Are Directory Submission Facilities Worth the Effort?

Online directories used to be a good way to find items of interest on the Internet. But since the search engines became highly efficient, online directories have not been needed for general searching. Search engines are the starting point for most users of the World Wide Web and directories are out of favour.

There are online services that will submit your website listing to hundreds or even thousands of online directories and they make it sound as if it’s the best way to get your website noticed. But search engines pay little attention to directories and few people use them and directories don’t feature much in recommended search engine optimisation for your website, so the value is questionable.

Free and Paid Listings

While most online directories all offer a free listing option, they will try to upsell you to a paid option – this is generally a range packages available for a monthly fee. For example $25 might get you a listing with a logo and a website link, whereas $50 might guarantee you an entry in the top half of their search results page.

A free, basic listing can be useful just for the sake of another return link to your website, but it’s difficult to justify paying for an entry unless it’s a niche directory that is still much used by people searching in that niche. This true for some trade directories that list for example architects or plumbers.

If your entry in a business directory is to your profile on the directory then this is unlikely to help your position in the main search engines as only the secondary link is to your website.

A paid listing will give you more visibility on the directory but probably be no better for the main search engines.

Maybe you know good reasons why business directory listings are worth paying for?

Do leave a comment on this post – click on the post title then scroll down to leave your comment.

December 15, 2021

How to Improve Your TikTok Family Security

As with other popular social media networks, you need to be careful what you put in your TikTok profile, the various privacy settings, who you allow to see your posts and what you choose to post.

Family Safety Mode

TikTok has a Family Safety Mode to let a parent link their TikTok account to their child’s. Once connected, parents can use the Digital Wellbeing features, which include:

Screen Time Management: how long their child can spend on TikTok each day.
Direct Messages:who can send message to their child’s account or turn off direct messages completely.
Restricted Mode:restrict types of content that isn’t appropriate for a child.

TikTok Security Tips for Families with Children

Set Your Child’s Account to Private: On the discoverability page of your child’s TikTok account, set the page to private. This means that people the child doesn’t know won’t be able to read the posts
Set Time Limits: This is part of the “Digital Wellbeing” feature and lets you restrict the total time spent on the APP
Set Restricted Mode: This will block any adult content and should have a password set to avoid anyone but you undoing it.
Set up Family Pairing: This links all of your family’s accounts so you can see the content and communications with your child.
Report Bad Behaviour: Teach your child how to report a user who does something inappropriate or anything considered bullying on TikTok.

If you have any experiences with these scams do let me know, by email.

December 13, 2021

Would You Believe a Scam Aimed Based on Letters To Santa?

Taking advantage of children’s wishes at Christmas is a pretty miserable thing to do, but there are scammers intent on doing exactly that.

There are assorted new services on the Internet to do with Christmas and the festive season and APPS that let children speak to Santa Claus, make wish lists, watch Santa travel across the skies etc.

Most of these are honest of course.

One that’s been recently turned into a scam is the Santa letter.

You get emails selling you the idea of buying a personalised Santa Letter package for your child or children.

You are promised

A personalised letter signed by Santa
A certificate
Santa’s map
Santa’s nice list
All sent from the North Pole

Sounds good, but it’s fake – you may get something worth only a fraction of the payment you make but more likely is you get nothing for your payment and probably your credit card details etc. are sold on to other scammers.

Be very careful what you pay for online and preferably use well-known brands.

It’s not always easy to recognise such a scam, but you can do the following

Ignore any spam emails you receive – search online for what you want instead and look for reviews to check
Ask friends and relatives – if they have had a good experience buying from specific websites then try those first
Check the email sender’s address. If it’s a nonsensical one such as thermosphere or dehypnotised then steer clear.
Check the sender’s domain. If the address is “.date” or “.bid” or anything else that makes no sense for someone claiming to offer Santa Letters then steer clear

Don’t be caught out this Christmas

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December 12, 2021

You Won’t Believe The Stupidity Of This Scam About a Magic Substance

Some scammers go to a lot of trouble to present a story, however ridiculous it is, in the hope you will believe it and want to know more.

Some others go for the opposite approach of starting a story but with no contents – leaving the reader to make up perhaps what they would like it to be about.

This latest one is titled “joke’s on them. The elite thought they had destroyed all of the evidence of this device”.

The sender’s email address is ‘Orgone Motor’ so perhaps the sender read about Wilhelm Reich and his theories of orgone energy or more likely the sender just thought it was a good word to use regardless of any historical meaning it might have.

Any theories about orgone have long since been discredited as ravings as Reich mixed up all sorts of ideas prevalent in the early 20th century.

The point of the email is to get people to click to watch a video – as that will be how the scammer makes money.

The message does not say anything about what the machine does or how it works, just that the inventor once tried to send a piece of it out of state and was immediately sentenced to 2 years in jail.

Everyone knows there’s nothing immediate about the legal system, so that’s as made up as the rest of the story.

All rubbish, to be ignored. Never click to watch videos unless you know wat they are and who sent you the link.

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December 11, 2021

More of Those Terrible Time-Wasters

The email asks me to book my hearing health check and seems to be from Boots the Chemist who do a lot of hearing checks, so that makes sense. The advert reads as if legitimate – the right logo, correct grammar and it is a service provided by Boots the Chemist. But the message is from rurehe.com which doesn’t sound like Boots the Chemist so it will get binned.

Ali Fashil wants to tell me about the financing program he is working on internationally. He’s only interested in projects worth more than $1 million but can completely finance any such project. So, if I have such a project he will arrange the money. I just need to get in touch and provide my details. The thought that anyone wanting to make serious investments would send out emails by the millions to names on a spam list is ludicrous. It’s just a simple phishing email after your confidential details.

A new mysterious liquid lets you dissolve fat instantly, so claims the scammer. It makes your metabolism work like it did when you were twenty. The liquid can dissolve up to 56 pounds of fat in 3 months and it will end obesity. The picture in the email looks like wallpaper glue but makes no difference as it’s all fake rubbish. There is no mysterious liquid – just an evil scammer.

Yet more emails arrive warning that various email addresses at the radio station will expire within hours and we need to login to confirm their passwords. It seems that everyone gets these stupid messages nowadays. All lies of course.

Some people go to ridiculous lengths to get people to watch their YouTube video. One latest one is called “2-finger trick that resets blood sugar”. It claims that over 190,000 people use a simple trick to reset their blood sugar almost instantly. This is an obvious lie and the point of the email is to get you to click to watch the scammer’s video from which presumably he or she will make some money. The email also claims that this is the end of the $370 billion diabetes industry in America. In fact the diabetes device, testing and medication market is about $25 billion per year in USA so the $370 billion figure is made-up. But then the whole thing is made-up rubbish.

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December 10, 2021

How to Report a Scam

There are endless scams, but they typically fall into a set of categories which determine how and who you can report them to.

Below is the information relating to the UK, but you will need to seek out the relevant contacts if you are in another country.

If you have transferred money to the scammer in the last 24 hours, tell the police immediately by calling 101 or report online at www.police.uk/pu/contact-the-police/report-a-crime-incident/.

Generally, the Police prefer non immediate scams to be reported to Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or online at https://reporting.actionfraud.police.uk

1. Report an online scam

This is any scam that uses social media, email or websites.

To report a scam email – forward the message to [email protected].

You should report an online scam advert to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) at www.asa.org.uk/make-a-complaint/report-an-online-scam-ad.html

You can also report a scam advert to the website where you saw it.

If the scam involves financial services – cryptocurrency, investments, insurance or pensions, report it to the Financial Conduct Authority at www.fca.org.uk/consumers/report-scam-unauthorised-firm

If you think you’ve been scammed into transferring your pension, contact your pension provider immediately. Then get in touch with The Pensions Advisory Service at www.pensionsadvisoryservice.org.uk/contacting-us

Identity Theft – contact the real company or person to let them know their name is being falsely used.

Any scam using the name HMRC should be reported to them at www.gov.uk/report-suspicious-emails-websites-phishing/report-hmrc-phishing-emails-texts-and-phone-call-scams

2. Reporting an offline scam

This is usually postal or door-to-door scams and can include telephone and text message scams.

You can report these scams to Citizens Advice Bureau at

www.citizensadvice.org.uk/consumer/get-more-help/report-to-trading-standards/

Trading Standards gathers information about scams so they can take legal action against scammers.

3. Royal Mail

Royal Mail investigates postal scams. If you’ve received something in the post you think is a scam, download the scam mail report form at https://personal.help.royalmail.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/303

Then send the scam mail and the report to ‘Freepost Scam Mail’ or you can call Royal Mail and ask for a pre-paid envelope and the form. You can just email Royal Mail if appropriate.

Email: [email protected]
Telephone: 0800 011 3466

4 Action Fraud

Action Fraud collect scam reports and collate the data and where relevant give the information to the Police or other authorities to follow-up on criminal behaviour.

They can get the National Fraud Intelligence Bureau to investigate some scams. They’ll also give you a crime reference number, which can be helpful if you need to tell your bank you’ve been scammed.

It’s quickest to report a scam to Action Fraud online at www.actionfraud.police.uk/reporting-fraud-and-cyber-crime but you can also report the scam by phone on 0300 123 2040