iNamics I.T. Blog

You’re Still Going to Need that PC with Your New iPad

alharlow — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 12:45:39 +0000

Most people don’t realize that you still need a PC (or Mac) to operate (properly) your new iPad. You need an iTunes account and a computer to hook your iPad (iTouch or iPhone) to. That way, all your data is synced with your iTunes account and you can download apps from Apple’s app store.

I own all three devices: iPad, iTouch and now an iPhone 4. I have come down to using for mobile just Apple devices and PCs for my regular business and office work. Right now, I’m typing this blog on my laptop PC because the keypad on the iPod is okay, but not as good as a keyboard.

If you want my opinion (which is one of the purposes for having a blog, isn’t it?), Apple for mobile is the clear choice. I’ve had them all, and even held out, longer than I should have, waiting for the new Windows 7 devices. But clearly Apple has the edge; even over Blackberry, which is really good, but not really, really good, which is my opinion of Apple’s mobile products.

At one time, I was one of those fanatical fans of Apple’s. My first real PC was an Apple MacIntosh. I use to lug that box around everywhere, in a carry bag. I did my wife’s and my invitation to our engagement party on that computer and a full products manual held on over 10 floppy disks. But then Apple let me down when I bought (a very expensive, I might add) laptop. Three times the hard drive crashed and Apple wasn’t helping me solve the problem the way I thought they should. So I threw it out and moved to the PC platform I still consider myself on today. (I think this was the period of time when Steve Jobs had left Apple.)

I met John Sculley once at an event in NYC. Ironically, he had lived in the same house my sister and brother-in-law owned in Camden, Maine, and we had some stories to exchange. I don’t blame John about my Apple debacle, but no doubt, a company like Apple has only survived because of one person — Steve Jobs.

Good work Steve! You’ve got me back as a huge fan of your products. But, I still use my PC with all these mobile devices. Plugging in as I have to now and then, my mobile device to my PC — now that’s something you need to solve. It’s a pain! So get back to work, and stop with that sickness thing! There’s more unfinished work to complete.

The author of this post, Al Harlow, is President and CEO of iNamics Corporation, a leader in website development, hosting and computer repair in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. (The word “iNamics” stands for “Internet Dynamics”, meaning the dynamic exchange of information is now possible using Internet technology.) To contact him, or to learn more about this subject matter and “Affordable, Reliable I.T. Services, Products and Support“, go to www.iNamics.com. This blog is also published at http://inamics.wordpress.com.

Business App Developers Can Learn a Thing or Two from Online Gaming (or MMOG)

alharlow — Sun, 20 Mar 2011 11:38:51 +0000

At iNamics, we build business applications (apps) which are hosted in the Cloud – typically on our Cloud, which is a private, secure network versus a public, you-take-your-chances network. The online application we’re most famous for, and what got us started, is www.careershift.com, which is now licensed by over 120 Universities and schools nationwide (and growing), with version 5.0 about to be launched.

I’m very proud of the work we’ve done. Thousands on people benefit from this work everyday by logging in and using our business apps, including some iPhone and mobile apps. But I think we can always do better and am looking to continue being a leader, not follower, in this very competitive and crowded industry of Internet and mobile app development.

We need to do better because there is always something coming around the corner, that could potentially knock us out and take our place. I will do everything possible to prevent this from happening, so one of the ways to accomplish this is by staying ahead of the curve, or “bleeding edge” as some like to refer to it.

I’ve always said that I wanted CareerShift to be a “destination app”. By that I mean I want users to look forward to using it, where they’re excited about it. It’s an end-of-the-day destination, the last thing you do, like logging into Facebook and checking up on your friends.

Destination apps today, for example, are Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and YouTube, I think. But now there are online gaming apps which more and more are becoming dominant as activities people do in their spare time. I for one am (admittedly) addicted to www.pokerist.com, but there are many like Farmville, Halo, Call of Duty and Crysis 2, just to name some.

What makes online gaming fun is the social aspects of it. There are massive amounts of people interacting and engaged in a common goal — all in a virtual setting. Pokerist.com for instance, will have at any one time, over 10,000 users from all over the world actively engaged, having conversations and playing Texas Hold’em.

Not to get two technical, but these MMOG (Massively Multiplayer Online Gaming) apps can be considered SaaS/PaaS (Platform As A Service) hybrids. This emergence, from a technologist’s standpoint, is exciting; especially when you consider what the possibilities are in using this approach when enhancing and improving online business apps for the Cloud.

At iNamics, most of our developers are gammers, which for me, makes the opportunities even more exciting when we begin to come up with enhancements (updates) to our customers’ apps.

There is no doubt, we have a thing or two to learn from online gaming. I believe in the next year, you will see new features and updates to CareerShift, for instance, which add aspects of MMOG to truly make it a destination app, and from this, more benefits will be realized by our users.

The author of this post, Al Harlow, is President and CEO of iNamics Corporation, a leader in website development, hosting and computer repair in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. To contact him, or to learn more about this subject matter and “Affordable, Reliable I.T. Services, Products and Support“, go to www.iNamics.com. This blog is also published at http://inamics.wordpress.com.

Hacked Email Addresses? You’re Not Alone!

alharlow — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 15:09:24 +0000

I received an email which looked like it was from my sister the other day. She wanted me to click on a link. When I did the “hover check” (explained in another one of my other blogs), the actual address it was going to was not the address displayed.

“Ah, someone must have hacked into her address book at MSN!”, I thought. No big deal, right?

Well an old friend of her’s was pretty upset, she explained when I wrote her an email saying she’d been hacked into. Needless to say, there were a lot of unhappy people.

It’s a harmless hack, unless you make the mistake and click on the link. But we all know better than that, don’t we?

Well, then Sara, my other sister’s step daughter, sent me this email. Okay, another link she was indicating for me to click on. “Wow, Yahoo got hacked into too! Unbelievable!“ I let Sara know this was going on. She wasn’t aware of it and when I told her, she too was pretty upset.

“Not to worry”, I assured her. “Just close the account at Yahoo. You really should not be storing personal information on these public servers anyway, which are always targets.”

So then today, I got this email from Tom, a local photographer. Poor Tom. Not good. I like the advise he gives though, and anyone who wants a real reliable email system should call iNamics, I think. Of course, I’m bias, but I know we can’t be broken into.

Here’s what Tom’s email says:

You probably received an email that appeared to come from me, requesting help while I was supposedly stuck in London. It was definitely a scam after my email account was hacked. I hope you were not taken in. You can learn more about the hacking in my blog post:

http://tomszabo.wordpress.com/2010/07/28/the-story-about-being-hacked/

My email, address book and Face Book account have been restored. All seems back to normal. In the process of restoring my address book, I made some changes to my broadcast list(s). In doing so, I discovered a procedural gap in my office. That “gap” means you may have been restored to the broadcast list for my studio. If that occurred, I apologize in advance. I’ve made a change to keep that from happening in the future.

If you wish to be removed from my studio email broadcast list, please reply with the phrase “Opt-Out” in the subject line of your email. Again my apologies for that.

Please pay attention to incoming emails, looking for suspicious email that might make you a victim. That should be a normal process for you, but with my address book hacked, you want to pay particular attention.

Some additional helpful hints:

Talk with your computer technician about the status of your inter net security on your system.

Don’t forget about backing up your data files!

Good luck to you and thanks for your patience and support.
If you need help with your email and want a more reliable and spam free email system for you and your office, call me at (216) 916-0196 ext. 3015.

All Of Those Passwords Driving You Crazy? Here’s a System to Help:

alharlow — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 13:24:07 +0000

Passwords and “pins” seem to be needed everywhere and with everything we do nowadays. If you don’t have a system for remembering and recalling all those passwords easily, then it must be driving you crazy.

Here’s a Simple System for Devising and then Remembering Your Passwords:
Come up with just four (possibly five) passwords, one for each level of security. These are the only passwords you’ll have to remember. The key then is to just associate one of the four passwords with the level of security needed for what your about to log into. For example, you’re bank account website you know needs extreme security, so this is the password to recall. Here the list of passwords to develop for yourself:

1) Low Security – one you can give out to anyone and don’t care
2) Medium Security – one you would give out to your co-workers, perhaps, and family members without any concerns
3) High Security – this is where your personal information is stored and you would have anyone like your immediate family to know about it
4) Extreme Security – this is for things like your pin for your debit card (which you shouldn’t give to anyone except your spouse, perhaps) and your bank account website password.

Now for those of you who have secrets not to be shared with anyone, including your spouse, you can invent a fifth password. Of course, when your wife or husband reads this blog, she or he is going to ask, “Do you have a fifth password?”, and what it’s used for. But just claim the fifth about the fifth. :)

When Changes are Demanded:
Some places require that you change your password every 90 days or so. This is in following with good practices when you have stored credit cards in Quickbooks, for instance. To handle this in a systematic way, pick a character to use. Then, in the case when every 90 days you must change the password, repeat the character in the password representing which quarter you’re in. For instance, the first quarter of the year might be “YesWe%Can”. The second quarter would simply be changed to “YesWe%%Can”. Or, you can move the position of the character such as “%YesWeCan” the first quarter and “Yes%WeCan” the second quarter.

You can take this further, where you use one schema for every password. For instance: your low security password can be “fatso”; medium - ”fatso%”; high – “%fatso%” and extreme – “%fatso%E1″.

Everywhere you Turn
No doubt, having a system to remember passwords so you can easily recall them makes a big difference in trying to simplify our lives. Everywhere you turn now requires a password. Here’s my short list of where I have to remember a password:
1) My bank account websites,
2) My debit cards,
3) My credit card websites,
4) My personal and company insurance websites,
5) My business websites,
6) My cell phone account website,
7) My advertising websites,
My multiple Google account websites,
9) My MSN developers website,
10) My Microsoft partners websites,
11) My accounting passwords…

Need I go further? For me, the list is very long. I bet if you thought about it, you would come up with over 20 instances easily where you have to use a password. So coming up with a method such as what I suggest here, has become vitally important.

Security
If you store your passwords in writing in one location, such as in an Excel spreadsheet, for instance, make sure it’s locked down and secure. You should tell your loved ones where this is and what the password is to open it, or where the key is. I myself store passwords for websites I use in Outlook, under the contact name I associate with that website. I make sure the “lock” is on, so only I can access this information. Of course, a security expert will say anything stored on the Internet is vulnerable, but I’m confident in the security at iNamics and how locked down our private network is, to be able to do this with confidence.

The experts say not to use birthdates for passwords. These are the first thing criminals check. All they have to do is look at the driver’s license that came with the wallet they stole. Also, you should also be cautious about using real words in a password. It’s better to use a nonsense word, like “hkbgfu”. (Good luck remembering it, though, so I don’t follow this advice.) While being conscientious of how secure your password is, an easy way to remember it would be to use your old school locker combination with an old girlfriend’s name spelt backwards. Also, read the comment below from Bill Russell, who suggest that when you write a password down, insert bogus characters to make the password worthless if someone were to find it.

Also, you need to choose carefully which odd characters you use in your passwords, because some websites don’t allow certain characters. For instance, Bank of America does NOT allow the characters $ < > & ^ ! [ ] to be used. However, Bank of America does allow the following characters: @ # % * ( ) + = { } / \ ? ~ ; : ” ‘ , . – _ |

By typing “password generator” into Google, you can find lots of password tools for generating, saving and keeping passwords. I myself haven’t had a chance to evaluated any of what’s out there, so I can’t make any recommendations yet. If you have any suggestions what to use and what works for you, submit a comment below.

If you want to learn about how to come up with an extremely secure password, click here to read a very good method provided by Lee Barnhouse of ITechSolutions in Hudson, Ohio.

For a password strength meter, check this one out, which seems to be trustworthy and not filled with spyware: http://askthegeek.us/pwd_meter/index.htm

Conclusion
The trick to not being driven crazy about passwords is to devise an easy system that works for you, and once you have it, the stress in your life will be somewhat reduced, I assure you.

The good news is that a lot of websites now have the ability to let you use your commonly used log-ins, such as from FaceBook, Yahoo, LinkedIn, etc.; so there’s a lot less to remember. This trend is continuing, and here at iNamics we’re suggesting using this technology to our customers, which requires special API code only a developer can implement at this time, but I expect this to get easier.

If you have any questions or want to know more about my system for remembering and easily recalling passwords, just call or write. I would also be happy to give group talks about this subject to anyone who asks.

Comments: (Submit your comment here)

Comment Posted By:

Bill Russell on 3/10/2011 1:53:31 PM

This is a great article, thanks. I’ve been using a similar system for about 15 years. Another idea to add is a tip on how to write down passwords in a secure fashion. Choose a word, name or number string – one that you do NOT use in any passwords, and insert it in the middle of your password when you write it somewhere. You’ll know to exclude these characters when you enter your password. Example: My dog’s name is Ace, and I do not use his name in any password. One of my standard passwords happens to be Otis1210#P. If I want to write my password down for my Amazon account, I write my username then PW: OtisAce1210#P. Now if someone happens to find this written anywhere, it’s worthless to them, but I know to drop the “Ace”. BR

Comment Posted By:

Al Harlow on 3/10/2011 2:06:03 PM

Thanks Bill for the comment and contribution. I think it’s very helpful to adapt a practice such as what you suggest, to keep passwords secure when written down.

iNamics puts Legacy Software put into the Cloud

alharlow — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 16:40:31 +0000

iNamics recently earned a new hosting customer (The Winemakers Database – www.wmdb.com), and the work we did for them has opened up a new world of possibilities for iNamics and future customers. We didn’t realize it as we were doing the work (which took a couple of months of back and forth trial and error), but we realize what impact it could have now, if we can get the word out.

Ironically, another hosting provider (a sophisticated one, at that) could not do what we did; or at least do it well. And what we did opens up the Cloud for hundreds, perhaps thousands of companies.

Accomplishment: We put legacy software made by WMDB in the Cloud. It’s now hosted on our servers at our data facility in downtown Cleveland, and already two of their customers are actively using it without any of the headaches associated with computer equipment and software maintenance. In our private, secure Cloud network, we do all that for them.

Okay, so, for those of you who don’t know what this means, here’s an explanation:

1. Maybe you’ve seen Microsoft’s commercials lately about “going to the Cloud”? The Cloud is merely a fancy way of describing the hosting of software applications on remote servers accessed over the Internet, through software such as Remote Desktop. (The company Citix invented remote access of computers years ago, licensed the technology to Microsoft and markets it through products such as “Go to Meeting” and “Go to My PC”.)

2. Typically, a software application has to be rewritten so it can be hosted and work over an Internet connection, usually done through creating browser pages, or a website. In our case, we develop web application using Microsoft’s dot net platform. Writing a web application can cost tens of thousands of dollars, and take over a year, depending on the scope of the project. Currently, iNamics has three large projects in-house, where we are being paid to develop applications to run and be hosted on the Internet.

3. Legacy software can not typically run over the Internet and be offered as a “Software-as-a-Service” (SaaS) application. But many companies have written software running on their local (at their facility) servers (computers), and there’s no way they can even entertain taking those legacy systems and placing them in the hands of a hosting company to maintain without a lot of work and headaches and possible failure — that is until we’ve proven it can be done.

If you have a “legacy” application used to help you run your business such as an ERP or MSP system, give us a call here at iNamics and let’s discuss with you how we can take it to the Cloud, saving you thousands of dollars in servers, hardware and maintenance.

Okay, so, for those of you who don’t know what this means, here’s an explanation:

New Optimized Website for Computer Repair Proves iNamics knows SEO

alharlow — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 15:52:59 +0000

We just built a new website for iNamics which focuses solely on computer repair. It is independent of our main web, www.inamics.com. The reason why we did it for ourselves is two-fold:

1) To emphasize that a focus of our business is in repairing and maintaining computer systems for our customers, and

2) To prove that we know what we’re doing when it comes to Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and getting favorable search engine results (SERPs) locally for businesses.

The second reason is the most important one, because lately, there is a lot of competition in optimizing websites these days, and everyone claims they know more than anyone else. The truth is, there’s no trick to getting your website onto the first page of search engines. It just takes some skills and knowledge and constant intelligence, so you get the latest scoop on what search engines like Google, Bing and others are doing. At iNamics, we subscribe to a number of resources which keep us up to date.

As President here, I also emphasize that everyone should keep their knowledge and capabilities in tune with this information, that sometimes can overwhelm you. Again, there are no tricks, but if you want to optimize your site yourself, a good place to start is by becoming a member of the iNamics website, and browsing the section on SEO. I myself try to update this with relevant information and resources. But if you don’t have time right now to sign up and log in (even though it’s free and easy to do), I’m providing you with what’s current in information below: Below are recommended links to tools and resources to help enable you to improve your web presence and website’s search engine rankings:

iNamics Free SEO Report: At iNamics, once you fill out and submit this form, we will produce a report that provides you with information about your search engine ranking in comparision with your competition. We also give you more information about how to improve your rakings.
iNamics & Google Analytics: If iNamics hosts your website, go to this link to view your website traffic reports. (Note: Google Analytics has replaced Report Viewer for providing analytics to iNamics customers frankly because it’s free. As a customer, if you haven’t had a Google Analytics account set up yet, where iNamics will insert code onto your web page source code, contact us).
Google Tools for Online Success: Google and the Small Business Administration have partnered to educate local businesses about how to succeed online. There are videos which describehow small business owners have successfully used the internet to grow his or her business.
About Site Maps: Google provides webmaster information which is a great place to learn about what site maps have to offer and how to implement them into Google.
Free Site Map Generator: This site gives you a quick and easy way to generate a site map. After you have created the site map, you can put it into your web site and implement them into Google.
Domain Worth Estimator: This link calculates your domain’s worth. It gives you statistics on your site such as Google page rank or the traffic on your website.
Google’s Keyword Popularity Tool: This tool will show many statistics for keywords and phrases.
Google’s Search-Based Keyword Tool: Use this Keyword Tool to help you get new keyword ideas.
Analyze Your Web Pages: Will evaluate anything related to SEO on your website. Simply enter your website and watch the magic happen.
Directories to submit your blog to: This is a list of 20 blogging websites where it is a good idea to register to help spread the word about your blog, which in-turn will help improve your rank on search engines.
Directories to submit your website to: This is a long list of Directories to submit your website to. Note: Find Directories related to your subject matter. Search engines favor websites in rankings that have relevant back links.
All Sorts of SEO Tools: This site provides you with a large range of SEO tools to help with improving search engine ranking.
Word Frequency Counters: WriteWords.org Scriptmania Rainbow: Content is King, and this site will count how many times the words you enter are repeated. The more times you enter a keyword or phrase, the higher the count. But beware of keyword stuffing, which is defined as a high volume of keywords or phrases. Search engines will penalize sites interpreted as stuffing too many keywords onto a page.
Keyword Frequency Analyzers: Text-Alyser – Use this tool to count the frequency of your keywords.
Keyword Density Analyzer: SEO-Arena – Here is another way to evaluate the density of your keywords.
SEO Tip Even Your Mother Would Love: Here are 55 tips and tricks reguarding SEO, which your Mother would love, according to the author.

Now, am I giving all our secrets away? Yes, of course. Why? Because when you get right down to it, the most important element is time — spending the time to do what’s necessary.

So if you don’t have the skills, technical knowledge nor the time to figure all this out when it comes to optimizing your website, simply call us here at iNamics and we can do it for you — for a fee, of course. But because we practice this, like a good surgeon, it’ll go a lot easier than if you were to try and optimize your website pages yourself.

By the way, www.chagrinfallscomputerrepair.com is on the first page of Google already, and the site’s been live for just one week. I think that this is a clear indication that we know what we’re doing, and can help you with your website as well, as well as fixing and repairing your computers.

iNamics wins APEX Award for www.laketran.com

alharlow — Tue, 18 Jan 2011 02:37:32 +0000

iNamics was awarded an APEX Award for it’s development of the website www.laketran.com. We received silver, or 2nd place.

The award was given for its “creativity, innovative ideas and marketing excellence” during the Lake Communicators 2009 APEX Awards luncheon on November 11.

Celebrating their 28th year, Lake Communicators is a Lake County-based organization for those in the marketing communications fields in Northeast Ohio. Accordingly, the professionals in this group “actively promote and encourage responsible, creative, professional advertising, public relations and marketing efforts”. The organization also provides opportunities for the professional betterment of its members.

“The Apex Award recognizes professionals in the communications industry affiliated with Lake Communicators and Lake County, Ohio. Eligibility is extended to companies, organizations, free-lancers, and individuals who live in, work in, and/or provide services to clients in Lake, Geauga, and Ashtabula counties.”

As President of iNamics, I was personally excited and honored to accept this award at the luncheon with Laketran’s staff.

Why You Should Be Wary of the “Cloud”

alharlow — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 22:15:31 +0000

We all hear about social security numbers and identities being stolen all the time. Well, here’s one you probably didn’t hear about. Only those on the “inside” know. It drives home the point that, whomever you entrust your data with is critical to the security of that data.

Recently, iNamics was hired by a company to write a bit of code to communicate between servers, so that the transfer of data between several systems happens automatically, in what is known as an API (application program interface) using XML. This is common practice today, where servers at different locations and under independent management can communicate and share information as authorized to.

iNamics doesn’t typically accept work where another business provides the server hosting, but in this case we believed it was going to be a way for us to earn the trust of a new, long-term customer, who found us through a procurement site monitored heavily by overseas developers.

In this experience, I have come to understand better, why the Internet is such a dangerous place, and again, am reminded that we all must be wary and extremely careful with who we put our trust in when storing our customer, client, medical, personal or whatever private information into the “cloud”.

As we got into the project, it turned out, the data being transferred over the Internet, from one server to another, contains some very sensitive information. Now naturally, over https, the data being transferred is encrypted, so no concerns there. And before I go any further, I myself must say that I don’t proclaim to be an Internet security expert, but as a business, iNamics is, and I like to think it’s our middle name. We employ the best Internet security experts money can buy, I believe; so when our Systems Administrator found out that the client’s hosted server storing this information was storing it unencrypted, he about flipped out.

I know our customer is very professional, sincere and knowledgeable, after numerous conversations with him. However, after we expressed our concern that anyone who broke into that server, whether an untrustworth or disgrunttled employee or a hacker, could steal that personal information since it’s unencrypted, he told me something which came as a surprise: “Everyone does it. ” He checked with five of his sources of this sensative information, AND EVERYONE OF THEM STORES THIS INFORMATION UNENCRYPTED!

This to us here at iNamics is a massive security vulnerability and should be stopped as a practice.

This is a stark reminder to beware, and know who you are providing your personal information to. Just because the server you’re filling in your personal information on is secure (indicated by the “s” in “https”), doesn’t mean that your information won’t be stored insecurely somewhere in the Cloud.

We hope that one day soon there are standards followed rigerously regarding how servers store sensative information, such as social security numbers, where personal information such as this can’t just be plucked off by someone unscrupulously tapped into IP. Heaven knows there are plenty of them trying and many have succeeded, so why are they taking the chance?

The Merging of Netbooks, Thin Clients & Server-Centric Computing

alharlow — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 09:56:10 +0000

A recent article in the Wall Street Journal spurred a need for a larger discussion: “Microsoft Gambles on Windows 7 ‘Starter’” (http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124018108488732939.html).

My thoughts are, why run applications on laptops at all? This can be done now using terminal services with “remote desktop”. Applications run at the server level, connected through WiFi. In fact, why have a hard drive? There’s really no need with a thin client notebook. There’s no fan, it has less heat, is lightweight and uses about a tenth of the energy consumption. The phone business model works well for everyone concerned. It’s profitable and satisfies customers. Software is a utility!

After many years of anticipation by the IT world, I believe we’re finally entering the fourth shift in business computing. It’ll be a big one, driven by savings as all shifts are. My company has been offering software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions for over a year now.

Read my article at http://www.inamics.com/requestfourthshift.aspx. All comments are welcomed.

The author of this post, Al Harlow, is President and CEO of iNamics Corporation, an I.T. company in Chagrin Falls, Ohio. To contact him, or to learn more about this subject matter and about “Affordable, Reliable I.T. Services, Products and Support“, go to www.iNamics.com.

The “Hover Check”: Spot Phishing Emails Quickly & Prevent Identity Theft Easily

alharlow — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 03:38:27 +0000

According to www.lifelock.com, there are 180 identity thefts happening every minute. Think about that! Every 1/3rd of a second, someone’s identity is stolen. But with some very basic knowledge, you can reduce your risks.

One way criminals are stealing identities is by using emails that try to fool recipients into giving away their personal information. This style of crime is more common than ever and the crooks are getting smarter, so you need to get smarter too. Below, I tell you how to spot these illegitimate emails very easily and quickly.

A common purpose of phishing emails is to steal your credit card information. Phishing emails have become more dangerous lately because they have developed better disguises hiding their true purpose. Because you’re more likely to think they’re legitimate, phishing emails typically appear to come from banks or insurance companies. These are the most dangerous. As a general rule, you should always be skeptical and proceed with caution when you receive an unsolicited message appearing as if it came from a company you do business with.

The Hover Check:
When you get one of these types of emails, try performing this one simple test I call the “Hover Check”. In the questionable email, hold your mouse over the link that is provided to “update records”, for instance, without clicking it. The actual URL address should appear in a pop up. Examine this address to determine where it is truly going to take you if you did click on it. Remember, DON’T click on it. Just let your mouse rest over the link until the address pops up and then examine it. If it’s not going to the website of the company they’re claiming to be, the link is most likely dangerous and at the very least, an attempt to get your personal information.

Pay Attention to Sub Domains. Now if you don’t know what I’m talking about and know nothing about URLs and what to look for, here’s a quick lesson. Web pages begin with “http://”. They are followed by the domain name, such as “google.com”. The “www” which precedes a domain name is really a “sub domain”. “www” simply stands for world wide web, but sub domains can really be anything and more and more often are. Google for instance uses sub domains frequently, to give one the ability to direct requests to other web services they provide. For instance, for maps the URL address is http://maps.google.com. To search news, it’s http://news.google.com, and so forth. One thing most people don’t know is that you can have as many layers of sub domains as you want. For instance, http://key.com.hujgf.eu is not a Key Bank link. The domain name is really “hujgf.eu”, and so whoever controls this domain name controls the pages that display when you click on their links. Instead of .com being used as the extension, “eu” is used, which means it’s a European domain name. There are actually hundreds of domain name extensions. You probably know only the most common ones like .com, .net, .edu, .org, .info, etc. But nearly every country in the world has its own domain designation.

Another simple test when examining whether or not you’re on a legitimate page asking for personal information, is to see if the URL address starts with “https”, where the “s” indicates that it’s a secure page. As a rule, do not provide any personal information unless the page is secure as indicated by the address beginning with https.

What should you do with the email when you determine that it’s illegitimate? Certainly, you should delete it, but only after defining the email as spam. However, with most basic spam filters, if you define an email as spam you will be preventing legitimate notices from this business from getting messages through to you. Most phishing emails are sent with a legitimate email address as a part of their disguise. Our Systems Administrators here at iNamics know how to stop these emails in better ways from getting through. They define certain rules at higher levels of our spam filtration system that stop these emails without specifically saying to stop all emails coming from any particular email address, as many basic spam filters do. I suggest you notify your email administrator so they can work to prevent any other similar emails, once discovered, from getting through to you.

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