provided by bankrate.com

When you access your bank account online you probably don’t think that at that exact moment there may be a hacker, somewhere in the world, trying to steal your bank information and your money.

Your bank offers secure online banking, so why should you worry, right?

Despite banks’ efforts to protect accounts from the online crooks, hacker attacks remain a serious threat that cost Americans millions of dollars each year. The Internet Crime Complaint Center reported that Americans lost about $559 million to Internet thieves in 2009. That is more than twice the 2008 figure, when $268 million was stolen on the Internet, according to the center.

“Last year there were more online bank robberies than there were actual on-site bank robberies,” says Sean Sullivan, a security adviser at F-Secure, an Internet security firm. “Banks have become very proactive in protecting accounts from hackers, but it’s still quite a large problem. We see all types of new attempts every day.”

Biggest Threat

Banking Trojans — malicious code specifically designed for banking fraud — are one of the biggest threats to consumers who bank online, Sullivan says. They are invisible and can steal multiple types of data, including passwords. Some more advanced types of Trojans can make fraudulent transfers and drain your account while you are logged on to the account online, he says.

Is Your Bank Safe?

The more questions and passwords you are asked to enter in order to log in to your account, the safer is your bank’s website.

If your bank only asks you to enter a username and password to log in its website is not as secure as it should be, Sullivan says.

Some banks require customers to create a username, a site key name and use personalized pictures or symbols that appear during the login process. In addition, banks should ask customers to answer a security question before gaining access to their account.

“The more layers you have before you get to your account, the safer you are,” Sullivan says.

Who’s Liable?

In the event you become a victim of online theft, act quickly and know your rights. The general rule for consumer checking and savings accounts is the bank is liable for most of the damage, as long as you report the illicit transfer in a timely manner. But if you have a line of credit account or a business account, you need to be extra careful, because the bank will not always be obligated to pay for your loss.

“It is based on whether the customer’s conduct with respect to security was reasonable,” he says. In that case the court will ultimately determine who was more at fault for the breach — the bank or the consumer.

Business Accounts

Business accounts are the most vulnerable to hacker attacks and the least protected by the law. Hackers are much more inclined to break into a six-figure business account than a consumer account with a few thousand dollars, Sullivan says.

“There are hundreds of cases of thefts of money from small business deposit accounts each year,” Johnson says.

Business accounts are regulated by the Uniform Commercial Code, or UCC, which requires banks to maintain “commercial reasonable authentication security procedures,” in any kind of wire transfer, he says.

“If the bank can show the breach was caused by something the customer did the bank is not liable,” Johnson says.

California attorney Nada Alnajafi says most small businesses don’t understand the risk they are taking when they use wire-transfer accounts.

“I don’t think a lot of them understand they are taking almost full risk for any potential issues,” she says.

She is representing a small Los Angeles business owner who lost $50,000 after a hacker committed a fraudulent transfer from his Bank of America account to a Croatian Bank. She filed a lawsuit on behalf of her client against Bank of America in February because the bank refused to take responsibility for the theft, she says.

Bank of America claims it is not liable for the illicit transfer. The lawsuit is pending.

How to Help Protect Your Account

• Don’t access your account from a shared computer.

• Be certain your computer has anti-virus, firewall and anti-spyware programs, including security software with automatic updates.

• If you are using wireless service, check the settings on your computer to make sure the connection is encrypted. Don’t connect to your account using a public network, like the ones you find at a coffee shop or at the airport.

• Review your statements regularly and carefully, and report any suspicious activity to your bank immediately.

• Use a strong password with letters and numbers combined. Don’t use the same password for multiple accounts.

• Log out after every session.

Copyrighted, Bankrate.com. All rights reserved.

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Article Author:David Mayer

This is a good year for drivers in California. Way back when in 1988, Proposition 103 received more than enough support from voters to pass. Basically, voters wanted car insurers to set rates based on the driver’s record and the number of miles driven. Three years ago, the Commissioner for Insurance introduced new rules prohibiting the use of ZIP codes as the primary factor for determining car insurance rates.

These rules came into force July 14. This is one battle won for consumers’ rights. The war goes on. Zip codes remain a dominant factor in other states. Similarly, insurers also check out your credit score. Almost every company seems to think that people with low credit score make bad drivers.

So what’s going on? Well, it’s all about how to define risk. All the factors go into the melting pot. How old you are, where you work, where you live, whether you own or rent your home, whether you own the car outright or have a car loan, what make and model of car, and so on.

This personal information is included in your credit history. It gives the companies a snapshot of who you are. Is it fair to look at this information? Unfortunately, yes. Just as a loan company wants to know more about you before making the offer of a loan, car insurance companies want a better idea of whether you take care of your financial affairs before agreeing to pay out if you get in a traffic accident.

The first step in setting the auto insurance rate is whether you qualify for any discounts. For example, most companies offer discounts if you can pay an annual premium rather than by monthly or half-yearly installments. Then comes the math work. There are statistical methods to determine the risk of you getting in an accident.

If you’re a late payer who gets into trouble with liens and mortgages on your property, if you rent rather than own, you may not take as much care of your property as others. Add in lack of consistency in employment and multiple lines of credit getting close their the maximums, and you’re considered a higher risk driver. It may not feel fair. It probably isn’t completely fair. But that’s the way insurance credit scoring works.

So, before you go online for your next car insurance quotes, check out your credit score and, if necessary, repair the score. The Fair Credit Reporting Act gives you the right to get free copies of your credit reports. Use that right and get your credit score into shape before getting quotes.

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Internet is the largest source of money and employment today. You too can make money on the internet, and getting set up only takes a few minutes. Being around the internet for many years it has always puzzled me why others aren’t turning to the internet for an easy way to make money from home. At very little cost if any, you can start your own internet money making machine that’ll generate a lifetime of income. And if you read on I’ll show you how to do just that in 3 Easy StepsCan you imagine yourself making money on the internet?

I can, and I’ll teach you a few basic things that will have you up and running in no time! There are thousands if not millions around the world who are already doing just that. It’s really no big secret to making money on the internet, but many would have you think differently because they want to sell you the information for a price. But if you spent some time on the internet you’ll discover that “BIG SECRET” doesn’t have to cost you a dime.

As a matter of fact that information is spread out all over the internet and it’s FREE!Now for those of you who have heard this before but never could find the information for free, well then you have just now found the right article that will show you a few of those so called secrets. And it won’t cost you a dime, a quarter, or even a buck to have your own money making machine. No more worries about it costing you a fortune to get started. Just follow the few simple steps below and in no time you’ll be an internet Business owner who’ll soon be on your way to making money!

Step One: Go to 22gee.com to set up your free hosting account. Or type in Free Hosting into your favorite search engine and search for a free hosting provider.Step

Two: Go to 101dollarearningtips and choose your favorite affiliate program. Find and sign up to quality affiliate programs.

Step Three: Launch your free site or buy space form webdomainspace.com Create a website using FrontPage website building tools. Web site can be about anything That about wraps that up. And it really only takes a minutes to get this set up and to start making some serious money!

Give it a try, but do keep in mind that you reap only what you sow In other words you will have to make an effort at in order to make money. You just can’t build it and expect visitors to show up. By spending just an hour a day leaving short messages and comments in forums and on blogs will drive traffic back to your web site in no time.

If visitors don’t like what your site is about, or they are just ready to leave your site, then nine out of ten times they’ll leave by way of one of your affiliate links. You can make fast money on the internet with affiliate links!Take it just one step further by writing short articles and posting them on article sites.

This will drive even more traffic your way! Search engines love Article Sites! Author Resource: for free earningtips visit my site http://www.101dollarearningtips.com

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EBay is the biggest E market place that you can find today on the net. EBay generates total gross sales of billions of dollars a year!

Anyone can sale on eBay whatever he wants, millions of users worldwide are exposed to the products that presented in eBay while we speak. That makes your chances to find a buyer really high.

The secret, of course, is to buy a product in a low price and sell it in the highest price that you can get, depending on the market conditions. (Or to sell something you have in your house that you don’t longer need).

For example, if you buy something in your neighborhoods grocery store for a few bucks,
And sell it for a few bucks more, you could really make a little bit of profit.
(It is really nice but still its small money we are talking about here)

If you are really interested in the BIG money, you need to know how to get the expensive exclusive, vintage products, for cheap!

But how the hell you do that?

In the data base of Salehoo there are more then 5437 wholesalers that can get you the cheapest merchandise, which you can sell on eBay for a higher price.

You will be able to get from those wholesalers good quality expensive products, cheap, like: D & G, T-shirts for: $29.99, Sony play station ps3 for: $420.55
, Gucci sunglasses for: $68, Citizen hand watch for: $157 and more….. (Those prices were right for February 2008; it might be cheaper by now).

Once you have access to those wholesalers, you can post the products on eBay. When a customer buys from you, you can quickly contact your wholesaler and ask him to send the items. You will pay the wholesaler the price that he asks you, and the difference you will put in you pocket.

In Salehoo directories there is a list of suppliers in more then 150 different categories,
From jewelry, electronics, art, to home and family products.
Even if you can’t find what you were looking for, once you are a member of Salehoo,
The staff that works 24-7 will look for you the product you need.

Salehoo has suppliers of real brand names like Gucci, Prada, Dolce & Gebana, polo, Versace, and more.

Once you are a member you get:
•help and support with selling on eBay,

•Full technical support while using the website,

•Access to a members forum exclusive only for the members like you, where you can share though ideas or get more information from real people like you.

•Verity of searching options in the data base,

•You can also get a view of real live feedbacks on the wholesalers and drop shippers selling’s and quality of the products. Feedbacks by Salehoo and by eBay itself.

For only a few tens of dollars you will become a member for life and you will be able to make the best deals through eBay that will pump your bank account.

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As we all know that none of the video sharing sites provide a link to download their videos. So we will have to do some tweaking and play around to download the videos. Here are some ways to download any video from the internet , they are based on the common hack (Right-click -> “Save Target As” OR copy the link into your download manager,but change the file extension to .flv)

Method 1:This is the simplest method.Download VDownloader. It will download Google, Youtube and Grinvi videos on your computer in avi or mpeg format (not flv) !This is the best method as it downloads videos in avi or mpeg format which can be played on your Pc(as opposed to other methods which download videos in flv format).

Run Vdownloader.exe and copy the url of the video you want to download. Click on Download button and enjoy.
Method 2: For Firefox Users – Install the VideoDownloader Extension from Mozilla Addons website – It downloads all embedded objects on a webpage including the video clips. This is very easy for beginners.

Method 3: One other easy way is to copy your video URL and paste it on KeepVid Lite. When you click submit, you will be provided with a link to save the video as an FLV file.
Using these tricks you can easily download videos from Youtube or Google Videos or Metacafe.

Now some more questions that arise are:

If you use method 2 or 3 you get your video in FLV format.Here sre some tips to manipulate this format:
How do I play FLV files on my computer – They dont open with windows media player or winamp or itunes or real player ?

You can download free FLV players to watch FLV files locally. A good FLV player has a simple and easy-to-remember name – FLV Player. Another nice alternative is the Riva FLV player.Try them out.

How do I split a large FLV file into smaller playable video clips?

This is the most common question among video enthusiasts – they want to split a large FLV video file into smaller chunks for editing or resharing only the interesting tidbits on the internet. To break an FLV file, get the free FLV Parser – a tiny command-line tool to split FLVs into pieces. Its intended use is to convert a large FLV into a series of shorter FLVs based on a series of millisecond-based timecodes. Using the -s switch will split the audio and video of the outputted files; the audio track will be extracted as a series of MP3 files, and the short FLVs produced will have no audio track at all.

How to convert FLV videos to Windows AVI or Quicktime MOV or 3GP formats ?

The free Simplified Universal Player Encoder & Renderer software from Super can convert FLV files to practically any other video format including MP4, MOV H.264, AVI, ASF or Flash SWF animations. Super video convertor

How do I convert my AVI, MPEG, MOV, 3GP movie clips back to FLV format ?

Say you complete editing your movie in Windows Movie Maker or Avid and now left with an MOV file that you want to convert to FLV. Just get the free Riva FLV encoder and relax. The Riva encoder even lets you select parts of the video that you want to convert to FLV and crop the rest.

I have three small video clips that I download from Google Videos and now want to join them into one single video – How do I merge FLV files ?

There is no free software that lets you join FLV files other than the expensive Macromedia Flash Professional. However, here’s a simple trick to join several flv video files – convert individual flv files to avi using Super [as mentioned above], then join the multiple Avi files into a single avi file using free VirtualDub and finally convert this avi back to FLV using Riva FLV encoder.Its done.

How do I watch Youtube Video on my iPod, PSP or Television ?

Again we’ll make use of the Super Video Encoder mentioned above. Just convert the FLV file into a corresponding format (like Apple iPod or Sony PSP or MPG) and transfer it to your gadget.

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• It’s really, really, really fast

• It goes through HTML code a lot faster and easier than most browsers do

• You can go incognito and keep people from seeing your browsing history

• It’s easy to switch to

• The start page is actually intelligent

• It has its own task manager

• You can drag tabs out and back in again

• It’s based on WebKit, which also powers some other browsers

• There are no plans to make a version for Linux

• The minimalistic design means you don’t get a bunch of clutter

• It’s already taken Opera’s market share in two days

• A version for Mac will be coming out

• A version for iPhone will be coming soon

• It’s got a serious security bug where Java is concerned

• It just might rival IE, even in its beta form

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So much information is on the web, its mind boggling. Thankfully we have search engines to sift through them and catagorize them for us. Unfortunatly, there is still so much info that even with these search engines, its often a painstakingly slow process (something comparable to death for a hacker) to find exactly what you’re looking for.

Lets get right into it.

I use google.com as my primary search engine because it presently tops the charts as far as
the sites that it indexes which means more pertinent info per search.

1. Page translation.
Just because someone speaks another language doesn’t mean they dont have anything useful to say. I use translation tools like the ones found at

http://babelfish.altavista.com and http://world.altavista.com to translate a few key words I am searching for. Be specific and creative because these tools arent the most accurate things on the planet.

2. Directories.
These days everything is about $$. We have to deal/w SEO (search engine optimization) which seems like a good idea on paper until you do a search for toys and get 5 pornsites in the first 10 results. Using a sites directory will eliminate that. You can narrow your search down easily by looking for the info in specific catagories. (PS google DOES have directories, they’re at: directory.google.com)

3. Here are some tips that google refers to as “advanced”

A. “xxxx” / will look for the exact phrase. (google isnt case sensitive)
B. -x / will search for something excluding a certain term
C. filetype:xxx / searches for a particular file extention (exe, mp3, etc)
D. -filetype:xxx / excludes a particular file extention
E. allinurl:x / term in the url
F. allintext:x / terms in the text of the page
G. allintitle:x / terms in the html title of that page
H. allinanchor:x / terms in the links

4. OR
Self explanatory, one or the other… (ie: binder OR joiner)

5. ~X
Synonyms/similar terms (in case you can’t think of any yourself)

6. Numbers in a range.
Lets say you’re looking for an mp3 player but only want to spend up to $90. Why swim through all the others? MP3 player $0..$90 The 2 periods will set a numeric range to search between. This also works with dates, weights, etc

7. +
Ever type in a search and see something like this:
“The following words are very common and were not included in your search:”
Well, what if those common words are important in your search? You can force google to search through even the common terms by putting a + in front of the denied word.

8. Preferences
It amazes me when I use other peoples PCs that they dont have their google search preferences saved. When you use google as much as I do, who can afford to not have preferences? They’re located on the right of the search box, and have several options, though I only find 2 applicable for myself…
A. Open results in new browser
B. Display 10-100 results per page. (I currently use 50 per page, but thats a resolution preference, and 5X’s the default)

9. *
Wildcard searches. Great when applied to a previously mentioned method. If you only know the name of a prog, or are looking for ALL of a particular file (ie. you’re DLing tunes) something like *.mp3 would list every mp3.

10. Ever see this?
“In order to show you the most relevant results, we have omitted some entries very similar to the X already displayed. If you like, you can repeat the search with the omitted results included.” The answer is YES. yes yes yes. Did I mention yes? I meant to.

11. Search EVERYWHERE
Use the engine to its fullest. If you dont find your answer in the web section, try the group section. Hell, try a whole different search engine. Dont limit yourself, because sometimes engines seem to intentionally leave results out.
ex. use google, yahoo, and altavista. search the same terms… pretty close, right? Now search for disney death. Funny, altavista has plenty of disney, but no death…hmmm.

If you’ve read this far into this tutorial without saying, “Great, a guy that copied a few google help pages and thinks its useful info” then I will show you WHY (besides accuracy, speed, and consistancy finding info on ANYTHING) its nice to know how a search engine works. You combine it/w your knowledge of other protocol.

Example:
Want free music? Free games? Free software? Free movies? God bless FTP! Try this search:
intitle:”Index of music” “rolling stones” mp3
Substitute rolling stones/w your favorite band. No? Try the song name, or another file format. Play with it. Assuming SOMEONE made an FTP and uploaded it, you’ll find it.

For example….I wanted to find some Sepultura. If you never heard them before, they’re a Brazilian heavy metal band that kicks ass. I started with this:
intitle:”Index of music” “Sepultura” mp3 <– nothing
intitle:”Index of música” “Sepultura” mp3 <– nothing
intitle:”Index of musica” “Sepultura” mp3 <– not good enough
intitle:”Index of music” “Sepultura” * <– found great stuff, but not enough Sepultura

At this point it occurs to me that I may be missing something, so I try:
intitle:”index of *” “sepultura” mp3 <– BANG!
(and thats without searching for spelling errors)
Also try inurl:ftp

I find that * works better for me than trying to guess other peoples mis-spellings.

The same method applies for ebooks, games, movies, SW, anything that may be on an FTP site.

I hope you enjoyed this tutorial, and I saw that recently a book and an article was written on the very same topic. I havn’t read them as of yet, but check em out, and get back to me if you feel I missed something important and should include anything else.

intitle:”index of” “google hacks” ebook
Ps. I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again… BE CREATIVE.
You’ll be surprised what you can find.

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1. News. Okay, so maybe that’s basic. After all, your company or business is the reason you put up a blog, right? Write about the products you sell. Give them a bit of the benefits your potential customers might get for buying them, with a link back to your main site to read the entire sales letter. You can also write about updates to your product. Post news about the industry you’re in. If you’re selling products that help people get better search engine rankings, write about search engine news. Or, if you or your service has been featured on TV, papers, or notable websites, write about it. Don’t forget to post seminars or gatherings where you’ve been invited.

2. History of your business. Maybe this one has already been in your main website, but who cares? People forget it. They come and go and chances are, when they visit your site, they don’t read it. Write about how you began, the reputation and achievements you’ve earned, and the accolades or awards you received, with a link back your site. That way you’ll let them know why they should buy from you, and that you’re a real person who’s building a reputable business. Add some employee’s profile if you have someone working for you, too. If you have nice traffic or site stats, that’s also worth mentioning.

3. Customer’s feedback. When a raving customer emails you about how your product has helped him, share it in your blog. You’re giving your visitors a compelling reason to buy from you.

4. Site of the week / month. Mention a site that doesn’t compete with you but complements to your won. Explain to them why you like it, and why it deserves your accolade.

5. Contests, surveys, trivia, questionnaires. If you’re running a contest, post it in your blog to encourage visitors to join. Get their attention by including the prizes, a bit of the rules, with a link back to your site for more information regarding it. Or put a survey. That could give you information regarding the product you’re selling, as to how you could develop it further.

6. Tip of the day. Write about a new tactic you developed or something you learned and perfected.

So there. Whatever your business is, no doubt there’s always something you’ll definitely want to write about. Give it a try. And it will reward you soon.

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