Instead buy a mid-range or budget PC.  You will not notice a big  performance difference and you will save hundred’s of dollars.

Phishing (pronounced as “fishing”) is defined as the act of sending an email to a recipient falsely claiming to have an established, legitimate business. The intent of the phisher is to scam the recipient into surrendering their private information, and ultimately steal your identity.

It is not at easy as you think to spot an email phishing for information. At first glance, the email may look like it is from a legitimate company. The “From” field of the e-mail may have the .com address of the company mentioned in the e-mail. The clickable link even appears to take you to the company’s website, when in fact, it is a fake website built to replicate the legitimate site.

Many of these people are professional criminals. They have spent a lot of time in creating emails that look authentic. Users need to review all emails requesting personal information carefully. When reviewing your email remember that the “From Field” can be easily changed by the sender. While it may look like it is coming from a .com you do business with, looks can be deceiving. Also keep in mind that the phisher will go all out in trying to make their email look as legitimate as possible. They will even copy logos or images from the official site to use in their emails. Finally, they like to include a clickable link that the recipient can follow to conveniently update their information.

A great way to check the legitimacy of the link is to point at the link with your mouse. Then, look in the bottom left hand corner of your computer screen. The actual website address to which you are being directed will show up for you to view. It is a very quick and easy way to check if you are being directed to a legitimate site.

Finally, follow the golden rule. Never, ever, click the links within the text of the e-mail, and always delete the e-mail immediately. Once you have deleted the e-mail, empty the trash box in your e-mail accounts as well. If you are truly concerned that you are missing an important notice regarding one of your accounts, then type the full URL address of the website into your browser. At least then you can be confident that you are, in fact, being directed to the true and legitimate website.

The first way that you can speed up your computer is by adding additional memory. One of the reasons why computers tend to be cheap whenever you purchase them at the store is because they skimp a little bit on the amount of memory that they install. They may use big numbers in order to try and impress you but the fact is, most computers are deficient in the amount of memory that they really need to run smoothly. Purchase a chip of memory and install it or have someone install it for you and you would be surprised at how much faster your computer becomes.

The second thing that you can do to speed up your computer is to have it cleaned of any spyware or viruses that may exist on it. Although many of these programs show themselves through pop-up windows or browser hijacking, many of them may run silently in the background. Whenever you have many different spyware programs, which often people do, they all run at the same time in it’s tends to grind your system to a halt. The easiest way to redeem this problem is to clean your system by means of an anti-spyware program. Not only will your computer run faster, you will be more secure whenever you are using it.

Finally, we have a very easy way to speed up your computer that is often overlooked by many individuals. This is by cleaning up errors that exists in the Windows registry. Although most people are not comfortable with tampering with this particular part of the computer, errors that compile inside the registry are often guilty of slowing down your system. Fortunately, you do not have to take care of this yourself. There are plenty of programs that can be downloaded and installed in order to scan your registry on a regular basis and keep it clean as a whistle. Not only will this help to speed up your computer, it will also get rid of those annoying pop ups, error messages and system crashes.

Although it may take a little bit of work on your part, these three easy ways to speed up your computer can make it better than new.

Email aliasing is a method that forwards emails sent to one email account to another email account. It is similar to the post office forwarding snail mail from your old home address to your hew home address when you move.

For example, let’s assume that your current Internet Service Provider (ISP) personal email address is: yourname@carolina.rr.com. You are also the owner of a business with a web site. You have purchased a domain name and web hosting service and wish to set up different email accounts for customer support, sales support, information about your services, and jobs opportunities. You have four different business email addresses. Your email addresses are support@yourcompany.com, sales@yourcompany.com, info@yourcompany.com, and jobs@yourcompany.com. In order to read all your email you would need to set up and check five separate email accounts, one for your personal email and four for your business. This can be tedious.

A better solutions would be to use email aliasing. Instead of opening and reading five email accounts you would only need to open and read one email account. Using email aliasing, all your business email will automatically forwarded to your personal email account yourname@carolina.rr.com. You can also use email aliasing to create a new person email address such as yourname@yourcompany.com. You now have a permanent personal email address. You can change your ISP without notifying all you personal and business contacts of the change. You simply contact your web hosting company and have them change the address where your email is being forwarded to. The change will be totally transparent to your existing contacts.

Email aliasing provides additional advantages. Email accounts on a server cost money and take up server disk space. Email aliasing allows the web hosting companies to charge less for their web hosting services. If you need affordable web design services and/or affordable web hosting, please consider Cire Web Site Design & Hosting. They have been in business since 1996 and have a proven track record and longevity.

Are you tired of remembering multiple log ins and passwords? Are you tired of filling out forms with your personal or business information? Then let me recommend Roboform. Roboform is actually different programs in one, an online password manager and a automatic form filler. The software makes logging into web sites and completing forms easier, faster, and more secure.

The data Roboform saves is encrypted and you can protected it with a single password. It essentially puts all your passwords and important information in a safe that only you can access.

You can store multiple credit cards, addresses, and identities. Roboform protects your privacy by using individual PassCards. Each PassCard can be protected by its own password that is linked to an identify. This allows you to safely share Roboform with other members of your family. Each member can create their own indentity, store their personal passwords and information, and protect it with a single password. You can also setup multiple identities for yourself, one for home and one for business.

Roboform Features:

• Remembers your passwords and Logs you in automatically.
• Fills long registration and checkout forms with one click.
• Encrypts your passwords to achieve complete security.
• Generates random secure passwords to maximize password strength.
• Fights Phishing by entering passwords only on matching web sites.
• Defeats Keyloggers by not using the keyboard to type passwords.
• Backs up your passwords and copies them between computers.
• IE 7 and Vista are fully supported.
• Unlimited Passcards
• Unlimited Identities
• Unlimited sets of Credit Cards, Addresses, etc. in each Identity.
• Unlimited Personalized Custom Fields in each Identity.
• Multiple User Profiles.
• Handles check boxes and radio buttons
• Full Customer Service and Technical Support
• Great tutorial for new user

RoboForm is easy to use, safe and secure. Cire Web Site Design & Hosting highly recommends this software.

Spam is the term that describes unsolicited advertisements sent by e-mail over the Internet. People who send spam are referred as spammers. Spammers are inundating the Internet with copies of the same advertising message, in an attempt to force the message on the public. The best way to protect yourself in the fight against spam is to learn more about spammers and the email they send.

Spammers

Since it is very inexpensive to send an email message, spammers will send millions of emails. They find it profitable even if only a small number of people respond to their marketing message. Spammers use software programs that automatically search the Internet for email addresses or purchase lists of valid email addresses from unscrupulous sellers. They frequently use phony names, addresses, and phone numbers to disguise their true identities. Spam is frequently sent from foreign countries, making legal action and prosecution difficult. Spammers also sent email illegally through open unsecured networks and use virus software to establish spam relay machines. Spam has cost companies and organizations billions of dollars in lost productivity, equipment, and anti-spam software.

Anti-Spam Software

One of the best ways to eliminate the receipt of spam is to install a good anti-spam software. Anti-spam software analyzes incoming email and using advanced algorithms attempts to identify and filter email it considers to be spam. Unfortunately, it can also end up filtering legitimate e-mail. During the past few years I have tried and discarded many different anti-spam software, but I finally found a piece of software that lives up to its hype. “I Hate Spam” is an absolute necessity for any business or individual that uses Microsoft Outlook and is being buried by Spam. The software is easy to install and automatically loads whenever you open Outlook. “I Hate Spam” will help you to win the battle against unsolicited commercial email.

An email signature is a block of text appended to the end of an email message often containing the sender’s name, address, phone number, web site link or other information you wish to share with your email recipients.

Your email signature is an easy way to show people you take your work seriously and what you’re up to. Adding an email signature is not only an easy and fast way to draw attention to your business, it’s free advertising.

To Create an Email Signature in Outlook

• Select Tools | Options… from the menu in Outlook.
• Go to the Mail Format tab.
• Click Signatures… under Signatures.
• Go to the E-mail Signature tab.
• Click New.
• Enter a name for your new signature.
• You can have more than one signature for different purposes.
• Click next.
• Type the desired text of your signature under Edit signature.
• Click Finish.
• Click OK.
• Click OK again.

To Create an Email Signature in Gmail

• Select Settings.
• There’s a signature option in the middle of the page.
• Type your signature into the box.
• Save your signature.

Now when you start a new email your customized signature will automatically be inserted allowing you to promote yourself and your business.

RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. It is a free and easy way to promote a web site and its content without the need to advertise or create a complicated content sharing partnerships. RSS technology is being used by millions of web users around the world to keep track of their favorite web sites.

The initials “RSS” are used to refer to the following formats:

• Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0)
• Resource Description Framework Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90)
• Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91)

RSS is a powerful tool, and easy to handle. The big consumer benefit to RSS is that consumers opt-in to content of interest, totally controlling the flow of information they receive. RSS feeds make it possible for site content to be packaged into “widgets,” “gadgets,” mobile devices, and other bite-sized technologies.

To fully understand what RSS is and how to use it, I am attaching a short video that explains “RSS in Plain English”.

Now that you understand the power of RSS. You can sign up for the Free Google Reader at http://www.google.com/reader and be sure to subscribe to our blog so you do not miss any of the informative content we provide.

“Bcc” allows you to send an e-mail without showing everyone the e-mail address of the recipients. It also is the polite thing to do. This way you’re not inadvertently sharing a person’s e-mail with a group of people they may not know, by including them in a mass email. You can also use the “Bcc” field to quietly notify a third party that a message has been sent.

Use of “Bcc” for long lists of addresses is important for two reasons:

1. It protects the privacy of those to whom you send a message, and
2. It makes forwarded e-mail less confusing to read

When using “Bcc” add your own e-mail in the To: field to ensure yours is the only address shown.

All e-mail programs support “Bcc”, but it may not be the default option.

• In Outlook 2007, click “New” for a new e-mail, then under the Options Tab click the “Show Bcc” button

• In Outlook 2003, click “New” for a new e-mail, then click the little down arrow to the right of “Options” and select “Bcc”.

Once selected, “Bcc” will be available for all new e-mails.

Here are some suggestions for using the different fields when sending e-mail.

• To: Add recipients who you are directly communicating with. There is nothing wrong with a list of e-mails, as long as there is no problem with each recipient being able to see the other recipient’s e-mail address

• Cc: Known as Carbon Copy. Use “Cc”: to send a copy of the e-mail to recipients not required to participate in the communication. It allows the To: recipients to known that someone else is also receiving the e-mail

• Bcc: Blind Carbon Copy is where you put e-mail addresses that should not be seen by other recipients.