Category: Guidance

The Secure Padlock Myth

When browsing on the Internet, you will be familiar with the padlock symbol that appears just to the left of the internet address. Depending on your browser, the padlock symbol may be green.

That padlock means ‘secure’ and you should never input any confidential information on a website if there isn’t a padlock symbol showing.

However, this does not mean that the website is safe to use – only that a level of encryption is in use between the browser and the Internet address. This encryption is called SSL.

The little padlock does not mean that the website is safe as criminals can easily get SSL for their fake scam websites.

Google has plans to stop using the padlock symbol as the vast majority of websites now do use SSL security, so would have the padlock symbol.

If you want more details on a website’s security, you can click on the padlock symbol and it will tell you the organisation name for the encryption certificate. If it doesn’t match the domain name (i.e. the Internet address) then that is a red warning flag.

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What to Do When Your Website is Copied

As many of us know, it can be a long tough job to build a website with great content that attracts customers and serves their needs, but it is an essential part of most businesses nowadays.

Unfortunately, there are many out there who may decide to use that success to their advantage by simply copying graphics, contents, ideas from your website or even just duplicating your website and putting their name on it.

What Can You Do?

If your site suffers from copying, the first step is to collect evidence – take screen shots of your site and the copy then try to contact the owner of the copycat site.

If the copying is not too serious, then maybe a warning will lead to removal of the problem content.

But in some cases, the copying is part of a very deliberate plan to defraud people and you may get the blame from scammed customers.

Steps to Take

  1. Use the WHOIS lookup service at whois.com to find out who registered the site’s domain name.

The information will include a contact email address.

In some cases, the owner will have kept their contact details anonymous.

  1. Contact The Internet Company Hosting the Web Site.

You can contact the server host and request the page or site be taken down, but you will need evidence of course.

  1. Search Engines

If you are ignored by the site owner, then you can proceed to submitting request to Google and Bing to have the site removed from their listings.

  1. DMCA Takedown

In the case that you need the site to be taken down entirely, you can request a DMCA Takedown which costs $199 per site, but can be worth it.

  1. Seek Legal Advice.

If you do not succeed, then it’s time to get legal advice and go after the owner of the website for damages.

This can be time consuming and expensive so it depends on the level of damage the copycat web site is causing to your business / reputation.

If you have any experiences with this issue of websites being copied,  do let me know, by email.

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Does Your Website Attract Fake Traffic

Website owners are always keen to know how much “traffic” their site gets i.e. how many people visit the site, which pages they read etc.

We all know that some of the traffic on the Internet is fake, but most website owners hope it is a small percentage of the real traffic.  However, some companies in the field of advertising believe that up to 50% of traffic achieved through advertising could be fake.

In this context ‘fake’ means it’s not a person looking at your website – it’s another  computer.

This is the reason why so many websites these days insist you answer a Capcha query (click the I’m not a robot button) to prove you are a human being.

Fake traffic is traffic generated by software not by humans. Fake traffic is used to artificially inflate ad revenue by making a site’s audience appear greater than it is in reality.

If an advertising network identifies a website’s traffic as fake, it will likely result in suspensions or even bans on the publisher’s advertising account.

How To Identify Fake Traffic

This is a complicated matter and needs expertise, but you would start by examining the statistics for the website :-

  • A very high bounce rate can indicate a lot of disinterested visitors or bots (computer programmes rather than people)
  • A very low pages/session figure can mean people attracted to the site are only interested in one link then they leave. If combined with a very short average length of visit can mean automated viewing not people.
  • Geography: If your website is in English and you get large amounts of traffic from countries where English is not typically used much, that can indicate suspect traffic.
  • A sudden unexplained increase in traffic can be welcome but if it doesn’t make sense e.g. no extra purchases or comments then it may be caused by automated systems scanning your website.

How to Stop Bots Accessing Your Website

Using a CAPTCHA to ensure visitors are human rather than computer is a good start and there is a file on your website called robots.txt which tells bots whether or not they are allowed to access the website. (Check on the Internet for how to access and edit this file on your website). Reputable business bots will access and obey the instruction in robots.txt but scammers, spammers, hackers and many others will ignore it.

If the fake traffic problem is seriously impacting your website and customers, then there are online services that will filter out such unwanted traffic but that does cost of course.

All sites attract fake traffic and the more popular a site then typically the more fake traffic it will get.

If you have any experiences with this problem, do let me know, by email.

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How to Check a Financial Web Site is Genuine

Imagine you want to find the best place for your savings or the best place to invest a windfall or the best pension scheme available, for example.

You might go to a professional financial advisor or to your bank or other finance organisation you know.

But if you don’t have the money for an advisor then it might be a case of asking friends and relatives for their opinions or just using a search engine.

However, when you get to searching online, there is a huge number of finance organisations online and many criminals create fake websites that sometimes look exactly like the ones for genuine businesses.

Q. How do you tell which websites are genuine and which are fake?

The starting point is to ignore unsolicited emails, text messages, calls etc. – these are very likely to be fake and should be ignored.

Things to Look For

  1. Check the message and website looking for mistakes
    • Correct URL e.g. Barclays Bank rather than Baclays Bank
    • Use of broken English
    • Simple spelling mistakes or serious grammatical errors
    • The content on the website doesn’t make sense
    • Pictures, diagrams etc. that fit in with the rest of the site and haven’t just been added at random to fill space.

2. Open the Google Transparency Report webpage.

https://transparencyreport.google.com/safe-browsing/search?hl=en_GB

Click the “Search by URL” field in the middle of the page and type in the Internet address for the website you want to check. Google will tell you if it can find anything dodgy about the website.

  1. Check the company on the Companies House website at https://www.gov.uk/get-information-about-a-company
  2. Check for reviews online about the business and check anti-scam websites

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Improving the Quality of Consumer Reviews

Research shows that it is generally the people with strong opinions who leave product reviews and the majority without strong opinions tend not to leave so many reviews.

So that leaves most people with no voice, by their own choice.

Bigger companies, usually have more customers, which can mean a higher likelihood of more reviews, which can mean more potential customers reading the reviews which can lead to more sales.

This can be a virtuous circle for big brands.

Research by Sinan Aral for MIT suggests that some reviews can be systematically biased.

“Social proof”, a psychological and social phenomenon where people assume the actions of others in an attempt to reflect correct behaviour in a given situation may be the basis for this.

Improving the Quality of Consumer Reviews

Reviews are shown to have a significant effect on consumer decision-making and it is important for people responsible for getting reviews (Marketing agencies and businesses) to do what they can to ensure the quality of their customers’ reviews.

  • Request feedback. The higher the percentage of customers that leave reviews, the better for the accuracy or the reviews overall. This can also reduce review bias and balance review sentiment. Requests can be through feedback surveys or simple questions post purchase.
  • Remind customers that their opinion helps others. When asking for feedback, social reinforcement goes a long way and can also lead to a better balance of reviews.
  • Provide incentives. These can be money rewards, but freebies, discounts, access to special offers etc. can also work.
  • Leave an appropriate length of time after purchase before asking for the review. E.g. PC World wait 28 days after purchase before asking for reviews.

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How to Stay Safe on Public WI-FI

The first piece of advice is to avoid public Wi-Fi completely.

A public Wi-Fi network is inherently less secure than your home or office Wi-Fi because it is publicly available.

If you do need to use public Wi-Fi then pick one which needs a password and do not carry out any financial activity or buy anything or access your email or do anything else needing passwords.

If you want to be secure when using public Wi-Fi you will need a VPN (Virtual Private Network) installed on your devices.  These encrypt all communications between your devices and their target websites etc.

They also let you browse websites without anyone being able to track your location and activities.

Alternatively you can take your own Wi-Fi with you by using your mobile phone to create a Wi-Fi hotspot for your devices.

Points to Remember

  1. Leave Wi-Fi turned off until you need it.

When you’re finished working online, turn it off again.

  1. Turn Off File Sharing

If you have file sharing of any kind enabled then turn it off while on public Wi-Fi as it could be copying your confidential information to the Internet unencrypted.

  1. Keep Your Antivirus and Antimalware Up to Date

You must have anti-virus and ant-malware installed and make sure to keep them up to date or their effectiveness will diminish.

  1. Use https Websites where Possible

Https access is safer than http access so stick to those websites that have https versions where possible.

  1. Don’t Leave Your Devices Unattended in Public

You don’t want some accessing your laptop, smart phone or other device. Even if they don’t steal it, they may access your information or install a malicious APP

Stay Safe.

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