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I’m looking for web related questions to answer in this new section WQA – Web Questions Answered.

You can comment or get in touch here and leave us your question(s), we will do our best to answer all of them, but there are only so many hours in the day.

I look forward to reading what is most bothering or baffling you and solving that little itch!

Alan

This is a clever spam email as it makes you think there is a security update for your email program, and who doesn’t want their email to be as secure as it can be.

For people in the know, it is common knowledge that the only way you should get updates for windows, Outlook or any Microsoft product is generally through Microsoft update in Microsoft Windows or their actual website. For everyone else they may just think this is Microsoft being kind and that they got the email address because it’s a Microsoft product and that they want to help you avoid being taken advantage of by scammers or hackers.

Of course that is exactly what some people think and go ahead and extract the zip file try to run the update and get themselves a trojan virus which gives the spammer/hacker control of your machine or something else like logging all your keystrokes for user names and passwords.

All I can say is obey the Microsoft update rule and only get it direct from them and always copy and paste the subject into google as you will most likely find a site at the top telling you it’s a spam email, oh and make sure your antivirus and malware checkers are up to date.

One more thing generally updates are version specific, so if you know your software has many versions this should give you a hint that there is something not quite right, so double check with the main company website if you want to be sure.

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What the Attached Zip file is called: officexp-KB910721-FullFile-ENU.zip

Brief Description

Microsoft has released an update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express. This update is critical and provides you with the latest version of the Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express and offers the highest levels of stability and security.

Instructions

* Install Update for Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express (KB910721). To do this, follow these steps:

1. Run attached file officexp-KB910721-FullFile-ENU.exe

2. Restart Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express

System Requirements

* Supported Operating Systems: Windows 2000; Windows 98; Windows ME; Windows NT; Windows Server 2003; Windows XP; Windows Vista

* This update applies to the following product: Microsoft Outlook / Outlook Express

This spam email is a clever one, it uses the general family member id so you don’t really questions that it may not be someone you know.

Also there are absolutely no links so you can’t even detect the usual false link behind the one that shows on screen.

So the only option you have is to open the zip file, which I don’t know exactly what this one does, but I can assure you they are never good, hopefully your antivirus is up to date and can save you if you do open it.

Any company sending out a digital e-card will do it with a link that takes you to a page (remember to hover over the link and make sure it’s legit), they won’t bother with sending out an actual file to you. Also a family member will most likely have their name in the email through a legit e-card website.

If you are ever in doubt always copy some of the email or the subject line and add the word spam and something should come up in the search engines that will let you know if it’s spam or not. if you’re in doubt get in touch and we can help you identify it for you.

here’s it the full text that’s in the email (the zip file has a name of ecard.zip)

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Good day.

Your family member has sent you an ecard from 123greetings.com.

Send free ecards from 123greetings.com with your choice of colors, words and music.

Your ecard will be available with us for the next 30 days.

If you wish to keep the ecard longer, you may save it on your computer or take a print.

To view your ecard, open zip attached file.

Today I thought I’d share with you this video and site as it should help anyone at the beginning of development and SEO for their own site.

Here is the link to the video and the rest of the article on Googles own blog.

http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2010/01/google-seo-resources-for-beginners.html

Alan

Hmm, well it would appear Google, Yahoo and Hotmail are having some serious spam blacklist issues due to be being on one black list particularly – sorbs.net

What this means is that there will be a lot of bounced emails across the globe until they do something about it, especially for us companies who use the lists to reduce spam on our servers.

So if you use SORB.NET blacklists you should remove them from your server for now. If you are one of the big three above, get yourself off the Bl***ing list it’s your responsibility to do so.

I’ve known that Yahoo have been on it since last Friday (15th Jan), but thought they would have fixed it by now. It does however seem very odd that all three of these email giants are on the list, could there have been a security breach on the SORBS.NET list? If so I hope they know about it!

*This info is correct at the time & date of this post.

Alan

On my weekly research I came across a story that proves that you don’t always need to have the latest best product on the market, just one that speaks to your customers needs.

Tesco found this out at Christmas by complete surprise with a new mobile phone they were selling.

Here’s the link

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/21/20100112/ttc-cheap-mobile-is-surprise-success-e1d36ba.html

Just before you go though, have a think about using traditional marketing techniques to see if you can identify a niche in your market and get there before your competitors.

If you haven’t signed up already here is a link to a directory you should be part of Freeindex

Here are another few to sign up to:

This one seems to be getting advertised a lot so it will probably become a good one to be in early with.

http://business.localmole.co.uk/index.php

Dmoz – Find your area and click on the Suggest URL on this one (very important you do this one)

http://www.dmoz.org

This one goes up and down like a yo-yo in the google rankings, but worth putting your information into as it’s been around for a while now.

http://www.hotfroguk.co.uk

Ok that’s your freebie list to help get you started just type free directories in Google, but be warned you can spend all day doing this which Google especially won’t like if you suddenly turn up in hundreds of directories in one or two days, so save the search and just do a couple a day or week.

Alan

Well I’ve finally been getting in some new spam and of course coming up to the self assesment time they are at it again – grrr those spammers.

So in this one (see spam email at the bottom) just look at the reference number, guaranteed you won’t have that on any of your official tax documents.

The link also goes to a completely different site from the inland revenue you can tell that because their web address is  http://www.hmrc.gov.uk/  and they have http://online.hmrc.gov.uk.okio1v.kr/… if you hover over the link you’ll see this address show up.

Basically after the first two slashes in the http:// the very next slash you see signifies the end of the actual domain name. so in this case the .okio1v.kr part is taking you to a completely unrealated domain name to the …online.hmrc.gov.uk… part.

Also in this case they got my name from my email address, which most people have, so that’s why it seems like it’s personalised (generally spam email isn’t personalised), so if you have a strange ID to your email this should look even more suspicious.

HMRC will very rarely email you, most of these issues will be dealt with via a letter in the post or a phone call, so if you get any emails verify it by calling up the revenue just to be sure.

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Taxpayer ID: alan-00000217490017UK
Tax Type: INCOME TAX
Issue: Unreported/Underreported Income (Fraud Application)

Please review your tax statement on HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) website (click on the link below):

review tax statement for taxpayer id: alan-00000217490017UK

HM Revenue and Customs

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Well we’re in 2010, so here are a few things you may want to have a think about in regards to your own website.

Firstly Google will be changing things up next year just one of the many aspects they’ll be looking at is the speed of your website, basically how long it takes to load a page. This is already one of the factors considered for AdWord campaigns so you might want to look at your landing page and optimise it if you can.

More importantly have a look at your whole site and see if you can optimise what’s already there, it might not take much to optimise the images but it could make a difference to your Google Ranking score. Even if it doesn’t your page will load faster and your visitors will respond better as they won’t be left waiting, so you’ve nothing to lose.

The next big thing to consider is mobile surfing, this year really will be the year of the mobile (something that keeps being said year upon year). So why will it finally be this year, well that’s simple, the iPhone has really opened the flood gates, lot’s of apps, unlimited access to the internet for email and web surfing that actually works.

Now every other mobile phone company are trying to build and promote the next iPhone killer, so what does this mean to all of us, simply quicker adoption. Just think how many people you know who check email or check something online with their mobile now and imagine just 6-8 months from now, all the new mobile contracts will be renewed with newer smartphones as part of the package -Start planning your business to be mobile friendly!

Businesses adopted email on mobiles properly in 2008/9 with Blackberry paving the way, so 2010 is the consumer markets turn and the companies know exactly how to target them, by using social media interaction (Motorola are really pushing this angle with Nokia hot on their heels).

Mass market means that you have more avenues to sell your product or services to, the only real problem is that websites just haven’t been built with mobiles in mind. So 2010 will see all web development companies jumping on the band wagon.

Thankfully we’ve been preparing for this and have ways to score a website on a mobile device (get in touch if you would like a free assessment score). Also your marketing using emails will need to consider the smaller screens of mobiles and dowload times (really quick mobile downloads still aren’t quite there yet – Maybe the tail end of this year).

Developing a website for a mobile can sometimes cost more money to do, but if you’re smart about it a single website could work for both mobiles and desktops/ laptops/ netbooks instead of developing a whole separate site. The main thing is speed and the ability to collapse to a smaller screen well.

Getting away from the mobiles, proper marketing research looks to be making a small comeback as companies no longer try to do it all themselves and rediscover the lost art of traditional marketing. Leading on from that surprisingly I’ve heard a lot of chatter about direct mail in the last couple of weeks!

Yes I said it Direct Mail – I’ve thought about this and it makes sense. Remember when people used to complain about getting all that junk mail through the letter box, well spam emails have now become that, so many new businesses are returning to the traditional methods. Be prepared for snail mail to become a much bigger part of your marketing again.

Make sure however that what you send is of actual value as it will very quickly be labelled as junk mail and tossed out – which is a waste of your marketing budget and certainly doesn’t help the environment, be mindful of your resources – all of them.

So what else does 2010 hold for us, well for small businesses over the UK the London Olympic bids for business hots up over the year with most of the bigger contracts already tied up there are lot’s of smaller ones still being decided. The Commonwealth Games up in Glasgow also gets put on the radar a little more, so start working out your long term strategies now, it’s seems really far away but trust me if you have a good basic outline that you expand each year you’ll thank me.

On a personal note I’m really looking forward to expanding my business and becoming part of some local inititives to help local businesses (already in the works), it should be great fun, so I’ll share some stories on this blog in a new section.

I hope everyone reading this had a great start to the year and is as excited as I am for 2010.

live long and prosper

Alan

I get quite a lot of clients ask me about the Data Protection Act and if they need to comply or not. I can’t legally advise them one way or another as it’s different for each company and what details they are holding.

What I can usually do is point them in the direction of the act itself, but I came across this handy site with a good break down of it.

http://www.is4profit.com/business-advice/business-law/your-firm-and-the-data-protection-act/notification.html