What do you need to save?

You have probably invested a lot of time (a lifetime?) and effort in creating and accumulating your personal data. Your family tree, thesis, digital artwork and photography, a manuscript or a musical score, home made videos, your will and other legal documents are just some of the kinds of personal data you may have compiled. They are important to you, and possibly important to others, and are well worth safeguarding.

Consider whether you can afford the time and effort to replicate your personal data if something happens to your computer. And is it possible at all to replicate it?

Computers die. More >>

Computers get stolen. More >>

Computers can catch viruses which corrupt or eat up your documents. More >>

Disks get damaged, stolen and lost.

CollectionMine’s offsite data backup acts a lot like an insurance policy. Something MAY happen to your property, but when you use CollectionMine’s offsite data backup services, your stored information is safe, secure and completely retrievable. Check out our Mac and Windows backup software today and sign up for your free 30 day trial!

What CollectionMine offers is a low cost, secure and private space for you to backup your most confidential and irreplaceable data. And it’s incredibly easy to use.

IF YOU WANT GUARANTEED SECURITY, ACCESS, UPTIME, PRIVACY AND CONTROL OF YOUR BACKED UP COMPUTER FILES, COLLECTIONMINE.COM HAS THE OFFSITE DATA BACKUP SOLUTION FOR YOU!

Contact us now about storing your most important digital documents using CollectionMine’s offsite data backup!

With today’s economy a lot of us are looking online for ways to make some extra cash. Some of us harbor hopes of finding an opportunity that allows us to work from home and rake in piles of money for very little effort.

While a few individuals may have been lucky enough to hit pay dirt, for the vast majority the dream of earning money online has not come true. For some individuals the dream has actually taken money out of their pockets rather than put money in.

If you Google “work from home” you get a staggering 2,090,000,000 results. You are not the only one out there interested, obviously.

Google search results will present you with thousands upon thousands of opportunities to work from home. These opportunities might be part-time data entry jobs, or completing surveys for money, or making crafts to sell.

Unhappily for those seeking to earn money online, only a teeny tiny number of the opportunities on offer are genuine. The rest are scams that are designed to part you from your money. The real trick is to figure out which are real opportunities and which are bogus.

There are the “get rich quick” schemes that claim you can make piles of money every day using their “secret formulas” that you ultimately have to pay for. Save your money. If there were really one formula that would bring us guaranteed riches, then the world would be populated by a whole lot more wealthy people.

What if they have testimonials from people who claim it worked for them? The simple truth is that scammers lie so please don’t believe everything you read. And please don’t send them your hard earned money. The only ones making money off of the secret formulas are the scammers.

Survey taking opportunities involve completing surveys online and getting paid for it. There are some that are legitimate, but many are just scams. Look for opportunities that don’t require you to pay. The whole idea is for you to get paid, right? So hang onto your money if you can’t fill out surveys without paying. If they promise you can make hundreds of dollars a day, or even a week, view them with great skepticism. Remember: if it’s too good to be true, it isn’t.

How about the making crafts from home and other such scams? These involve you having to buy the materials from them to assemble a product that they promise to buy from you. The end product never reaches their standards, so you never get paid. This scam could involve stuffing envelopes or making dolls or crosses. 

There are legitimate craft-making opportunities out there. The legitimate ones require you to buy a kit with the materials, instructions and a sample. You are then asked to mail ONE item back to them for approval, and only then are you to proceed to make the rest and get paid for it. The scammers want you to send ALL of the items at one time and then they reject your efforts and don’t pay you a cent.

The trouble is that you have already parted with your money before you can determine if the opportunity is legitimate. It’s a gamble.

There are also the Work-At-Home with Google and Work-At-Home with Twitter schemes. What these scams do is sell you basically useless information about Google and Twitter advertising programs.  If you really want to check out Adwords and Adsense programs, you can do it for free, online. Google and Twitter don’t make their advertising programs all mysterious and secretive. They really want people to learn about them and to use them, so you don’t need to pay someone for readily available information.

Another scheme that sells you worthless information is the rebate processor scam. The scammer convinces you that you can make great money just by filling in rebate forms. You send in money, usually around $200, and all you wind up with is useless affiliate marketing information. 

There are only a couple of companies in the States that do process rebates, and participants are required to live very close to them because they have to do pick-up and drop-off. 

The “mystery shopper” scheme involves either you paying a fee in advance, or receiving a cheque that ultimately turns out to be fake. You are usually told you will “mystery shop” a Western Union or MoneyGram outlet. They send you the bogus cheque which you are instructed to deposit into your bank account. You are then to withdraw a portion of it and wire it using Western Union or MoneyGram. The rest of the money is your “commission.”

Be very, very careful with any cheque you receive — if you deposit and cash a fake cheque, you are on the hook for it financially and legally. It is a crime to pass fake cheques.

Play it safe and do not accept cheques. Use PayPal, accept credit card payments or money orders, but do not accept cheques.  Even if the bank exists, even if the account exists, even if there is money in the account to cover the cheque, that does not mean the cheque is good. Anybody can create a cheque.

Another scheme that can get you into real trouble is the reshipping scam. This involves you receiving and forwarding packages as a “job.” That is the type of “job” that can land you in prison.

So what makes these scams successful? The sheer desperation of the target groups is a big reason. Disabled, sick and elderly people have trouble finding and keeping jobs in more traditional ways, so they often turn to the Internet to find a ready-made solution for their employment woes.

Single moms and stay-at-home moms have trouble working full-time out of the house. The costs of daycare and transportation are prohibitive. They need money to raise their children, so they look to the Internet to supplement or provide their income.

People without much education have problems finding good paying jobs, and without a decent income they need extra cash to keep afloat. 

Then there are the families where at least one spouse has lost a job. The bills are coming in, and money is desperately needed.

Yes, there are those people who want to get rich quick and are willing to take a gamble on these schemes. Primarily, though, the victims of these scams are those who can least afford to lose their money.

If you are considering responding to one or more of the work-at-home offers on the Internet, please use caution and good sense. Do all the research you can before you spend time and money on any money-making scheme.

If the opportunity promises big money for very little effort, it is not real. If it wants money up front or your bank account number, it is not real. If you need to sign up immediately or you’ll miss out, it is not real.

And as always, be very careful about downloading files from suspicious sites. You might wind up downloading a lot of trouble instead, including viruses and malware.

Protect your computer files by using offsite data backup. CollectionMine’s backup software allows you to save and store your more precious files onto a server in our own data centre. Easy to use and very inexpensive, CollectionMine’s data backup will keep your computer files safe from viruses, hackers, and any disasters.

I had never heard of Stanley Eveling until today, but I feel sad for his widow, Kate.

Stanley Eveling was an Edinburgh playwright and poet who passed away in December, 2008. He was well known to the people of Edinburgh, and had lectured at Edinburgh University for three decades.

In the final years of his life Mr. Eveling had written scores of poems and his final play, “Ways to Remember,” on his trusty PowerBook G4. This old computer in fact held hundreds of Mr. Eveling’s poems and six of his plays.

The reason I feel bad for Kate Eveling is that in January 2011 her home was broken into and her late husband’s PowerBook G4 was stolen… and Kate Eveling had never backed up the files.

She is distraught, as are her sons. “Ways to Remember” was being considered for staging in the future, and although a copy was printed out, it doesn’t contain the final alterations made by its author.

Stanley Eveling’s final poems hadn’t even been printed out.

“I hadn’t downloaded what was on his computer to a memory stick. I’m not all that computer literate and I was terrified to lose everything,” Kate Eveling said.  ”I was waiting for my sons to help.

“I have been kicking myself that I didn’t do it sooner.”

Kate Eveling is appealing to the thieves to kindly return the computer files.

“It would be wonderful if the material was to appear. It’s very valuable to me and I would be very appreciative,” she said.

Hopefully the thieves will be willing to take steps to return the computer files, but I think that outcome is highly unlikely.

Every year hundreds of thousands of computers are stolen, and in many cases the computer files were not backed up. Granted, not all of us are storing literary works of art, but most of us are keeping something that we value on our computers.

I know I treasure the video of my brother’s wedding that features my dear departed parents. I am not taking any chances with that, and have many copies made.

The wisest course of action is to back up your computer files now. Mr. Eveling’s sons had over two years to help their mother, but their procrastination has cost them all.

The truth is bad things happen to computers. They might not get stolen, and they might not get a virus. They might not catch fire, and they might not get hacked. But they will die. Sooner or later all computers die. Whether or not we are prepared for that eventuality, it will happen.

Using CollectionMine’s online data backup is a simple and affordable solution. It is easy to use so you don’t need a computer whiz to help you. And for the small price you pay, you guarantee that your valuable, irreplaceable computer files are stored in a world-class data centre. If anything happens to your computer, your files are totally safe and totally accessible. 

Let’s not wind up kicking ourselves like Mrs. Eveling. Let’s avoid her unhappy circumstance and protect our computer files from being lost, stolen or destroyed.

The tax man cometh, but he’s not the only one after your money.

The upcoming income tax season is another prime opportunity for scam artists to ply their trade. 

In Canada scammers are sending out emails purporting to be from Canada Revenue Agency, and good news: You have a refund! The email then links to a fraudulent refund form that looks a lot like the other pages on the real CRA website.

Canadians should be aware that Canada Revenue Agency does not, and never will, ever, complete transactions through email. Any email request purporting to be from them is fraudulent. In other words, if you get a refund notification by email, don’t even bother to click on the link.

Canada Revenue Agency uses snail mail, not email. The genuine CRA website allows Canadians to sign up to access their account details online. Even then the access code is sent via snail mail. 

In the United States, scammers are identifying themselves as the IRS, or as a legitimate tax preparer. They have created fake websites that mirror the real ones very closely. According to Scambusters.org, there are approximately 5000 of these fake websites out there. 

Some of the emails the scammers are sending out inform you of a refund coming your way. You are given a link to the “refund claim form” which of course, if completed, will give the scammers all the personal information they need to inflict major damage to your foreseeable future. 

Some of the scammers’ emails provide you with a link to a document outlining changes in the tax law. Not surprisingly the link will download malware onto your computer.

Other emails from scammers scream the word “audit” and provide you with links to forms that they want you to complete. Again, armed with your personal and account information, they can steal your identity and do major damage to your life.

Americans should know that the IRS, just like Canada Revenue, does not ever, ever send unsolicited emails about tax accounts. You cannot apply for a tax refund except by filing a tax return. There is no separate online form to fill out. 

So beware the scammers this income tax season. They’re out there, and they’re sneaky, and they’re the last people on the planet you want to give access to your personal and income tax information.

If you do receive a fraudulent email such as the ones mentioned above, you would probably want to inform the real tax man about the scam. They would really want to know.

Again, as well as protecting your personal and income tax information, you should also protect your computer files. If your computer was stolen or damaged or lost, could you easily replace or restore your personal data? CollectionMine’s online data backup and storage software allows you to keep your most valuable, irreplaceable information in a world-class data centre, safe from harm and from prying eyes.

The recent economic downturn has meant very hard times for a lot of people. With so many people out of work and/or out of money, the stage has been set for a proliferation of fraudulent Internet schemes. Their common goal: to separate victims from their money and/or their personal information.

The best way to avoid being victimized by these scams is to not pay up front. A lot of these scams require that the victim make a small payment in advance in order to receive the promised inheritance/lottery winnings/job offer/mortgage refinancing etc.

If an advance payment is needed, it is best to regard the scheme as a scam. If your promised good fortune is too good to believe, don’t believe it.

Sometimes the scammers will advance their victims a payment by cheque and then request a refund. They might indicate that they need reimbursing for an overpayment, or that fees have to be paid.

The scammer’s cheque is of course bogus, leaving the victim on the hook with the bank for the entire amount they have withdrawn. The victim is always responsible for any cheque they deposit, whether it’s fake or genuine. 

Most importantly, cashing a bogus cheque is a crime and the hapless victim may wind up charged with money laundering or worse.

Recipients of large cheques should do their utmost to ascertain that the bank account is legitimate and that the funds are available. Even then that doesn’t mean the cheque is legitimate — anyone can print a cheque. 

It is far safer by far to make it your policy not to accept cheques from any Internet transactions, including e-Bay sales.

It is also far safer to not make payments by cheque. Scammers want your bank account information simply because they want to empty your bank account.

If you have to make a payment online, use a credit card instead. Credit card payments are protected insofar as the liability of you the consumer is limited if you report unauthorized use of your card. You won’t be on the hook for the illegitimate transaction.

Besides keeping your banking information private, I cannot encourage you enough to keep all of your personal information private. Every year scammers get trickier and more determined in the methods they use to convince people to reveal personal information.

It used to be the scams were fairly easy to spot because they’d be full of typos and bad grammar. Nowadays the scammers are very sophisticated in their phishing techniques, and make the emails with the malicious links look very convincing and legitimate.

It is best to be sceptical of every email that has very, very good news like you won the lottery, or very, very bad news like you will lose something if you don’t act right now. 

Also be suspicious of every email that links to a log-in page. If you receive a message from what looks to be your bank for instance, instead of clicking on the link you should directly key in what you know to be your bank’s URL. Or, better yet, telephone your bank to inquire about the message. Look up the number instead of using any phone number provided in the suspect email message. Keep in mind banks do not do business via email because it is so insecure.

My best advice to you is to be aware that although the Internet is a fantastic tool that brings the whole world to your fingertips, it is also a fantastic tool for cybercriminals that allows them to bring a whole world of trouble to you.

Use caution and good sense. Guard your privacy as best you can. Trust, but verify. 

Besides protecting your digital identity, don’t forget to protect your computer files. Using CollectionMine’s online data backup and storage is a great plan. It will keep your files safe and secure, away from prying eyes. Stored in a world-class data centre, your files cannot fall victim to viruses, hackers, thieves or any natural disasters.

Social media websites such as Facebook and Twitter are designed primarily to allow you to share information such as who you are and what you’re doing. 

These websites are unbeatable tools for connecting with family and friends, and reconnecting with long-lost acquaintances. They are also great to help you meet up with people and groups that share your interests. This is why Facebook alone has over half a billion users.

However, Facebook, Twitter and other social network users should consider that not just friends and family may be privy to their posts.

Public messages posted on Twitter can literally wrap around the globe within seconds. They can as well be found in real-time searches 24/7/365.

Considering the vast audience and immediate nature of these social networks, I urge users to think carefully before they submit a post. Could your message compromise your safety or your identity? Could it embarrass you? Could it cost you your job or a job opportunity?

Happily, social network sites have privacy settings that allow you to control the visibility of your contact and profile information, posts, videos and photos. Users should take the time to consider how much visibility they want, and to set the controls accordingly. I very strongly urge that you restrict your visibility to friends only. 

Most (not all) social network sites allow you to limit who can see photos and videos tagged with your name. Take advantage of this option. While I am sure you wouldn’t even consider uploading something that would embarrass or compromise your friends, can the same be said for your friends? So if there’s something undesirable out there with your name on it, use the control setting to protect yourself.

Speaking of protecting yourself, do not share information that can be used by people to locate you or to steal your identity.

Think before you post about your holiday — do you really want the world to know your house is empty for two weeks? Pleaserobme.com should convince you to be careful about oversharing.

Do you really want the world to know you’re home alone with the kids while your spouse is on a business trip? Or that your kids are home alone while you and your spouse are out for supper? Even if you limit your posts to your circle of friends, you still cannot guarantee that’s as far as they go.

And have you actually met all of your “friends” or are some of them Internet friends only? Housewife Donna from Windsor could be stalker Mike from your workplace. The ancient adage of better being safe than sorry would apply. 

Did you know social network accounts can be hijacked? Protect your own accounts by using unguessable passwords. Don’t pick something obvious like your licence plate or your daughter’s name. Choose something with a mix of uppercase and lowercase letters and numbers. 

And why would anyone want to hijack your social network account? There are those out there who use hijacked accounts to launch a phishing expedition — they try to lure your friends into clicking on a malicious link that they think was sent by you. 

And since your friends’ accounts could be hijacked already, use caution when clicking on a link sent to you regardless of the source. Clicking on a malicious link could hand over access to your computer and all its files to criminals. 

And my last bit of advice is to use CollectionMine’s online data backup software. Your computer files will be stored safely and securely away from prying eyes in a world-class data centre. All of your important data would be safe from theft, spying, viruses and all other disasters.

Enjoy the Internet and all it offers, but be aware and careful. Don’t invite trouble by posting information that could be used against you.

There are a few ways that someone can gain unauthorized access to your email account. Possibly your password is too simple and someone can guess it. Or your password is great but someone can guess the answer to your password reset question. If you access your email account from an unsafe public terminal someone using Firesheep can grab your account details. Any of these scenarios will allow your email account to be accessed by someone other than you.

To make it harder for spies and snoops, here are a few common sense tips to follow.

1. Pick a good password. Don’t make it something obvious to those who know you. Make it long, add numbers and mix uppercase and lowercase. And then change it. Not right away, of course, and even not every few days, but just every so often. That way those people who have known your email, such as your roommate or your ex, won’t be able to check up on you whenever they want.

2. Go through the “I forgot my password” procedure and discover how hard/easy it is for you to regain access to your account. A password reset option is really good. If there’s a password reset question required, there’s no reason to have put the “correct answer” as your answer in the first place. So what if your first pet was named Spot? Feel free to put “Michael Jackson” if you think you can remember that answer. Just don’t tell anyone!

3. Want to access your email using an unsafe public terminal? Just don’t. Don’t.

4. Don’t click on “reply to all” unless you know exactly who all the recipients are. You don’t want your emails being sent inadvertently to the wrong people. This can prove embarrassing and upsetting for you and them. Or it could provide confidential information to people who are not meant to see it.

And while we’re on the topic of email, here’s a tip which admittedly has nothing to do with preventing unauthorized access: watch your tone when using email. Sarcasm does not translate well. Neither does irony. If the topic of your email is sensitive, potentially contentious or will spark a long discussion, pick up the phone instead. 

Email is useful and it is handy, but it is not the only medium from which you can choose. Sometimes it’s wiser to choose another method to deliver information. The phone, couriers, mail, ftp, even the fax machine are viable alternatives. 

We can’t stress enough the importance of data security. People who gain unauthorized access to your email account will be able to view all of your emails and their attachments, so the above steps should be taken to protect it.

We strongly urge readers to consider online data storage and backup. Keep your most sensitive and important computer files safe from loss, from theft and from prying eyes by using CollectionMine’s online data storage.

Phishing, for those who are not familiar with the term, is a type of fraud in which the criminal sends out legitimate-looking e-mails in an attempt to get the recipients to hand over personal and financial information. It usually involves the victim clicking on a link that takes them to a bogus website which looks very much like the legitimate site. Once the victims “log in” with their user names and passwords, the criminal has access to their online accounts.

Websites that are frequently spoofed include PayPal, eBay, Yahoo, BestBuy and America Online.

Phishing has been around for a few years now, but there is a new twist called “spear phishing” that computer users should be aware of. It is what the FBI calls a “risinig cyber threat you need to know about.”

Spear phishing is a very clever method to deliver malicious software that gives criminals control of their victims’ computers.  This method involves sending out e-mails that are highly personalized, using information that makes them look like they have been sent by a very trusted source.

How do the criminals (phishers) get your personal information? Sometimes they comb through blogs and social networking sites like Facebook. They are also known to hack into companies’ computer networks and steal files. That’s what happened to McDonald’s and Honda recently. Their customer e-mail lists were stolen.

Imagine those Honda customers who are quite used to getting periodic e-mails from Honda. They would expect more e-mails from Honda and would see no reason to be suspicious. They would be very vulnerable to phishing expeditions by the thieves.

Over Christmas dozens of American government employees fell for a spear phishing lure in the guise of an e-mail from the White House. They thought they were downloading an e-card from the President, but instead got an executable file that would allow the criminals to take control of their computers.  

Targeted spear phishing gets far better results for the phishers than regular phishing, and with far fewer e-mails involved. It’s a ploy that is around to stay.

So how to avoid becoming a victim of a spear phishing expedition? It’s becoming so much harder, especially now the “trusted source” can’t be trusted so readily any more.

Use caution. Don’t click on links in e-mails. Key in the URL yourself. And watch for URLs that are slightly different than what you typically key in for the trusted source’s website. Be wary if the e-mail contains unexpected typos or grammatical errors. 

Phishing e-mails numbered over 95 billion last year. That is a staggering amount. Spear phishing e-mails comprised over 6% of that total in 2010. With those kinds of numbers, we all of us can expect to receive at least one fraudulent e-mail in the near future. 

To safeguard your private and confidential computer files we strongly urge you to consider using online data storage. CollectionMine allows you to back up and store all of your data securely and affordably. Your files will be kept in our world-class data centre, safe from prying eyes, viruses, and all other dangers your computer faces.

Eric Butler decided to prove to the world that security on popular websites like Facebook, Twitter and Amazon.com is laughable.  He did this by creating and distributing a Firefox extension called Firesheep.

Firesheep lets you essentially hijack other people’s insecure social network connections.  Simply put, Facebook among other sites authenticates its clients with cookies. If someone uses a public WiFi connection to log onto Facebook et al., that opens the door for anyone using Firesheep to capture and display their authentication information. The connection can then be hijacked.

As Butler explained, “As soon as anyone on the network visits an insecure website known to Firesheep, their name and photo will be displayed.” All you have to do is double click on their name and you will be able to log into that user’s site with their authentication information.

Many social network sites are not secured besides Facebook. Foursquare, and Gowalla are also vulnerable as are Amazon.com, Basecamp, bit.ly, Cisco, CNET, Dropbox, Enom, Evernote, Facebook, Flickr, Github, Google, HackerNews, Harvest, Windows Live, NY Times, Pivotal Tracker, Slicehost, tumblr, Twitter, WordPress, Yahoo, and Yelp.

These sites, and many more, only encrypt your login. Once you’re logged in they use an unsecured connection with a simple cookie check. Anyone with that cookie can masquerade as you. That is the vulnerability that Firesheep exploits.

Eric Butler made Firesheep available for free. It has been downloaded hundreds of thousands of times. The amount of mischief/harm it can do is incalculable.

Anytime you’re using an open WiFi connection, anyone with FIresheep can quickly access your most private and personal information and correspondence. And you won’t know until after the damage is done. And you won’t know who did the damage.

So our advice to you is to not use an open WiFi connection to send or receive sensitive information. To be safe, assume people can access any information you see or send over a public wireless network.

That’s the simple answer to this issue. If you want to really ensure your privacy and security, you can set up an SSH SOCKS proxy to encrypt your traffic. Or you could use extensions like the HTTPS Everywhere Firefox extension that forces popular sites to send data via HTTPS protocol, which encrypts data as it is being sent.

If you didn’t understand the paragraph above, stick to not using an open WiFi connection while using Facebook and its counterparts.

Treat your data with respect. Just as you wouldn’t leave your bankbook or your diary on your doorstep, you shouldn’t expose your data to the world at large.

The temptation that Firesheep offers is that it can turn anyone into a spy. People who would normally not consider doing anything devious or underhanded can now snoop and pry without risk. How many would succumb to the temptation? The fact that hundreds of thousands of people have downloaded Firesheep is an indication that a lot would. Or else it means that there are hundreds of thousands of criminals who would use it for their own gain. 

Either way, be aware that there are people ready and willing to check out your private information and act accordingly.

CollectionMine strongly urges people to consider their most valuable and private information as being under threat. Whether it is by hackers, by viruses, by disaster, by computer failure, your data is vulnerable unless you back it up.

Online data storage is the ideal solution. Your data is kept in a world-class data centre, safe from thieves, hackers, viruses, disaster and computer failure. It is fully accessible 24/7/365. It is worry-free and extremely affordable.

Check out CollectionMine’s offsite data backup software now, and ensure your irreplaceable and private information is kept safe and secure from prying eyes and harm.