Internet Content Filtering

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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Copyright 2005 Rok Hrastnik

The importance of RSS for marketing can no longer be disputed, but do we really understand all the benefits RSS brings to us as marketers, or really understand why we need to use it to get closer to our customers?

WHAT RSS WILL DO FOR YOU AS A MARKETER?

a] Get your content delivered without fail to all of your subscribers.

E-mail delivery rates are dropping, spam is everywhere and it’s getting increasingly difficult to get our marketing content read by our subscribers, prospects and customers. RSS is the way out.

b] Increase your web traffic and your online visibility.

With more and more sites competing for business every day, you need to do everything in your power to increase your online traffic, and RSS will help you get an upper edge.

c] RSS enables you to easily get your content published on dozens and dozens of other sites.

d] It will serve as a platform for ad sales,

e] It will provide advertising opportunities to promote your own business

f] It will help you get more content for your site without you having to write a single word.

WHY YOU NEED RSS, FROM THE END-USER POINT OF VIEW?

a] People want to receive content in a controlled environment where they are in-charge, not the publisher.

b] Delivering content using e-mail is becoming increasingly difficult, due to blacklists, spam filters and over excessive amounts of e-mail in your recipients’ mailboxes.

c] RSS allows you to deliver content beyond your e-zine, giving you more content delivery opportunities.

d] RSS is a natural tool for content syndication, which means easily and instantly delivering your content to hundreds of other content sources, thus creating additional exposure.

e] When using RSS to deliver all of your web site content updates, RSS will actually increase your web site traffic, thus giving your promotional messages more exposure.

f] People are afraid of subscribing to e-mail lists, which makes getting new subscribers difficult; RSS is a whole different story.

WHY SHOULD YOU CARE?

Either as an end-user or as business person, content delivery should be one of your top informational concerns.

a] As an end-user you cannot function properly without having relevant access to the information you need. Content delivery mechanisms affect your ability to access this information.

b] As a business person you must understand that your business success, among other things, depends on information, and in large on your ability to deliver it. Without the proper content delivery vehicles you cannot get content in-front of your target audiences, at least not in a relevant fashion.

RSS answers the needs of both.

About the author:

Learn how to take full marketing advantage of RSS and get all the knowledge and how-to information for implementing RSS in your marketing mix, from direct marketing, PR, e-commerce and online publishing to SEO, traffic generation and so on. FREE guide available for immediate download, too. Click here now: http://rss.marketingstudies.net/book/

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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The Internet is a great tool for many things, such as doing research, reading the latest news, shopping and staying in touch with family and friends. To borrow from the title of a Clint Eastwood movie, along with the good comes “the bad and the ugly”.

Freedom on the Internet also opens the door for illegal activity, such as emails pretending to be your bank (aka phishing), expression of various ideas - whether you agree with them or not, scams to separate people from their money and content that some find objectionable, like pornography.

While searching the Internet for homeschool support groups, to ask for permission to list their web site as a resource in HomeSchoolEXPOs’ Support Groups & Organizations directory, I became a victim of porn-napping. I didn’t know this term existed until I decided to do research for this newsletter. My purpose was to help other parents, who are short on time, learn about what they can do to protect their children who use the Internet.

Porn-napping happens when a non-pornography domain or web site address becomes inactive and it is purchased by a pornography business. The site might have closed down or the owner didn’t renew their ownership. Once the pornography business owns the address, they post their content on it. Below is an example of how I was porn-napped.

Let’s say there is a homeschool support group called Family Homeschooling. Their web site address is www.familyhomeschooling.com. The group discontinues because all of the children have graduated high school and have gone to college. The parents decide not to renew the ownership of their website address. A pornography business discovers the support groups’ web address is available and decides to buy it. Now that they own the address, they post their content under the domain www.familyhomeschooling.com, with no warning of the content that is coming. Another tactic they may employ is something called a re-direct. This happens when you click on or type in a web site address they have purchased, e.g. www.familyhomeschooling.com, and you are re-directed to another site with their content. Re-directing is not illegal. Many web sites use this feature for functions such as load balancing or redirecting users to a sites new web address because it has changed.

My original plan was to write an article about the steps that parents can to protect their children from pornography and pedophiles. While looking for information, I found a couple of good articles and resources that provide great information for parents. Instead of recreating the wheel, I’m providing the following links for parents to learn more about what they can do to protect their kids when their kids are online.

1. 2005 Software Review of Parental Control and Internet Filtering Software
http://internet-filter-review.toptenreviews.com/?ttreng=1&ttrkey=internet+filter

2. Home Internet Filters - Steps Parents Can Take At Home For Filtering Content
http://www.northstar.k12.ak.us/safety/filters.html

3. Parental Control and Internet Child Safety
http://www.protectkids.org/

4. Wired Kids - Online Safety Project for Kids and Teens
http://www.wiredkids.org/

5. NetSmartz Workshop - Interactive games and activities to teach kids what to watch for online to protect themselves.
http://www.netsmartz.org/

6. Parents Can Make Internet Safer for Kids - Article in the Honolulu Advertiser
http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2004/Oct/19/tc/tc08p.html

7. SafeKids - Making Technology and the Internet safe for Families
http://www.safekids.com/

8. GetNetWize - The GetNetWise coalition wants Internet users to be only “one click away” from the resources they need to make informed decisions about their family’s use of the Internet.
http://kids.getnetwise.org/

About the Author

Aaron Hyde is a consultant with the 280Group, http://www.280group.com, with over 17 years of industry experience. He homeschools and is the founder of HomeSchoolExpo, http://www.homeschoolexpo.com. HomeSchoolExpo is a new auction site for connecting homeschoolers who want to buy and sell homeschooling books and resources. HomeSchoolExpo also provides store hosting for family friendly businesses.

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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Coping With Spam Filters
by Laurie Rogers Copyright July 2002

If you haven’t yet heard about the chaos that Spam Filters
are currently causing for publishers, then I am about to tell
you EVERYTHING you’ll need to know on this subject. Many
of our fellow publishers disregard the fact that Spam Filters
DO in fact exist. For some reason just do NOT want to face
the fact that, they are DESTROYING their businesses.

I write a column on Spam for DEMC small business ezine, so
I do consider myself to be well educated on this subject. If
you have any questions about what I am about to tell you,
feel free to contact me at: http://www.OptinFrenzy.com

Now let’s begin.

Spam Filters are EVERYWHERE online whether we like it or
not they are. And they are becoming more dominant in all
aspects of the internet, through ISP’s, webhosts and the
chances are, one person in three is using some type of a
filtering device. They are inexpensive to purchase and so
it makes it fairly EASY for the average “Joe” to buy one.

And chances are that your ISP or web host probably uses
them and you are NOT even aware of it. Personally, I do
advise that you contact them to ask them about it and
ask them to REMOVE them from your account immediately.
Now, here is why I suggest that you do this, Spam Filters
are NOT 100% fool proof, in fact they have a tendency to
block out your LEGITIMATE email. Anyone who tells YOU
otherwise is in some serious DENIAL.

I’ve personally taken the time to test almost EVERY Spam
Filtering program that there is currently available online.
And what I saw was absolutely mortifying to say the least.
I ran over 100 different types of emails and newsletters all
through each system and 9 times out of ten, it resulted in
being marked as spam. Needless to say, by the end of the
day I was NOT impressed with my discovery.

Most of these programs are designed to target newsletters
specifically, because they have the words “subscribe” and
“unsubscribe” black marked. Meaning, that any peices of
email that contain those two words are “marked” as being
“SPAM”. This is especially predominant in Spam Killer which
is now owned by McAfee. They also LURE publishers into
what they refer to as being “Spam Traps” (which they do
openly admit -right on their web site), so they can create
more filters DAILY based on ezine/email content. And YES,
I did say DAILY!

Now that I’ve probably scared the wits out of you, here
are a few things that you can do and they will require a
bit of added work on your part.

1.) Make your ezine available in 3 different forms, if it at
all possible. Email it directly to your subscribers, put it on
an autoresponder and make it available online. My good
friend jL Scott (owner of iCop) does this and it covers all
of the bases to ENSURE your readers get your ezine. It’ll
also give you an idea of HOW many people actually read
your ezine.

2.) Ask your readers, IF they have had ANY problems in
receiving your ezine. If they have, start keeping a log of
these instances, if your ezine has been marked as being
spam through their email client ask them for a copy of it
for your records. You MAY want to TRY contacting their
ISP and try talking to them about it, ensure that YOU
maintain your “professionalism” in doing so, as this could
create problems for your subscriber. Advise ALL of your
subscribers to contact their ISP’s and ask them if they
are in fact using filters on their email.

3.) Keep financial loss records that you’ve encountered
because of Spam Filters. And remember everything is of
a monetary value including your ezine.

Although there is no fool proof method of avoiding Spam
Filters, there is currently a pending law suit against the
creators of these programs. So if you do have a case or
have proof that you have been filtered, falsely accused
etc. I recommend that you go and file a report asap at:
http://www.e-crucible.org

Article by Laurie Rogers Copyright 2002 All Rights Reserved

About the Author

Laurie Rogers is co-author of the Ezine Resource Guide,
http://www.zineadz.com/erg.html She is the owner of Optin
Frenzy - a paid list building program for ezine publishers
http://www.optinfrenzy.com You can obtain more of Laurie’s
articles at: mailto:ezinearticles@optinfrenzy.com

Learn How to Protect Your Family from the Worst of the Web!

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How many times have you realized that your email simply doesn’t arrive to your list or you suspect something is going wrong because you don’t get the response you are waiting for?, this is more common today than yesterday and will be critical tomorrow.

It’s frustrating for us that our Content is not deliver to the end-user, this is true for you and all the people dependable on email technology, the results plainly don’t come, whatever they can be.

Have you seen those funny email arriving to your email container with odd characters that some times seem like the sender is telling you rude words? Don’t take it literally, is an effort from the advertisers to deliver their best proposition trying to bypass the filters… some of them will arrive, some of them are taken out from you and put inside the waste container of your ISP.

Is there some hope for the small entrepreneur in this jungle of spam filters, viruses, and junk information?

Deliver Quality Content To End-user And Promote Your Products Without Annoying Spam Filters: RSS Gives you the Chance To Deliver messages To End-user

It’s A Fact: At present this is the best way to beat spam filters, RSS is the fresh road to walk, getting rid of the problems that nowadays attack the email option, this allows you to send your messages to the users with 100% sureness they will arrive, we don’t know if RSS is the email killer, its too early to state and coin this phrase, anyway some gurus say its here to bury email, some others think is only an alternative way to keep in contact with the end-user … the only true is: You can deliver your messages spam free.

But its not costless, you need to work, and work constantly and with quality, if any of these variables fail, all your efforts go to the drainage piping. Why? If the end-user are no more interested in your content he/she can kiss you good bye easily with a finger, the small one on the delete key.

RSS is The Secret Weapon To Deliver Quality Content

RSS gives the power to the end-user, this means marketers must be concerned with the content they deliver, for most of the sellers this is a hard alternative, but at the end the online world will see a lot of websites full of worthy content, the users will come again and again, and if this happen to you, your days will be longer and profitable.

Deliver quality content is the advertisers and webmasters payment, this is not negative, Search Engines go in the same direction, if you want a good SE position it most be due to your content, content tends to be the only parameter in the near future. Make your homework and you’ll see positive results in short time. If this not convince you, remember, email is living the hard way and if things go in the same direction it will go out of sight, at least like a marketing alternative.

What all this means for the end-user?

The end user just now is the winner, he/she has the control, are able to access any kind of information in accordance to his/her interest: news, marketing options, leisure sites, knowledge pages, new content is notified automatically, can subscribe/unsubscribe with total freedom, no more need to travel to the websites and waste time looking for something new….

About the Author

C Zarza
20+ experience in the information technology world,
He has built financial system for several years
Background: Databases, Web , Finances …
czarzac@gmail.com
http://www.nesswords.com