Internet Privacy Invansion

The internet is one big hairball that keeping expanding. It welcome a great opportunity to share informations. Unfortunately, some are use for wrong purpose to for personal or financial gain.

I will cover on different series of how you can protect yourself while browsing freely.

The first topic I will be covering on the social networking and the ladies.

The social networking is a wonderful web 2.0 concept to connect with your friends in a certain niche. Facebook, MySpace, and Linkedin are a good example of social networking. Linkedin is a great social networking connecting with other professionals seek prospective customers and job opportunity. This is an example of niche social networking. There are over thousands of niche social networking site.

The Facebook and MySpace is one of fastest growing social networking. They claimed to add 100,000 to 300,000 new users a week.

Some of social networking sites don’t have great privacy protection. It have holes in its security for people to exploits your privacy.

I am going to discuss e-whoring method today. E-whoring is a marketing tactics where a user set up a fake profile to enticing a member into sign-up for a financial gain.

For example, A male will find a pretty picture of a girl. He will create a profile on a dating site that he sign up with. Then, he maybe will go into chatroom or any ads site like Craigslist to advertise. He lures men who is interested in this profile. Then, he flirts with them and guide them to a sign-up page. Depend on publisher’s term on how the payout will be. Some will earn $3.00 per sign up or $30.00 for a new customer who sign up with credit card. In the end, if he is successful, he earns a paycheck and the customer end up into empty abyss where this girl doesn’t end.

This is considered fraudlent. The publisher don’t endorse this method. The publisher wants to build a honest business. If the publisher discovers this fraud is happening. This advertiser will be banned and the commission will not be paid. Unfortunately, those advertiser are savvy in hiding their identification. They resort to method called blackhat. It is a method where an advertiser may violates the agreement using unorthodox method to gain large financial in short period on internet. If you keeping on getting viagra ads in your inbox. Those e-mail came from blackhatter.

How does e-whoring exploits girls. I observe their method. They will building many profiles. The more profiles equals more monetary rewards. Their favorite place is going on MySpace to find cute girls. They will steal the picture to create a profile. It maybe your picture or your girlfriend. They will advertise the fake profile. They may advertise it in a sexually way. Can imagine if you happen to stumble across the picture. This picture is your sister or your daughter. And you are upset by her secret life she is living. This will cause a chao among the families and friends. Maybe she is doing this or she is a victim of being e-whored.

It is a two-way street fraudlent, your picture is being stolen and men are misleaded. Your reputation is tarnished and you end up losing money to a fake profile.

In my research, I discovered that there are two companies that enodorse this method of e-whoring. Those guys claimed that they make up to $1,000 or more per day tricking guys. They report that there is huge money in gay market.

How can you protect yourself?

1) Upload clean head and shoulder pictures, group pictures, and  non-sexual pictures only. The e-whore guys are looking for pictures that invoke sexually. Many girls like to post picture taken in bathroom off the mirror of her in underwear and tanktop. It is what lot of guys look for. If you must post, share it with your friend in a invitation profile only. Don’t revealing much of yourself on the internet. There are thousands and thousands of stalkers seek for an opportunity to pounce on you.  The e-whore guys love MySpace since lot of young girls fleece to these sites with no considration of her security and posting pictures like there is no tomorrow.

I give the Facebook five stars for good privacy system.

Take a look at your social networking profile. Some have toggles that you can control how much you release your information to the public. Keep it clean and respect manner and you shouldn’t have this problem.

2) Add watermark to the picture. It will slow the e-whore guys. The e-whore guys tends to be lazy and want easy way out making money. There is watermark stamped on picture and the e-whore guys don’t want to spend time cutting the mark out of picture. No watermark = amateur pictures + free of repeat uses.

3) Getting picture protected. Go to http://creativecommons.org/. It is a non-profit organization that provide copyright protection for any type of medium. Take advantage of this. It will make your case stronger if you are going to file a complaint.

4) Montitor your privacy using http://www.tineye.com/. It is a reverse search engine for image. Upload the picture or url address. It will search the engine. If you see your picture is being use in a wrong manner. You can search down the website and contact the administrator. They will investigate and possible revoke this advertiser’s account and remove their comission.

5) Run whois search. With some luck, you may find this  contact’s information. You can report to the website hosting account company that they are using your image in wrong way. They will suspended this person’s account. Check the information by entering website’s url at http://www.whois.net

6) Become educated on the Digital Millienium Copyright Act. It is a legislation bill it was passed by the Congress in 1998. It outline your right in how you can protect your work on-line. http://www.copyright.gov/legislation/dmca.pdf

I discover a e-whore profile being ’advertise’ discreetly on Tim Ferriss’s blog. I am declaring the profile plausible but a strong indication of e-whoring being employed. Here is the landing page, http://www.annamcmahon.com/.

Go ahead practice test this url by running it through Whois search and Tineye. If you are curious. Go to Craigslist and reply to an posting in relationship or adult section. You will see how they try to ’sell’ you. They are pretty savvy in doing this since they are motivated by making money easy way frauding the hell out of you. Again, run this through Tineye and Whois.

Remember to report to protect the next victim. The internet re-victimize the ladies forever through sharing. Watch out for yourself and your loved ones.  

Watch out, MySpace.com and HotorNot.com is a popular hunting ground for the e-whore guys to harvest the picture.

Be vigilant and get yourself protected today.

P.S. I must admit I fail to protect myself sometime. When I was working on this project. I was tired and I decide to take a nap. I left my work open. The next thing I find someone had use the computer. Oooh no. It is a big oops. What they see and they may mischaractized my e-whoring reserach. It make the situation awkward and it is tricky to give an explantation. Be vigilant, be responsible, and check your surrounding before you sign off.

We may slip sometime. We are human after all. We hope that someone out there will not take advantage of us. If one slip, extend your helping hand pull them up back on the feet. He will return you the favor the next time you stumbling down.

This Sunday, the December 21, 2008; my parents will mark their 40th anniversary.  I am so blessed to have parents in my life.

Mom and Dad

Let me pull the message I wrote about my parents from my Facebook profile:

My parents, Thomas Vieira and Sharon Vieira.

They are the architect of my life. They gave me the strong foundation that I can enable my journey in exploring the life.

They are amazing people. They beat the almost impossible odds. My dad and mom survived the hardship of life. The bag of hardship were homeless, growing up being unappreciated with lack of love, facing the horrible forms of abuse, and have almost no guide in life.

They married when my dad was 17 and my mom was 18. One of their first commitment is that their children will not live their old lifestyle.

Today, my sisters and I are the outcome of their success. We all three graduated from college. It were my parents’ iron-clad goal that we will graduate from college and to live a good life with all their support no matter what.

My parents of 40 years in marriage has served as my role model in building a loving relationship and the driven character of being success in life.

They are always persistent in hope, faith and love.

My parents, Thomas and Sharon, the mast of my life.

Technorati Profile

I am now read a book by Rod Dreher, “Crunchy Cons”.  It is a controversy takes on the conservatives that now is becoming a countercultural to the mainstreamed conservatives and liberals. 

On the front cover, the block text go on,

How Birkenstocked Burkeans, gun-loving organic gardeners, evangelical free-range farmers, hip homeschooling mamas, right-wing nature lovers, and their diverse tribe of countercultural conservatives plan to save America (or at least the Republican Party)

This is such contrasting statement how Dreher describe the conservatives. Birkenstock? Organic?

Dreher’s chapter on Consumerism, he tells his experience meeting Wade Davis, the Harvard anthropologist, who studies the vanishing indigenous cultures around the world. 

The conservation between Dreher and Davis after the lecture which I find it interesting…

We say we believe in marriage, but half our marriages end in divorce. We say we love our children, but look how we let them live.  We say we believe in the family, but you don’t see it in the way we behave.  You can say a lot of things about Americans, but ‘they’re happy’ is not one of them.

The thread of a conservation between Davis and Dreher made me thinks how we hold on our beliefs yet our actions don’t reflect what it aligned with the belief.

The solution American’s misguided dream maybe is to make a committment and live what we intended to live our life.