While I was trying to sell my car on CraigsList I received an e-mail which said:

Goodday,

I am Dr Charles Anthony and i am interested in buying your car which you posted on the net for sale .I would like to know if the car is still available for sale while you furnish me with your final selling price.

I will await your kind and timely reply soon so that we can proceed on how payment would be made.

Hope to read back from you.
Dr.Charles

I replied with my price and got this answer:
“Dear Seller,

Thanks for you quick response.am ok with the price and the conditions,i will like to tell you that i will be paying with a Certified cashier check through a client of mine in us dollars and as for the shippment,my shipper will come for the pick up at your location upon your confirmation of receiving the payment and i dont want you to look for any other buyer. i would have love to come down for the pick up,but am not chance to do that now but am satisfy with your discription of the item i will like you to give me the following so that your payment can be sent……………..

1….your full name to be on the check
2..your full contact address to send the payment to
3..your zip code
4.your mobile land number to reach you.

I will expect your mail.asap.
Regards
Dr.Charles

At this point I know it’s a scam. Here’s a person using a yahoo e-mail address buying a 1996 vehicle without seeing it first and then wants it shipped somewhere!

When I checked their IP address I found:
196.220.0.154
OrgName: African Network Information Center
OrgID: AFRINIC
Address: 03B3 - 3rd Floor - Ebene Cyber Tower
Address: Cyber City
Address: Ebene
Address: Mauritius
City: Ebene
StateProv:
PostalCode: 0001
Country: MU (has anyone ever heard of Mauritius?)

I wrote them back and asked for their contact information and was told

Dear Jim,
Thanks for the mail,i live at new jearsy and now i’m on business trip to canada but i have contacted my client concerning the payment and i was told that the cheque would be send to your address today or tommorow
morning.

I want you to prepair the car and pack it outside immediately you got the cheque ok.
Hope to read back from you when you got the cheque
Charles

I’m sure what was supposed to happen here was they were going to send me a bad check and then ask for a refund after it was deposited, but before it was discovered to be a fraud.

I wondered if there was something that could be done before the scammer found out I was aware of their plan so I called the FBI and they told me to call the Secret Service. The woman at the Secret Service told me that there was not much they could do because these countries will not help us prosecute them. She did tell me to visit this website
http://financialcrimestaskforce.com which I did and posted my story. I also did some reaserch and found a slightly different version of this scam with the same MO and IP address
http://www.terrificpets.com/scams/scam.asp?bad=2149 and I’m sure that there are more.

I’m also posting here and telling you BEWARE!

Sara Holoubek of Search Engine Watch has written a post about just how far SEO has come in a short time. Major companies are adding VP’s of Search, she says it’s “the hottest new title in town”. Well, if the big players are doing it shouldn’t small companies at least recognize that search is something that is much more than an afterthought?

Small businesses can have an advantage over big ones in this regard. Search is constantly changing and evolving on the web and a small company can appear to be much bigger and more relevant just by being flexible enough to keep up with the changes, but first they must be aware of them.

I’m not saying that you need to devote a huge amount of resources to this, but I do believe that it’s a good idea to at least have someone either inside the company or perhaps contracted out to keep up on the trends and to keep the management apprised of what’s involved in search engine marketing and optimization, what the future is looking like and where your company stands in regards to both.

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With Search Engine Optimization (SEO) nothing is ever guaranteed, so my first rule of thumb is to be skeptical of anyone who does guarantee you specific results. That doesn’t necessarily mean they can’t do it, but they may just be talking about a specific search for your name or some other obscure search term that you could probably get yourself without much effort. The search engines are continually changing their algorithms which constantly changes their results, so even being number one in the rankings today doesn’t necessarily mean that you will be tomorrow.

I try to explain to my clients that whenever I design a website I do it with the visitors in mind first and the search engines second. I believe that if you can design a site that provides good quality content and easy to follow navigation that the rankings will come and remain fairly consistent.

On occasion I have had a client ask me about optimizing their site for a specific keyword(s) and how much would I charge for that. Often the client believes that to get their site to number one at all the major search engines all that needs done is to stuff their content with key words and to add a few meta tags. Unfortunately, due to abuse, most search engines give little or no weight to meta tags for rankings anymore and “keyword stuffing” can be seen as Spam and get your site banned completely.

Many times in order to do the job right it involves completely changing the way a website is structured and that involves more time, resources and money than is possible. The question remains how and how much do I charge for this? Here is an interesting discussion on the CSS Beauty site about this issue.

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On this day to remember this countrys loss on September 11th I read this essay by Bruce Schneier about how to prevent future terrorist acts.

He reminds us that “Our best defense is intelligence and investigation. Rather than spending money on airline security, or sports stadium security.”

We should not be wasting our resources on highly visible displays of pretend security just to get people (re)elected.

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Here?s something for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)

It’s amazing how far computer games have progressed. But have you ever felt the urge to take a trip back in time and relive the games of the eighties and nineties? Well now you can download and play.

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I also have many old style arcade games that you can play on line at my old personal site.

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Here’s an article by Bruce Schneier about how money and resources are wasted on Digital Rights Management.

I can understand how authors want to protect their content, but I believe that this is something that people don’t want and if that’s the case then there are too many people willing to put more time and effort into undoing your protection than anyone can afford to put into making it.

This is sad because it wastes so much productivity that could be put to much better use. Like finding a better way to pay artists for their work.

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iWEBTOOL has free Webmaster tools including seo tools. It’s a very good way to find out how good your website ranks.

On this site there are:

• Google PageRank Prediction
• Visual PageRank
• Backlink Checker
• All-in-One Lookup
• Link Popularity
• PageRank Checker
• Search Engine Position
• Website Speed Test
• Rank Checker
• Google Banned Checker

I would recommend that you start with the All-in-One Lookup. You can get some great information about your site.

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I have seen many articles showing up lately on what a business needs to know before building (or rebuilding) a website. It seems like there is always more to think about than what you first consider.

What I like to tell my customers is to concentrate on your core business. Get one thing right before you move into ancillary products and services. Always plan to add more information later, because if you start out in too many directions your project will look like you are moving in many directions at once. I have found that once you build a sturdy foundation to your site making small changes and adding new content becomes easier and easier.

Roger Johansson has written a nice post called “10 things businesses should know before building a website” where he talks about the best articles that he has seen and adds some great points of his own.

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It’s the Labor Day holiday here in the US and I’m off to a Barbecue.

It’s the unofficial end of summer in this part of the country. Feel free to read more about the holiday.

Here…

Here?s something for some fun on a Friday. (Not responsible if you get caught playing at work)

What a cool toy! I wish that I had this one on my Hatteras beach vacation last month, the sky there is so clear and big.

The SkyScout is a revolutionary handheld device that uses advanced GPS technology with point and click convenience to identify thousands of stars, planets, constellations and more.

The SkyScout includes entertaining and educational audio and text information, including facts, trivia, history and mythology about our most popular celestial objects.

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