plans for the future in terms of internet searches performed through their new search engine. The SEO community has been eagerly awaiting some definite information, and Monday's press release was the first step. It's not complete information yet by any means, but it's certainly an interesting indication of things to come.

The first item of note is that MSN will actually have 3 separate search capabilities: General search; news search; and blog search. Blogbot and Newsbot will be powered through Moreover Technologies Inc., using their listings of internet news and weblogs. These 2 search bots are expected to debut on MSN relatively soon in the United States. Their regular search bot will not go live until later, but hopefully before the end of this year.

A beta version of Newsbot is already live in some other countries, which means that this is the bot we know the most about at this time. Not only does it draw on standard internet news sources such as Yahoo! News and Google News, but it also sets up cookies to allow for personalized searches based on your search history. At this time, there are no live betas of the Blogbot, but it should go live in the United States at the same time as Newsbot. It's unclear just how, precisely, these search bots will be integrated into the overall search scheme on MSN.

That's not all that MSN is working on though. They are also developing an Answerbot, which is designed to allow the computer user to ask a question in "natural" language, and get the correct response. This bot will also be designed to "learn" as it goes, so the more you use it, the better it gets at understanding what you want.

I'm very interested to see how these new search bots work once they go live. It's unrealistic to expect perfection right away, of course, but I see the potential for great things here. Although news searches exist, and blog search engines exist, along with a variety of standard web searches, it would be very nice to see them integrated smoothly into an overall search, with perhaps the option to search blogs instead of general web listings (similar to what Yahoo! currently has on their tabs at the top, but with a few additional and/or different options).

One thing that is exciting to me is seeing how the different search engines are encouraging developments and innovations in each other. Google comes up with something fresh which is very successful, and Yahoo! and MSN take note. Then it's Yahoo!'s turn, then MSN's. Healthy competition between them seems to be working in favor of the internet surfer at this time, giving them ever more options to find what they need quickly and easily, from an ever-increasing library of websites, news stories, images and blog posts.

How To Avoid Internet Scams

Yesterday's incidents reminded me of how easy it is for people to be taken in by apparently legitimate offers. The scam which was brought to my attention was relatively easy for me to see through, but that's because I am familiar with how businesses operate on the internet, and that includes some of the behind-the-scenes details that are definitely not common knowledge. People with less internet knowledge might not be so lucky.

The scams are out there everywhere, and they hide behind different faces. Instead of debunking them one at a time, I've compiled a 2-part list of things to do when investigating a new business opportunity. The first part is standard precautionary measures, the second part is aimed specifically at internet businesses, and includes some information that those who don't work in the tech sector might not know.

BASIC BACKGROUND CHECKS

1. Check out the business with the Better Business Bureau. See if there are any complaints against that business, or the principals of that business. If you can't find out who owns it, beware: Legitimate businesses do not hide their owners, presidents, CEO's, etc. Remember: A clean record with the BBB is a good place to start, but it does not guarantee that the company is clean.

2. Check out the business credentials. Where is it located? Is that a valid address? Who owns it? Who runs it? If they won't give you a physical address, that's another red flag.

3. Check out the offer. If an offer seems too good to be true, it probably is. Do your research carefully. Be particularly cautious with any "opportunity" that wants you to pay money up front, or asks for detailed information about your bank accounts (the Nigerian scam is infamous on that score)!

INTERNET INVESTIGATIONS

1. Check out the behind-the-scenes details of the website. Who owns the URL? Who is the administrative contact (should be someone in a position of authority at the same company)? Who is the technical contact? Where are all these people located? Does this information fit with what is given on the website itself? To find this information, go to one of the sites where you can research domain ownership. Network Solutions or GeekTools both offer "whois" tools. Type in the website name (for example, insyncsoft.com), and the information should pull up. Watch for red flags. In the case of the scam I learned about yesterday, the website claims they are in Czechoslovakia, the offer claims that they arein Ukraine, the admin contact is in Ohio (that street address turned out to be for a garbage facility -- nice touch, eh?) and the technical contact is in Canada. Red flags all over the place. If that information is protected or not given, that is another red flag. Again, legitimate businesses do not hide, and do not discourage people from contacting them.

2. Check out the offer. In this case, they wanted people to "process PayPal payments". First of all, no company needs a middle man to do this; PayPal payments can be made in multiple currencies to anyone with an email address! Second, no company is going to limit themselves by using only one method of payment, which requires them to pay out 10% - 20% of their profits to a middleman right away. Legitimate businesses have merchant accounts, and can process orders through a secure online shopping cart. It doesn't matter what country you're in. If your business has the right financial credentials, you can get a merchant account.

3. Check out the company. If you have the company name, do a search for it on Google, MSN, or whatever your favorite search engine is. See what else comes up. In this case, you would have quickly discovered that the domain name (www.insyncsoft.com) was for sale in 2002 -- which doesn't fit if the company has supposedly been in business since 1999. Check out their products too. This bogus company claimed to have created "successful software products" including Atrides, RelaniumPost, and X-draw. Personally, I'd never heard of any of them, and I'm not impressed by fancy names. A search for "Atrides" pulls up a site in Russian about a cat. X-draw is free software created by Riku Saikkonen. RelaniumPost gets no matches at all. These are fakes.

WHAT TO DO IF YOU UNCOVER A SCAM

1. Contact the ISP for the website. This is the company hosting the website. By hosting them, they are abetting illegal activities. Lay out the facts, and try to get the website shut down.

2. Contact the people listed as owners or contacts. Odds are, these are fake addresses, but you might get through. Make it clear that you know this is a scam and are pursuing action against them.

3. If you've been scammed, contact the authorities. Give them every bit of information you possess, and help them catch the scam artists in question.

4. If you've seen the site/scam advertised anywhere, notify the sponsor that this is a scam. In this case, the scam was posted on both Monster.com and jobseeker. They have been notified, and asked to pull the ads.

Scams exploit ignorance. Educate yourself, your co-workers, your family and your friends, and you can protect them from being taken for a very expensive ride. The half hour you spend doing background research could save you from a nightmare experience. Just ask Tina, the stay-at-home mom who lost $3000 in one month to a fake company called Insyncsoft.