Top 5 ways to keep your computer and identity safe during the holidays

Don't click on links in emails. Go directly to the website to check on orders.

Traditionally, phishing and malware attacks rise during the holiday season as online impersonators try to trick shoppers users into installing malware or providing personal information.

Before the holiday season starts, take some time to learn tips to make your online experience safe and insure a smooth celebration.

1. Don't click on emailed order confirmations or shipping links

This time of year, scammers take advantage of increased online buying and the corresponding package deliveries. They use fake order information and shipping notifications as a method to infect PCs and grab personal details. These fake notifications often look very close to the real version. When in doubt, don't click directly on order confirmations or shipping links within the email. Go directly to the retailer’s or shipper’s website by typing the address into a web browser to verify order and shipping information.

2. Don't respond to password requests, even from your bank

Your financial institution will never e-mail you asking for your password or any other information. Emails requesting that you use an embedded link are an attempt to scam you into surrendering private information for identity theft or other unauthorized purposes. Legitimate organizations should never request sensitive information in this manner. Instead of clicking on a link, type the legitimate URL to your financial institutions in your browser to access the web site.

3. Unless 100% certain of the source, never open attachments

When the sender is known and the attachment is in doubt, contact the sender directly and verify the legitimacy of the attachment.

4. Nice sentiment, but don't open online greeting cards

Each holiday, you can expect a flood of e-greeting cards from friends and family wishing you a happy holiday. While seemingly harmless, these holiday greetings can be dangerous. They may contain harmful viruses or may be used for identity theft. E-greeting cards are best not to be opened, and especially should not be opened using a work computer.

5. Carefully review all email, delete any suspicious ones

If the email is suspicious, do not click on any web link or open any attachment.

Two possible ways to evaluate emails are:

• Move your mouse over a link without clicking it; you can often see the actual destination URL address underlying that link. If the now visible URL doesn’t look like an address that belongs to the legitimate site, be extra careful. If it appears to be legitimate, still be careful, the hackers are getting creative in this area as well. Instead, go directly to the website you know.
  
• Often times, but not all the time, the “To” list of the email has multiple names that do not make sense for the subject matter. Delete these emails.

BONUS

6. Safe Computing Tips for the office

In the workplace, you are the first line of defense and the best defense. Be skeptical of work and personal email that you’re not expecting and that is from unknown sources or just looks suspicious. When in doubt, contact your local help desk to verify any suspicious emails.

What tips do you have?

Great is the enemy of good and other things I learned from blogging

I fidgeted in the chair and reached for the cup of coffee. I took a quick sip and listened to the question. I let it hang in the space between us. I took another sip and I mulled it over. A smile snuck across my face, I settled the cup down, looked directly at the gentleman who could potentially promote me and said:

"If there are two roads
leading to my destination,

Both roads will get me to my
destination at the same time,

One is stalled in traffic,
and the other moving slowly,

I will always choose the road that is moving."

If you're moving there's hope.

I went into my 30 days in a row blogging project with the same thought. Get moving. Do it now. Maybe it won't be perfect, but the practice of contributing each day will get you closer to where you want to be.

If you're moving you may get inventive, prove you own American ingenuity and figure out a better, faster, more efficient way to get to your destination.

Luck might happen.

In my previous posts, I shared snippets of what I learned. It's not about making money, it's about moving along the path of contributing, building your brand, finding your voice. Readers will come if you add something new on a consistent basis.

I discovered I seldom sat down knowing what to write about, but the fact that I managed an editorial calendar--a semblance of a plan--gave me a place to start, a way to move into traffic, even if I was moving slowly. A certain amount of glee arose when I mangled my own calendar by moving things off and giving some a swift kick to infinity when they didn't come together as I'd hoped.

But.

I didn't get any complaints.

I got viewers.

If you try and make a post perfect it will never happen. It's not like print, you're not sending out 50,000 copies with a blatant mistake that you'll regret and beat yourself up for. It's online. It's one page that you can edit over and over and over again. People will help you edit, they'll correct your grammar, they'll leave funny comments, you'll engage, you'll laugh and you'll be part of a virtual community.

Here's what the participating in the virtual community taught me...

Lessons Learned from Blogging:
1. Having a goal means you can measure your success
2. Having a plan, in this case a calendar, gives you direction
3. Mistakes are not forever, community will help you correct them
4. Everyday there is a new deadline
5. You have 24 hours to make the deadline

And there's plenty of do-overs. Not every post was a home run. But as a friend of mine said recently, “Great is the enemy of good.”

Sometimes when we're trying so hard to be great, to seek quality, we forget all that anyone wants from us is to be there, to be present, to be good in the moment, to be good enough. To create something today, so that we have a shot at tomorrow. And maybe, just maybe, while we're striving to be good something great will happen.

Did great things happen for me? Well, when the interview was over, I was not promoted. But the disciplined effort to blog everyday led to local, national, and even international attention.

More on that tomorrow.

---

If you'd like to read the other posts in the blogging series, try these:

1.

What I learned from Jeremiah Owyang
that allowed me to take down Google*
*Almost

2.

Tips for blogging everyday

3.

Great is the enemy of good and other
things I learned from blogging

4.

How blogging is like throwing stones

5.

How blogging for 30 days in a row
leads to international acclaim

Tips for blogging everyday

Keep it in motion.

Yesterday, I disclosed my genius idea to take down Google by offering free ads on my blog. The disclosure was made mid-stream on a post about choosing to be a consistent blogger.

Before I began my 'daily blogging' journey I was actually on a different path. I had planned to write a post to help other people blog. A few ideas had been percolating. The first one was to create a great check-off list from ideas I'd gleaned around the web.

Tips for Bloggers:
1. Start with clear objectives
2. Develop a strategy
3. Keep content focused on a topic
4. Have an editorial calendar
5. Measure based on objectives
6. Integrate social tools, allow logins from social networks
7. Encourage for word of mouth (WOM), integrate into all you do
8. Most effective blogs are conversational or controversial
9. Treat your site (and you) as it's own company or brand
10% for fun, stuff you ♥

I never posted my list.

I decided to live it.

My objective would be to test the theory that posting with consistency changes the world. I wasn't sure how it would change my world, but I knew that it would.

My strategy was to post for thirty days in a row. It was June 18 and that month I'd only posted sporadically. Exactly nine times. I began with earnest on July 19.

360 Convos had its incubation when I wanted to write about business topics, as opposed to blogging on fiction writing and life themes, the center point of my other website. When I was building the strategy for this daily blogging adventure for 360 Convos, I considered a wide array of topics. In staying with item three on the above list, I decided to keep the content focused on business.

I did not keep the content focused on business. (I'm practicing, not shooting for perfection). I did, however, learn a few lessons while blogging everyday:

Jot down blog ideas whenever they occur. Do not use paper for this.

The best place a blogger can jot down ideas is somewhere online. I chose a Google calendar. No, I haven't taken Google down, yet. I still find most of their products useful. In keeping with item four on the list noted above, I dubbed my Google amenity Editorial Calendar and made it public.

I wrote down measurements to evaluate my success (item 5). I integrated social media and made sure the icons were large and easy to find (item 6):

Icons courtesy of PRLloyd

I talked about my blog (WOM). I left a screen up on my computer at work and reeled in a co-worker. I played around with style – conversational and tested controversial by using the word 'hell' in a headline. I sought a parental tone, I toyed with a touch of PR. I made a confession and made a personal disclosure that had left me dry-mouthed with guilt. I paraded a cute kitten. I preached to myself. I preached to no one else. I outed myself as a distracted parent (more than once).

I aggregated.

I fell asleep, not just once but twice.

I treated my blogging journey as a job. I treated my blog as its own company. I integrated my online presence and it became part of my personal branding strategy.

I love to write. I had fun.

I learned that when I was clueless about what to write about, I could refer to my editorial calendar and pick up exactly where my brain had left off. I learned I was in charge of the calendar and could change it when another topic felt more important. I learned I could take on a writing assignment – I could write not just for me, but for someone else as well.

Library Director abruptly retires
after correcting 360 Convos post.

After I pulled the trigger on my starting post, Literacy is the key to the internet, I received an email. A community member chose to send me a kind note, instead of lambasting me in the comments section on my disarray of facts. (I didn't know the difference between a bond and a levy). He coached me through several re-postings, so I could be accurate, mostly.

(Thank you Bruce Ziegman).

The effort to exchange those eleven emails and set me straight, apparently taxed Ziegman beyond his literary capabilities. Two and a half weeks later, he announced his retirement. Today, August 22, is my 35th consecutive post. I have no idea who will give up and retire today because of it.

Today, is my 35th consecutive post. I have no idea who will give up and retire because of it.

What I do know is that the disciplined effort to blog everyday taught me life lessons.

More on that tomorrow.

---

If you'd like to read the other posts in the blogging series, try these:

1.

What I learned from Jeremiah Owyang
that allowed me to take down Google*
*Almost

2.

Tips for blogging everyday

3.

Great is the enemy of good and other
things I learned from blogging

4.

How blogging is like throwing stones

5.

How blogging for 30 days in a row
leads to international acclaim