Lately popular micro-blogging platform Twitter has been hit by phishing scams! If you are getting a Twitter direct message reading: “check out this funny blog about you”, don’t click the link. Because it will redirect you to a fake Twitter login page on http://twitter.access-logins.com/login/, created by some phishers. If someone enters Twitter username and password on that site, their accounts could be hijacked by those phishers for sending direct spam messages on behalf of you. So, never enter your login details on unknown sites. At least give a look at the URL before entering your username and password.

On Saturday, Twitter quickly informed it’s users about the phishing attack through a status update:

If you receive an email notice saying you’ve received a Direct Message with a link that redirects to what seems like Twitter.com, be careful about entering your Twitter credentials. Instead, look closely at the URL to see if it’s not really Twitter but a sketchy phishing site like http://twitter.access-logins.com. If this has you feeling a bit weirded out, feel free to change your Twitter password.

After looking at the WHOIS report of that particular site, you can easily tell that the registrant is in China. But the good thing is that that fake site is now being blocked by all major web browsers except Internet Explorer. So, Firefox users don’t have to worry about it.

I wanted to see how the phishing site looks or how they are trying to make us fool! So, I opened that site on Internet Explorer and found that it is a den of phishing attacks. The main URL (http://twitter.access-logins.com) displays a fake Facebook login page (second screenshot), which takes the user to a URL similar to Facebook.com. It means that they are also trying to attack the Facebook users? But, one can easily stay away from that one by looking at the URL which includes the word ‘twitter’.

So, the bottomline is Internet is full of scams and frauds. If you want to stay away from them, never click suspicious links and never enter your login details on unknown sites.

As a blogger, I am sure that you all have profiles on different social networking or social media sites. Ever wanted to share your activities on those sites with your community, friends or blog readers? If yes, you should go for lifestreaming. What is lifestreaming? According to Word Spy, lifestreaming is “an online record of a person’s daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person’s online content such as blog posts, social network updates, and online photos.” There are many third party services that allows lifestream.  Just choose one and share your activities with the world.

But you may want some uniqueness in your lifestream. For example, you may want to integrate it with your WordPress blog, which is not a bad idea. In that case, you may try ‘Lifestream’, an unique WordPress plugin that displays your social feeds and photos much like you would see it on many of the popular social networking sites or third party lifestreaming services. Want to see it in action? Follow the demo link provided below.

The ‘Lifestream’ plugin is very easy to use. It supports unlimited numbers of feeds in your lifestream and includes most of the popular social networking feeds. For example: Facebook, Digg, Twitter, Reddit, Delicious, Jaiku, YouTube, Last.fm, Google Reader, Photobucket, StumbleUpon, Ma.gnolia, Mixx, Vimeo etc. And the good thing is that you may add your own feeds.

Some features of Lifestream:

• Free WordPress plugin for lifestream.
• Supports unlimited number of feeds.
• Stores entire feed history, not just the last week or two.
• Extendable via a base PHP class. Easily add your own feed types with very little PHP code.
• Personalizable CSS classes.
• Detailed configuration options.
• Supports nearly every major social networking website (see)
• Supports grouping of events.
• Localized in English, Chinese (Simplified), Japanese, Polish, Dutch, Italian, Bulgarian, French, German, Danish and Spanish.
• Daily digest available to summarize your online activities.

Requirements of Lifestream Plugin:

PHP 5.1 or newer.
MySQL 5.0 or newer.
WordPress 2.5 or newer.

More Info | Demo | Download

Year 2009 is here! I wish you all a happy and prosperous New Year. May this new year bring you lots and lots of love, happiness and success. My best wishes are always with you.

So, year 2008 is gone and the new year has taken possession of the clock of time. This is the time to look forward, not back. So, forget what you did in year 2008. Think about the coming 12 months of 2009. You have lots of things to do, lots of things to achieve. Move forward with confidence and learn from mistakes made in past. Don’t stop your search for new opportunities. Whatever you do, love your work and success will follow. Happy Blogging and Happy Earning!

When talking about email marketing, what comes to your mind? If you are a beginner, you may have both positive and negative opinions towards it. You may think that it is all about spam mails or you may also think that it is something that carries the power to make one rich overnight! And I am sure that you have heard about it in various blogs, forums etc. So, what actually email marketing means? Let’s talk about it from a beginner’s point of view.

What is Email Marketing? Learn more here!

Before going further, I want to make it clear that this article in meant for the beginners, who wants to make money online. If you are a seasoned player in the file of make money online or affiliate marketing, your point of view will be somewhat different and you may skip this article, though I always welcome your constructive feedback.

First, what is email marketing? In simple words, it is the use of the power of electronic mail or email in order to reach a wide range of potential customers or readers when offering products and services. Simply put, it is marketing via email and it is one of the most powerful tools one can have in internet marketing.

An alternative definition of email marketing, however, is when a company continues to foster communication with existing clients in order to enhance the service being offered and the relationship in existence. These are all done with the intent of gaining customer loyalty and patronage.

Email marketing, in either definitional paradigms, aims for the end of loyalty and patronage. If email marketing were to be used on potential clients, the role that the strategy has to play is that of trying to transform readers into real clients. The same idea holds true for existing clients. If existing clients were to receive continuous check-ups and evaluation of the service offered, the perception of forwarding the satisfaction of the customers would be made even clearer.

Email marketing, of course, does not go off without any negative perception from the society. Many individuals see themselves as greatly inconvenienced by email marketing, which is at times classified as spam. However, it has come a long way since those early days of a complete and absolute negative stigma of email marketing. Now people have the right to choose what they find useful and suitable content arriving into their in-boxes.

However, in email marketing, it is important to know what rights and limitations are in existence. In the United States of America, different states revolt. Some would legislate against email marketing (which is considered spam) and others would not. That’s why in preparing and serving an email marketing campaign, you must take care not to annoy your prospects with unwanted and irrelevant emails. The legality of receiving an article of email marketing is unquestioned when the customer being serviced is that with which the company has had previous transactions with. A pre-existing business relationship may vary, but it may very well be someone from whom the company has previously requested information from, or someone who has bought or acquired the services of the company. This implies a level of consent that must be present in all the emails that will be used in email marketing campaigns.

Because of these various reasons, there are some imperative steps that must be taken by a marketer or company wishing to take part in any email marketing campaign. For example:

• Maintaining the integrity of Content: Legislation against email marketing, and marketing general, are in fact in place because in past there was many reports of abuses. Therefore, it is imperative that of some of the things considered in an email marketing campaign is that of integrity of content. This would mean the inclusion of the senders’ complete and accurate information.
• Clarity of Consent: It is imperative that companies or individuals make sure that the persons they are sending emails to are those they’ve had previous transactions with, and are in good standing with each of them. There is a necessity to keep close track to each and every email address being added to the list of clients because similarly, it would be easy to duly evaluate consent in each and every scenario.
• Aggressiveness of Content: While email marketers may want to carry on with their aggressive marketing strategies, their interests must be balanced with the rights of individuals against marketing strategies that are far too aggressive and neglect their rights and wishes. So, companies and email marketers should use subject lines that reflect content, use a valid address, and make arrangements for the recipients to opt out of the service or from receiving future notices and marketing pitches.

At the end of the day, email marketing is a powerful marketing tool that really works. It works because of its low-cost and its far-reaching capacities. However, because there are no singular restrictions as to how it may be used without going to the extent of the legal borderline behavior, companies and individuals that wish to use it in its full potency must in return expect a degree of compromise to be made, which may not endanger the reputation of the company or the brand, but may, in the long run, help build a healthy brand image.

So, that was all about email marketing in a nutshell! If you are thinking about trying email marketing to make some money online, don’t forget the points that I discussed above. Then take help from a powerful tool like Aweber and jump into real work. I am sure that soon you will become a successful email marketer. Need some more elaborate information about email marketing. Watch out for my next few articles. Old player in this field? Still trying hard to get good results? Just keep it in mind that gone are the days of tons and tons of spam mails. Instead build a good list, create some creative and powerful email marketing campaigns and see the difference.

Merry Christmas to all my readers, subscribers and advertisers. May this Christmas be bright and cheerful and may the New Year bring abundant love, joy and happiness in your life. I hope that many of you have already started to think about the goals for the next year. That’s really nice. In fact this is the right time to start something new. Set some solid goals, prepare yourself mentally and jump into practical work. And the success will be all yours. My best wishes are always with you and I know you can do it!

Once again Merry Christmas!