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Open wi-fi is just about everywhere these days. It’s found in laundromats, coffee shops, cafes, bookstores and more. As the internet service becomes more essential in our daily lives, businesses see to it that this is available to their customers. Businesses offer the service as an incentive for customers to sit down and stick around for a while and purchase more product. And customers take them up on this invitation by setting up camp with their computers to do things such as pay bills.

However, open wi-fi comes with a problem that is inherent to all open Internet access portals; that is the ease of with which hackers can lift secure data. It is not enough to use a website with an https on it. It is child’s play for a thief to use a sniffing program that plucks the passwords out of the air and saves it to their system. And what’s worse is that the user will never know that their vital information has been stolen until after the fact.

An open wi-fi signal is much the same as a broadcast TV signal. Any computer with an antenna can receive the signal that is being broadcast either up or down. Each computer that accesses the signal gets its own address to use during the session in order to keep the signals from becoming mixed up. However, a thief has no problem getting around the address and can easily intercept the data for parsing through later.

Be safe – do not use an open network for personal business. Don’t log into bank accounts or any other sensitive personal accounts. Wait until you are on a secure signal to get the business done, or do it over the phone if you can’t wait.

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Even the most advanced anti-spam filters in the world cannot filter out all the unwanted and unsolicited bulk email messages. Often, these types of messages are generated from companies who sell mailing lists of email addresses or scraped from websites where emails are openly posted.

In the best of instances, these messages are merely annoying. In the worst, they’re dangerous and can lead to malicious viruses or stolen financial information.  Because of the two most common methods for people to obtain your email address with intent to send you unsolicited messages (listed above), you can easily filter out these email messages manually and find out what websites use your information in an unsecured manner.

Many email clients – particularly cloud-based email including Google’s Gmail, Yahoo! Mail and the Windows Live email system – give you additional email address options that you may not even know about. Adding appendages to your email after a plus sign can help you keep track of where your junk emails are comin g from. For instance, you may be joe@website.com but you are also joe+retailstore@website.com.  This means you can customize your addresses for each retail store, mailing list or other use of your email and know where a spam email originated from.

Of course, this method isn’t a surefire way to get rid of spam forever. Some more sophisticated spammers can write a simple script that strips out any additions you may make to your email address. However, this trick still works the majority of the time since most people who harvest and sell email addresses don’t even take the small amount of time that it would take to clean up the addresses.

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You may have plenty of protection on your computer. For instance, there is a decent chance that you have an antivirus program, firewall, and other utilities, such as registry tools, present on your computer. But is that enough? Depending on how you use your email, it may not be the case.

You cannot obtain a virus by opening up an email. However, you can most definitely get a virus by opening an attachment. As a result, if you are lacking some protection for attachments, typical measures to protect your computer are undermined by this loophole.

In determining your risk level, every email program and utility is different. For instance, if you have a free and widely-used email utility that you can access online, there is often some protection present; for example, Yahoo! Mail uses Norton to scan every email attachment. But you may be opening emails and attachments through a hosting website or service that does not do this.

Take a look at how you open emails and attachments. Whether this is done online, through an application on your computer, or some other means, you certainly need to have some method of protection. If you don’t have this, you should immediately look into ways to protect yourself from viruses with your email client/service. You can find many downloads to do this.

Take care in regards to viruses and attachments. Even if you have a client installed on your home computer, you would, for instance, need to make sure that you are protected if you open email from a smartphone or other device. The bottom line is found in protecting your email.

Reducing spam and simplifying your email inbox will allow you to spend time doing things that are more fun! For example, you can surf the web, read an eBook, or enjoy playing BetUS Casino Games!

Luckily, you can take steps to reduce spam in your inbox. One great trick is to create a special email address that you give to shops and use whenever you’re registering for something online. Use it for flight information, online shopping, movie rentals, and anything that’s not personal. That way your email inbox will just contain personal emails, and your other inbox will contain commercial emails and so forth. You can scan quickly, delete what you don’t want, and report spam.

To reduce spam, you should always report it. Most email accounts offer you the option to “Report Spam.” Reporting it helps the email systems recognize spammers and block future messages from them.  You can also filter your mail so that unwanted emails get booted out of your inbox. You can even unsubscribe from messages that aren’t spam. For example, if you get emails you don’t want from a clothing store, go ahead and unsubscribe at the bottom of the email.

In the past, games have been hesitant to add these programs to gaming desktops because it prevents them access to certain games. While this can be frustrating, consider the long term effects of something getting into your desktop through one of these games. Fixing the issue or replacing the hardware could be costly. Here are three options to consider:

Symantec Norton Internet Security offers several different products for home and work. When it comes to gaming, the regular package has you covered. You can be confident that this is a product that will keep your computer and information safe while you play.

Eset Smart Security is easy to use and updates during “off hours” when you aren’t in the middle of a serious gaming battle. Pop ups won’t disturb you while you play and you can count on the fact that it won’t slow down the system. With this program you can play without even realizing that you are being protected.

ZoneAlarm Extreme Security keeps track of your personal information and makes sure that you know when it leaves your computer. It updates consistently and can give you the peace of mind that you need to keep playing. There is a special gaming mode that will help you get everything set up to your specifications.

Yawn, yawn, yawn. I’m barely getting out of bed at the crack of noon. I have to commute a whole 10 feet to my computer to start my busy day of bringing products people didn’t know they needed directly to their email! Spamming is hard!

Spam, spam, spam.

I just made a new instant messaging account! I must try it out! How many people can I IM?

Hi, my name is Jessica! Hi, my name is Amanda! Hi, my name is Stacey! I’m a hot chick, and I want to show you pictures of me doing hot things like splashing on the beach or sitting on the hood of a car! Just click on my link, hotgirlsdoingshotthings.com and then you can look at pictures of me!

Oh, how boring it must be working in an office all day long without any contact with the outside world. I bet all those office men are thinking of being at home, spending time with their wives, but if only they had pills to make that certain special manly part bigger. I can help them with that! I’m doing humanitarian work!

New free trial samples of BiggerManParts! Read my email to learn all about how you can get bigger man parts by trying samples of my free new pill, Bigger Man Parts! We’ll even throw in free samples of ViagerrX! It’s like Viagra, but only sold in Canada! I’ll ship both free samples to you for only five easy payments of $35.99!

Oh, no! What if their spam blocking software realized I’m not a legitimate email! I’ll misspell a whole bunch of simple words! Yeah, that will throw it off!

That Rick Astley is so funny! I must share his musical prowess with the world!

Click on me to see politically charged monkeys flinging rhetorical poo! Haha, I’m actually a music video instead! You just got Rickrolled! Spamming is fun!

These are valid questions to consider when determining whether your present or anticipated security measures are sufficient. Unfortunately, many people seem to believe the risk is far too overstated. After all, why would someone want to hack into your computer? Most of us are average computer users with little to steal, not multi-billion dollar corporations with tons of confidential data and resources.

Consider it this way: typically when we assume that nothing can go wrong is when something does (just like Murphy’s Law). And even if nothing does go wrong, is it not better to prepare for certain eventualities rather than pretend those types of things only happen to “other people.”

Think about how important the sanctity and reliability of your computer is to you. Do you rely on it for work and keep loads of irreplaceable information inside? These valuables may not be millions of dollars worth of corporate secrets, but they might as well be to you if their loss is unrecoverable.

Taking a few simple precautions (as listed below) may mean the difference between a hacker or virus gaining access to your computer and either breaching your confidentiality, or destroying all of your data permanently.

1. Research and invest in a highly rated virus and spyware protection software. Be sure to keep it updated and run it on an intermittent basis. You might be surprised at how many low to medium risk cookies or other potential threats are implanted into your computer from any number of sites.

2. Avoid opening attachments in emails from people you don’t explicitly trust

3. Maintain your passwords and all other personal information in a secure place

What is a False Positive?

In the world of anti-spam software, a false positive refers to any legitimate email that gets treated like spam. Anti-spam features often use certain keywords to determine whether an email contains unwanted information. Unfortunately, this can mean that the software accidentally sends your emails into the spam folder. When this happens, users lose important messages from their colleagues, families and friends. False positives, therefore, are a serious concern in anti-spam software development.

Preventing False Positives

Email software developers have used numerous methods to prevent false positives. Most online and stand-alone email subscription services now compare incoming messages to a list of contacts created by the user. If, for instance, the system flags an email for containing the word “Cialis,” then it will look at the address that sent the message and compare it to the list of contacts. If the message has been sent by a trusted source, then the software will allow it to enter the inbox. If it has been sent by an unknown source, then it will file the email in the spam box.

Today, false positives don’t happen very often because developers have tweaked their codes to account for typical email activity. Setting your anti-spam feature to its highest level, though, will increase the chance that legitimate messages get sent to the wrong folder. Keeping an updated list of contacts will help prevent this problem, but you should also take some time to glance through your spam emails to make sure none of them are important.

Protech actually has been in business for twenty years, servicing all areas regarding safety and defense. Back in 1980, the company actually coined a technological breakthrough to revolutionize the security industry with the discovery of a new microwave signal processing called Stereo Doppler, which today you’ll find in most if not all motion sensor systems–especially systems used by the military. Over the years they’ve constantly revamped and updated their products to stay ahead of the technological times. One of the unique advantages is their belief that quality is better than quantity plus branding and marketing. They never felt the need to continue creating newer and newer products for the sake of profit. Their task has always been to continually improve the products they already have.

Some of the systems they have are the Piramid XL2 Series, an outdoor motion sensor system, the Piramid XL2 Camera Series which is the same as the previous only with mounted camera, Explosive Proof Microwave Sensors, Piramid Direction Control Ladder Series, mostly used by the military or government to protect against intruders climbing on ladders or towers to invade property.

They stand by their technology, which today is still state of the art. Based in Sparks, Nevada, you can contact them at 1-800-428-9662 or e-mail at info@protechusa.com for more information on some of their great products!

Spamming is very popular among certain types of advertisers because it is very cost efficient. There is no real cost to send mass e-mails, other than the costs associated with collecting viable e-mail addresses to send the messages to. Since it is so easy for spammers to get started spamming, there are massive numbers of them out there. It is estimated that there will be around seven trillion spam e-mail messages sent during the year 2011.

Spam does have a cost. The amount of lost productivity each year is massive in and of itself. Another major cost is money lost by consumers and businesses to fraudulent businesses that use spam to reach consumers. The costs associated with spam are paid for by the public as well as by internet service providers that have to handle the massive amounts of spam emails that come through their servers each year.

Spam is becoming a major subject of legislation. Many people want to have spam cut down, but they don’t want to risk our personal privacy to do it. The problem with many possible laws that would come down on spammers is that it would cause everyday people to be under scrutiny for their normal email habits.  This is a problem that will be in the public eye more and more over the next few years as people try to find a solution that works out best for everyone involved.