What You Should Do When Your Website Is Stolen
You are searching for information on your own website and start checking out the search engine results. Your website shows up in that hard fought number one spot. Congratulations. Then you notice one result a couple of spots lower than yours. In big bold print it has your website or company name. You click on it and are taken to a third party site where, much to your horror, your copyrighted page has now become part of the content of their page. Your website has been stolen.
Stolen may sound like a harsh word, after all, you can still get to your own website’s URL, but your content is now available in someone else’s website. You can click on your links and they all work, but their trapped within the confines of another webmaster. Even links to outside pages suddenly get owned by the evil son-of-a-bitch who doesn’t mind ignoring your copyright. His website is now displaying your website in its entirety. Logos, favicons, content, web forms, database results, even your shopping cart are available to the entire world through his website. It happened to me and it can happen to you.
Unscrupulous webmasters, website owners or other third parties think nothing of violating copyright law to derive financial benefit from your work. They can argue that it is still your site, but it’s just being harmlessly displayed on their website, stuck in frames. Heck, your site name may appear in the title bar, your favicon is in its rightful location and all your content is right there, it’s just under control of the evil SOB I mentioned earlier. Who knows, if someone tries to login through the embedded site maybe their credentials can be captured, maybe even credit cards. It all depends on the sophistication of the evil SOBs.
Two questions you should ask yourself:
- Why is someone risking the penalties association with criminal copyright infringement to display my content in their website?
- What can I do about it?
Why?
The answer to the first question varies. The hijacker may want to grab some of your search engine juice. When it happened to us the perpetrator was listed as number 3 on the first page of search engine results on blekko.com. They got all that juice for free by stealing our content and displaying it in their page without our permission. Heck, their website has absolutely nothing to do with web security, access control lists or anything related to mine.
Perhaps the perpetrator is attempting to steal credentials and passwords.
Regardless of their motivation, your business can be affected by this type of identity theft. Yes, when your website is taken it can become confused with an entirely different brand, thus cheapening your product, your company and those who put in the hard work developing something unique.
What can I do about it?
There are several courses of action you should consider taking.
Copyright your website. While a copyright is technically no longer required to protect your content it does add extra value. The first type of copyright is the typical warning, Copyright 2012 Some owner. This is important to have displayed but it does not give you all the benefits you need. Sure, you can sue when someone infringes on this copyright, but you may find, unless you have lots of money or a lawyer in the family, you will be hard-pressed to find affordable counsel. If you really want to protect your copyright, register your entire website with the US Copyright office. You will have to register, however, if you wish to bring a lawsuit for infringement of a U.S. work.
For cases of criminal copyright infringement you should always contact law enforcement authorities and file a report. Before you rush out and do this, let me give you a little insight. The FBI is going to want a police report before they even consider investigating. Your local police force will try to avoid creating a report for many cyber-crimes, including copyright infringement (it is a crime as well as a civil tort). Most police departments are ill-equipped to handle cyber-crimes. They lack the training and resources to adequately respond to your complaint. They are often short-staffed and the available staff specialized more on crime in the streets, burglary, assault, homicide, etc. But don’t let them turn you away. Document your copyright infringement, gather screen captures and other evidence, place it in a file with any other documentation including an overview and history of the alleged crime, and deliver a copy to the police. Make them give you a report number.
Once you get your police report, you can now file a complaint with the FBI. Let me warn you in advance of two issues. I have been told firsthand by an FBI field agent that unless you are a Fortune 500 Company, the likelihood is that the FBI will not investigate your cyber-crime case. Secondly, the FBI will usually not take your report directly. Instead, they will pass you off to the Internet Crime Complaint Center to file your complaint.
When you file you should provide them with the description of the alleged crime, witness information and that all important police report.
Once you file, your complaint may be seen by certain groups to ascertain the merit and jurisdiction of the crime you are reporting. Then your report goes off to die in that great government wasteland known as bureaucracy. Hopefully it will resurrect in the hands of someone in law enforcement that can and will do something about the alleged crime. But in reality you may never know.
After you have filed your criminal reports file a DMCA copyright infringement claim with the major search engines and the ISP where the website is hosted.
When it comes to personally contacting the alleged perpetrator should you write or call? You can send a formal “cease and desist” letter asking them to stop infringing your copyrighted materials. But if you do, they may grab your content and file a copyright on it with the US Copyright office. Then turn around and file an infringement claim against you. Make sure you are protected first. If you do send a cease and desist, send it after your content is fully protected and use a professional cease and desist letter or have one drafted by an attorney. If you send it yourself do so using cheap stationery so you don’t lose much money when they laugh and throw the letter away.
If you choose to call, don’t. We are not lawyers, but we have one.We have him to deal with these situations.
Contact the media. If you expect the media to come riding in on white horses you are in for a big letdown. I spent a huge portion of my life as a talk radio celebrity and know how most in the media think. If it bleeds it leads is still true. If the cyber-criminal didn’t shoot you or blow you up, chances are you will be ignored, unless you are in a tiny town on a very, very slow news day. The big question for the media is this: is it compelling? It’s compelling to you because your company identity has been destroyed, your content was stolen and your search engine juice has dried up. But is it compelling to the general public? No, probably not. My talk show producers spent more time turning stories, guests and show ideas down than accepting great show material.
I recently shared our personal copyright infringement experience with a producer at a radio station in Phoenix; a great station and a great producer. He wasn’t interested in the least. “Not compelling,” he said. And he was right.
Your cyber-crime experience may only be compelling to you. But, that doesn’t mean it’s unimportant. In order to slow down criminals and those who think they can use your content and intellectual property without permission or payment, you must act to protect yourself. Remember, this is not a compelling problem until you personally experience cyber-crime. Chances are, those who haven’t yet, probably will.
Stewart White
Country IP Blocks LLC
6 Reasons You Want to Redesign Your Website For Better Results
It seems like everyone has a website today. You may be one of the many. Maybe you did a (DIY) do it yourself website, followed the wizard and then you were done. You shared it with your family and friends. Maybe you have even sold products and services from your site to your friends and family. But, not much more has happened with your site. You are at a standstill and don’t know what happened or what to do at this point. Is it the product or service…or perhaps it is time for a redesign for your website? Not just the look of the site but the mechanism behind the face. Does your site have enough plug ins? Is your site SEO optimized?
Redesigning your site could be the very lift your business needs to boast your internet presence. So what are the six things that redesigning you website can do for your business?
More professional look – Perhaps you are stilling using the website that your son built for you when you first started your business. It is there but it isn’t representing you or your business anymore. You want to take your image to the next level and attract a new audience. Maybe you are adding products and services to your selling mix and it is time for an overhaul of your site to properly present.
Improve the mechanism for SEO optimization – Even if you created your website last year, technology is constantly moving forward and this is true in the website theme arena. The newest themes have features that you could equate to buying a car today with a GPS and Bluetooth built in. Your website is down the corner, around the other building and in the ally. Potential visitors need guidance to get to your establishment. Simply updating your site theme could give you the mechanism for better search engine optimization. The newer themes allow you to do things with your site with built ins that once took hours to find and then implement.
Add elements to attract the right visitors – There are ways to attract visitors to your site now that were virtually impossible before. The newest web themes are ready for the latest and greatest features. If you can imagine it then it is fairly possible that it can be implemented.
Capture data to create a list for future sales – You may be getting traffic to your site and selling products or services with your existing site. However, you haven’t made a sale until you have them coming back for more. Return visits to your site is the life blood of your business. The best way to get return customers is to capture their information. Just getting a name and e-mail address goes a long way. If they are truly interested in your stuff and you are willing to give them something of value for the exchange of information, then they will give you genuine capture information. Now you have a chance to make a customer for life by sending them e-mails that keep them up on what you are doing with your products and services and how you can help them solve whatever problem your products solve.
Streamline and speed up your site painting – Nothing worse than going to a website and having to wait forever for it to load. When you add things to old technology themes, you bog down your site and the speed suffers. Maybe you have too many photos residing on the site, or too many rotating gifs that slow your site down. With the newer themes, the newer features are considered and streamlining the process is built in so that speed is not a factor.
Rise above your competition – Everyone has a web site and marketing materials. Develop a winning brand that makes you stand out in your industry and drive better results for your business. That’s how you grow.
By Scott D Brown
How to Use a Graphics Tablet
It is kind of a silly question really to ask How to use a graphics tablet, but some people may be interested in the process of using the tablet or pen display to make digital images. I guess the best way would be to break down the process into a series of steps.
1. Get connected! Some graphics tablets connect using a serial connection or Bluetooth, but the majority of modern devices communicate with the PC or Mac via a USB cable. Make sure you have the tablet plugged in and powered on.
2. Choose your weapon! The tablets can be used with various styluses, pens, mice and input devices. Even the pen and stylus supplied with most modern tablets will also be supplied with a range of nibs or brushes which will make the strokes on screen different. The stylus or pen supplied with the graphics tablet will most likely be covered in an array of buttons and selectors which you can use to perform functions within the application you are using. Familiarize yourself with these too.
3. RTFM! Make sure you read all of the documentation that comes with your graphics tablet. It will tell you how to use and adjust the tablet to your needs. Some graphics tablets or interactive pen displays will allow you to adjust the angle at which you use them. Just this simple adjustment can make all the difference when using the device. There will also be software settings that can be tweaked and changed to make the experience more authentic.
4. Install the disks! As some of the popular graphics programs such as Adobe Photoshop come with a plethora of tools, settings, brushes and effects it is important that you install the drivers or plugins for your graphics tablet before you start. If you are using a software package that does not have a plugin supplied by the tablet manufacturer there will most likely be a system wide set of parameters and settings you can adjust to allow you to create better images.
5. Create! This is the most obvious part of the series of steps. Once you have installed the device, installed the disks and software and chosen the correct settings for you, the next part is to open the application you wish to use and get busy. Try choosing different brush sizes and shapes if the application supports it and also experiment with the levels of sensitivity that the graphics tablet and stylus allow you to use. These are perfect for making a nice watercolor painting or building up an image in layers.
The author runs a website where you can read a graphics tablet review on products such as Wacom, Vistablet and Genius. You can also read several more guides on getting the best out of your graphics tablet and which one to choose if you are buying.
Picasa is a Great Pick For Photo Enhancement, Printing and Sharing
Digital cameras let you easily take lots of pictures, giving you the freedom to experiment without racking up film processing fees. And there’s a perfect digital camera out there for everyone-from ones that comes with mobile phones to the fanciest digital SLRs. The real challenge for most people comes in finding an easy way to download, store, edit, organize, print and share those photos.
Picasa provides a perfect do-it-all solution that’s FREE! Forget about the software that came with your camera, it won’t come close to doing what Picasa can do. Neither will most of software in fancy boxes on store shelves. If you already have uploaded photos to an under-performing program, installing Picasa will instantly and automatically find and organize those and any photos on your hard drive. And, if you have KodakGallery.com, Snapfish.com or shutterfly.com accounts, Picasa works seamlessly with those and many other photo-printing sites, too.
What is it?
Picasa is free photo editing software that helps you manage and share photos and videos. You can download Picasa to your Windows XP, Vista or Linux desktop, or get a beta version for Macs. Launching Picasa immediately finds and organizes all the photos on your hard drive. Plug in a camera, phone or memory card and Picasa will automatically recognize the device and help you import those pictures and videos, too.
Popular Features
Picasa’s powerful editing tools let you do basic touchups or perform more advanced enhancements. Just a few of the popular features you’ll find, include:
- Cropping, rotating or straightening
- Retouching images with red-eye correction, brushes and more
- Adding text or watermarks
- Adding printable captions
- Adjusting light and shadows
- Applying effects like black & white, sepia tone or soft focus
- Creating and editing movies that combine photos, videos and music
Working within Picasa, you’ll also find easy-to-use options for arranging photos into collages, mosaics or contact sheets; custom-designing screen savers; exporting to make your own photo CDs; or printing photos on your own printer.Photo Sharing
What makes Picasa especially impressive is its intuitive navigation for uploading and sharing photos and videos. With a single click, you can upload selected photos to Picasa Web Albums for private online storage, sharing with friends and family, or public posting (which may elicit comments and ratings). You can store up to 1 GB of photos on Picasa Web Albums for free, and then you have the option of purchasing additional storage space at reasonable rates.
If you prefer to print your photos or you already have accounts at sites like KodakGallery.com or Snapfish.com, select your best photos then click the “Shop” button. You’ll be able to choose from about 15 different vendors that offer photo printing for in-store pick-up or at-home delivery as well as other photo-related products and services.
Picasa also makes it unbelievably easy to email pictures to friends using Gmail, Outlook, Outlook Express or Apple Mail. Again, you simply select your pictures then click one button to launch a new email with your photos already loaded and properly sized to ensure delivery. You’ll also find one-button options for uploading photos to Facebook and Blogger.
Good to Know
With so many features and options in Picasa, you may go a little crazy editing and manipulating your photos. But, never fear. Picasa always retains the original photo file regardless of how many alterations you make. In fact, you could go back and undo every change you’ve made to a photo two years after the fact.
Uploading photos to Picasa Web Albums is one way to save a backup copy, but after a few vacations and birthday parties you’re likely to run out of free storage space. Make sure you have another plan for backing up your photo files as well as all the other files on your computer. Carbonite is a good option or you can use the “Backup Pictures” tool in Picasa to quickly save files to an external hard drive or CD/DVD.
Patric Welch, also known as “Mr. Noobie,” empowers people to confidently approach technology and use it to enhance their lives. He has a passion for understanding and answering your technology challenges. You can find Mr. Noobie on the web at www.noobie.com.
How to Decide – Custom or Template Web Site Design?
How to Decide – Custom or Template Web Site Design?
If you’re starting a web site and planning to make some money from the site, you have to design on the design of your website, custom or template designs.
What is a template web site design and how different is it compared to a custom design?
For those who are not particular about the design about their website and is more concerned with the content and ranking of their web sites in search engines, then custom web site design is probably not necessary.
This is especially true if you have just started out in your business and don’t have a big budget for the design of your custom web site.
Without a single smidgen of a doubt, the design and structure of your web site is very important to the success of your online business. If the design is good and easy to navigate, you will eventually find more repeat customers. If the design is hard to navigate, you’ll lose customers even before they have a chance to see the potential of your products and services.
So, templates are good too if you have only a couple of pages and don’t have a lot of sections. Sometimes, the simpler the design is, the more customers you will get.
When is a custom design web site necessary for an online business?
It’s advisable for you to get someone to come up with a design unique to your web site if you plan to have an informational web site. A web site with reviews, information, articles and plan to attract your customers into buying from you by using the ‘stickiness’ technique.
Because I am assuming that you’re going to have a lot of information that is categorized into different categories, you need a clean-cut and professional looking web site design. Therefore, get someone to customize the design for you.
A custom design is also advisable for people who are planning to sell products and services from lots of categories, like beauty products, softwares, PC, games…etc. As you can see, they are all not related to each other in any way at all and they have to be separated into their own category. In such a case, I think it’s best that you invest in a separated design.
How to find people who are willing to custom design my web site or me cheaply?
Granted, we’re all working at a very low budget and cannot afford expensive design services from advertising agencies or web design companies that have lots of web designers who can custom design your web site for you.
You’re not alone. There are lots of us who are low on budget and big on dreams.
But don’t let our budget be an obstacle to our dreams of making some money on the internet via our web site.
You can find lots of freelance or contract workers who are willing to design your web site for you for below $100 from freelance websites. Some of them are college students who are looking to make some extra pocket money or fatten up their portfolio. Some of them need the experience and money to get them through college. So, making use of them is a good idea.
If you don’t think you can rely on people whom you can’t personally see, you can ask around and see if anyone knows of anyone who can offer you custom web site design services at an affordable price.
— Marsha Maung
Web Host – Host Yourself..!
You Can Be Your own Web Host
Nowadays it is possible for you to become your own web host. Machine prices are down. Web servers have become much faster with the new technology. You know a large number of websites use only a small portion of a web server’s resources and so a single web server can nowadays host a large number of web sites on it without any performance degradation. To become a web host for yourself, you must be a technologically sound person and you must know the basic concepts of setting up web servers.
You also must have a high speed dedicated Internet connection to your web server and as a webmaster you have to go for high band width (Band width is the measurement of data that is sent from the web server down to the visitor’s computer). Functioning as a web host is really time consuming and so you must have enough time to dedicate for this. And finally, you must be able to solve different problems that may occur in web servers.
If you don’t meet the above requirements, you may drop the project of becoming your own web host and consult a web hosting service.
Web Server Requirements for Web Host
The major points to be noted for setting up your own web server are
(1) You should have a computer dedicated as a web server,
(2) You must have a high speed broadband Internet connection for faster data transfer and a Network Interface Card (NIC),
(3) A computer that will be enough to keep up with server requests because many web sites hosted on the servers need high end performance capabilities,
(4) You should have an installed copy of Linux OS since Linux is one of the most popular server operating systems (You can also opt for Windows operating system for the server purpose),
(5) An ISP or Internet connection that can support web traffic and that can allow users to run web servers on it’s connection.
Linux OS Web Server for Web Host
Linux web hosting has become very popular nowadays. There are a number of Linux flavors to choose from. They include RedHat, Slackware and Debian. Before going for this, you need to learn Linux operating system thoroughly. The Linux operating system is freely downloadable from the Internet. You can make a thorough study of Linux operating system by visiting at the following websites.
1) Debian Server
2) Slackware Server – There are other Linux learning sites and they are “www.yolinux.com”, and “www.isolinux org”.
Windows OS Web Server for Web Host
Windows OS is, of course, quite a good operating system to act as a web server. Like Linux, Windows operating system has different versions.
Microsoft Project 2010 – Do You Need to Upgrade?
The internet age is characterized by fast technological change and constant updates and advances. Ten years ago, nobody had heard of Facebook or Twitter. Five years ago most people still thought a Blackberry was a fruit. Two years ago, just a decade after Jorn Barger coined the term “web-log”, blogs written by Buddhist monks constituted the primary news channel during the Burmese protests.
And now, yet again, Microsoft is marking a shift in way that the internet community works by launching a new generation of MS Office products, including Microsoft Exchange Server, Microsoft SharePoint Server and Microsoft Project 2010.
What’s changed?
The main focus of the Microsoft 2010 products is on the increasingly blurred boundaries of work/home and computer/phone, the consequences partly of technological advances and partly of the changing business environment. Customers, suppliers and even employees are drawn from across the globe, necessitating flexible working hours and locations.
The Microsoft 2010 suite integrates various forms of communication, allowing users greater control over what, when and how they talk to one another.
MS Project
The first version was released in 1984 by a company working for Microsoft. Since then, users have seen a revolution in project management software. The latest edition, 2007, enables project managers to create complex Work Breakdown Structures, estimate costs and resources, experiment with “what if” scenarios and create comprehensive project documentation at a mouse-click, using templates.
The 2010 version will be released in the first half of 2010. Apart from the initial press release on April 15th 2009, Microsoft are keeping quiet about the specific features of the new product, which will be unveiled at the Microsoft Project Conference in September 2009.
Which version should you use?
Some project managers still use early versions. However, for most projects and project managers there are clear advantages to upgrading to the latest edition:
• Enhanced features enable more efficient planning, monitoring and control
• Optimized compatibility between MS Project and other software programs
• Up-to-date training ensures users can work with any edition of MS Project
Summary
The release of 2010 version will not necessarily entail throwing out 2007 version and retraining every staff member from scratch. However, it is in the interest of every project manager to remain informed about the new capabilities of MS Project 2010, and to update their knowledge through training-courses and tutorials. In the changing world of modern business, keeping up with technological advances is essential to survival and success.
Simon Buehring is a project manager, consultant and trainer. He works for KnowledgeTrain which offers ISEB training courses in the UK and overseas. He can be contacted via the ISEB business analysis website.
Simple Solutions to Windows Media Player Problems
Over the years I have used many of Microsoft’s products on a daily basis. I also like Windows Media Player and all of the features it has, but the other day I started to get error messages and did not know what to do. As it turns out I had a problem with my registry.
Apparently every time a program is installed or uninstalled the registry is changed. These changes can greatly affect the performance of every computer. Sometimes these changes get corrupted and the damaged files can cause the processor to work overtime trying to figure out what is going on. All of these things can slow down a computer and create errors.
I don’t really know that much about how a computer works or even how to edit a registry. Every website I went to for help would tell me all kinds of technical things about going into the registry and deleting this entry or that. I needed a program that I could install and it would do the rest. I needed a program that would speed up my computer and fix all of the errors with just a few simple clicks.
After a bit of research I found out that I could optimize my PC with a simple registry cleaning program and once I installed one of these programs, it did the rest. The program I used cleaned the registry and removed all of the old computer data that was slowing down my computer and giving me errors.
Every program I use seems to be running better and I have not gotten any error messages for Windows Media Player since I cleaned my registry. Before I used this program to clean my registry I would sometimes wait forever to get a program to start. I would click on my Windows Media Player and I could walk off to the kitchen; when I came back it would just be starting. Now I click the icon to start it and it is running before I even get out of the chair.
Thanks to the program that optimized my PC I have been able to learn more about my computer than I had in the past. All this time I thought that just like me, the older a computer gets the slower it runs, but now I think that if I just find the right program I can fix most computer problems on my own.
Optimize-Your-PC can help you, with its advanced registry cleaning technology; it will scan, diagnose and fix all erroneous Windows Media Player registry entries, leaving you with nothing but a highly-optimized PC.
Microsoft Access Tutorial
When determining your information needs it is important to select the correct tool for the job. Microsoft Access is the most popular desktop database in the world and is part of the Microsoft Office suite of programs. It is possible to create simple Microsoft Access databases by picking up bits of information from the internet and also books. Like anything, there are good and not so good ways of learning to use a product. Microsoft Access is ideal for a beginner to use as it has built in wizards to walk you through many aspects of creating a database. Whilst the wizards are powerful, there will be times when you want to tailor your systems and introduce new functionality. This is when you need to have more than an understanding of the basics. Take for example an invoicing system where you will have totals for unit price, sub total, grand total, package price, tax rates etc. This type of functionality will take skillful programming or development skills which the in built wizards cannot handle.
Would you want just a database for entering and displaying information or a complete integrated solution. One of the great things about Microsoft Office is that all the components can communicate with one another. You could have an Access database running on an overnight scheduler which then spits out a list of today’s sales figures into an Excel spreadsheet. That same spreadsheet could be automatically emailed overnight to the other side of the world or be available for accountants to look at in the morning. This is all possible with customization of your Microsoft Access database system.
Many find database theory difficult. There is a lot more to a Microsoft Access database than simply entering and displaying information. For example, database design involves removing the possibility of duplicate data, relating tables together, setting indexes to speed up searches as well as choosing the correct data types to hold information. How will you get answers quickly from your database? You will need to design Microsoft Access queries to extract the data from the tables. Say for example you want to know how many subscribers you got in the month of April.
It is important to have user friendly well designed screens to enter your information to your database. Screen design, whilst not exactly an art, still requires a good understanding of what does and does not look good. Reporting is another skill worth learning. The ability to get data into printed format is essential for example in producing timely management information.
Learning Microsoft Access takes time, but is worthwhile. In difficult economic times, the more computer skills a person has the better. Some of this information can be found on the internet if you are prepared to hunt around in the dark. Alternatively you could get yourself onto a comprehensive Microsoft Access tutorial class.<">