by Charles Oropallo | Dec 12, 2018 | Email, Internet, Monadnock Shopper News, Passwords, Security, Shopper News, The CW Corner
Compromised email can be an important component of identity theft. People take much of today’s electronic communications for granted.
Think about what’s connected to your email accounts – activities like shopping and even online banking to name a couple. Hackers getting into your email can give them an open doorway into many aspects of your financial and personal life. The losses incurred through compromised email can be enormous.
Good security practices are great deterrents. Start by using strong passwords to mitigate such losses.
Wireless connections can be “sniffed”, meaning hackers can wait nearby and record the information being sent and received over the connection.
Always access your email using encryption. Encryption makes it close to impossible to decode the wireless traffic. With email clients like Outlook, Thunderbird, Apple Mail or even a mail apps on phones, make sure encryption is turned on. With webmail through web browsers be careful to access it using https:// to ensure an encrypted email server connection.
Free wireless hotspots are a haven for hackers. You are pretty safe as long as you are using encrypted connections.
If you don’t understand how to set up and use encryption, call your web hosting, email or device provider for help. Don’t risk potential losses.
by Charles Oropallo | Dec 5, 2018 | Do-It-Yourself, Domains, Email, Internet, Introduction, Monadnock Shopper News, Security, SEO, Shopper News, The CW Corner, Website Development, Website Updates, WordPress
Here we are in the Shopping Season. Lots of business people talk about shopping local. Many don’t walk the talk. Shopping local works when it’s a reciprocal process – when we buy from each other. It isn’t always feasible – but making a best attempt is beneficial for most – and noticed.
The web is mostly about business. Stuff gets sold. It’s about making sales directly online and/or encouraging brick and mortar store visits.
I’m a strong proponent of local shopping. As a web guy – not a financial expert – common sense tells me spending my money in another part of the country (or the world) prospers THAT place at my neighborhood’s expense. Many businesses justify shopping elsewhere for web related services because they’re simply price shopping. Is that really the best deal?
Ask yourself “What is new business worth?” One single piece of business in a year due to a direct referral from your web vendor (or its employees) usually more than covers any perceived difference in web costs. Even if that business is the vendor itself.
Ask us WHERE you’re hosted so you know WHERE your web services money goes. Plenty of truly local businesses are right around you to do local business with.
by Charles Oropallo | Nov 28, 2018 | Do-It-Yourself, Domains, Internet, Monadnock Shopper News, SEO, Shopper News, The CW Corner, Website Updates, WordPress
Do-it-yourself website builders make it sound SO easy! And they can be. But there can be a steep price to pay.
I see ads every now and then boasting about how you can build a website in an evening with no previous experience. Several times a month we have people who have fallen into that trap, then contact us to help them out of it.
The biggest issue with these do-it-yourself sites is that you don’t own your site! The platform/servers the site is built on is proprietary – so you’re locked in to that company. Couple that with the fact that the site can’t be easily customized. Also, your site looks like numerous others. Many of these sites are not found well in the search engines. They have layers of coding that makes it easy to make changes but harder for the search engines to “see” what they’re about.
Do-it-yourself sites are generally not through local companies either. So if doing business with local people who will send business back to you is important – that’s another reason to avoid them.
When thinking of having a website built, take the time to ask a developer about options. Simply ask, “Do I own my website?”
by Charles Oropallo | Nov 21, 2018 | Email, Internet, Monadnock Shopper News, Security, Shopper News, The CW Corner
We get many questions about spam (Junk E-mail). Spam clutters up your email. It’s also used to deliver online scams and malware/viruses.
A common question is “Any idea of why I’m seeing spam emails in my Inbox?” Spammers most likely got your email address from your friends or acquaintances – people you know and correspond with – whose computers or phones were compromised. Their contact lists get added to the spammers lists. Spammers also get emails from when we purchase online and from finding email addresses on websites.
Spam is difficult to avoid. One way to handle it is to hit the delete key. That’s much the same as just throwing junk mail away that’s delivered by the mail carrier.
However, spam email can be filtered. The good news is that better than 98% can be filtered into a junk email folder.
One filtering problem is determining which are actually spam – Home Depot, Lowe’s, Staples or other vendors are spam to many and not spam to others. Good mail servers allow users to “mark” items as not spam in that case.
There are numerous email servers that behave in just as many ways handling spam. If spam is an issue, check with your email provider about your options for handling it.
Charles Oropallo (Charles@CharlesWorks.com) started CharlesWorks in Peterborough NH in 1998. His team does website design, hosting, search engine optimization (SEO) and related web services.
by Charles Oropallo | Nov 14, 2018 | Do-It-Yourself, Internet, Introduction, Monadnock Shopper News, SEO, Shopper News, The CW Corner, Website Development, Website Updates, WordPress
Websites don’t just appear out of thin air. They must be built. There are numerous products to assist with this. Many are what are called Content Management Systems (CMS). The most popular today is called WordPress. Nearly 1/3 of all websites use it.
A somewhat typical
WordPress logoWordPress started as a blog software. It’s capabilities evolved over time to include pages, navigation and all the components needed for a web presence.
Just as anyone can build a home or paint a house or even perform their own dental work – anyone can make a website. All you need are the right tools and lots of time to spend learning how to do it, right? That’s why we hire contractors and painters and go to a dentist. WordPress developers save folks the time of developing the website – so they can be busy doing what they are best at.
WordPress software is free. However, website development takes time and is best done by professionals familiar with it.
Be wary of the promise of a website “anyone can build”. Those result in trapping you to a particular vendor – meaning you do not own your website. With WordPress you can go anywhere and most importantly you own the work you paid for.
Charles Oropallo (Charles@CharlesWorks.com) started CharlesWorks in Peterborough NH in 1998. His team does website design, hosting, search engine optimization (SEO) and related web services.
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