I highly recommend JL Scott’s Newsletter - she tells it like it really IS and doesn’t pull any punches.  Her ezine is actually one of the FEW that I actually take time to read because it always contains helpful and interesting stuff & often a little controversy. 

This week’s issue is about the upcoming governmental changes in income reporting (which I hope gets vetoed) as well as how our privacy gets compromised by far too many dishonest internet marketers who claim to “… hate spam as much as you do” while they’re trying to get you to opt-in, and then those snakes turn around and give, sell, barter or trade your private info so you get even MORE spam!  GRRRR.

Part of the point is that before you opt-in to ANYTHING, take a few moments to READ that site’s privacy policy.  The more honest ones will tell you exactly how your info will be used - and every site is supposed to do that.  And just for your curiosity about mine?  I don’t share… because I respect you.  Sure, it’s less lucrative, but what about ethical marketing?  Surely we can keep that alive…

Here’s an excerpt from this week’s newsletter:

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) demands that every web site from the USA - and any that do business with folks in the USA - must have a Privacy Policy posted. We talked about this last week.

What many “top” internet marketers have discovered is this: the FTC does NOT say they cannot sell, trade or give away visitor information. It ONLY states you must clearly post what you plan to do with the information.

THIS is the reason many of them are sharing your information. And, the fact that they are doing it is posted right there in their Privacy Statements. It may be unethical - but, it IS legal.

I know it’s a PITA, but if you’re going to give your email address - or any other information - to a web site, you NEED to take the time to read their Privacy Policy.

If you want to read the rest of this issue - visit i-Cop’s Online Business Trade Journal here.  JL always provides you with useable, helpful information for your business and your life.  If you’re in online marketing, you DEFINITELY want to read what the government is up to now!

Have a great one!

Donna

Hi, Everyone,

I can’t resist…. I just got this in my spam box at my gmail account and being a CB affiliate like most of us are, it kind of hit a raw nerve… here’s the whole thing just as I received it in my email first and then I’ll break it down as I *really* see it:
———————————————————————-
SPAMMER’s Subject Line: Mass Advertising over 13.5 million ClickBank® affiliates worldwide
Came From: blasterteams@yahoo.com (be sure to add them to your spam list!!!) One good turn deserves another, right?  Time: 9:08 PM

Hello,

It has taken us over 2 years to develop this one program and we have pulled out all the stops. We have been able to amass a database of over 13.5 million ClickBank® affiliates worldwide.

These people are fully verified 100% double opt-in and have agreed to receive ads from us . Simply supply us with your ad in 5 easy to understand steps and instantly submit to ClickBank® members the world over.

These are people who buy and sell online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year! Who could be better to receive your offers than people who do this for a living! It also comes with a reseller option.

Click Here To Get Instant Access! [Their stinking SPAM URL removed for obvious reasons!]

Regards,
Blasters Team

This email is fully compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This email is not spam - nor has it been sent to you randomly. It has been sent to you by way of courtesy, and to confirm your entry (and provide you with additional information) to our amazingly simple wealth-building system. You can unsubscribe from receiving any further emails from us at any time, simply by emailing to admin.clickblast@gmail.com.

[NOTE:  Any Spammers feel free to spam that email address too!  After all, turnabout is fair play - at least that is what I've always heard.]
——————————————————————-

Ok, here’s my “take” on their SPAM email (which I did NOT follow their link nor will I ever) but I feel like having a little Granny’s RANT against abominable spam practices:

They wrote:

It has taken us over 2 years to develop this one program and we have pulled out all the stops. We have been able to amass a database of over 13.5 million ClickBank® affiliates worldwide.

Translation:  We have been slinking around the web for the past two years trying our best to steal every single Clickbank ID we can find with our sleazy software so we can help you spam ever MORE unsuspecting people with still more garbage and unwanted emails while we make profit selling you this evil tool!

They wrote:

These people are fully verified 100% double opt-in and have agreed to receive ads from us . Simply supply us with your ad in 5 easy to understand steps and instantly submit to ClickBank® members the world over.

Translation:  These poor, unsuspecting people have NO idea we plan to use their ill-gotten CB user names to send them a mountain of sh*t they absolutely do NOT want nor will they appreciate, but we’re hoping we can make the offers sound good enough to get a few of them suckered in anyway… even though we know without a doubt that NONE of them would really EVER opt-in to receive still more spam from our garbage spewing servers.

They wrote:

This email is fully compliant with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003. This email is not spam - nor has it been sent to you randomly.  It has been sent to you by way of courtesy, and to confirm your entry (and provide you with additional information) to our amazingly simple wealth-building system.

Translation:  [[Obviously they haven't ever read the CAN-SPAM Act or there would be full physical mailing address, name of company and phone number etc at the bottom of the email - did you see any of that?  Nor did I, and we never will... because they are NOT compliant in any way whatsoever.]]  So really they are saying look how nice we are, and how compliant we are and I had to LOL about the courtesy sentence… what a crock of crapola!

What it all boils down to is spammers will work their tails off to find more and more and more ways to spam us as long as there are people who OPEN their SPAM emails and click their links and buy their spammed wares. 

Please, if you get a spam email and you think you just *have* to open it, don’t click ANY of the links - although even opening it can endanger your inbox by getting you tracked as a ’sucker who opens them’ with special HTML codes and tracking links.  So, then they will share your email with thousands of other spammers (even the nasty nasty ones) so you get still more unwanted email clogging your inbox and wasting your valuable time.

Anything on this planet that you want, can be found via legitimate methods.  You NEVER have to open even one single spam email.  NOT ONE!  You don’t ever have to fall for their BS… they *will* stop once everyone on the planet stops buying from their links.  Imagine… a wonderful internet email inbox with NO spam in it… ever again.  But… ONLY YOU can make this happen!!!

Ok, Granny is done ranting… and the ONLY reason I opened that email was to read the BS inside and make this post and warn unwary CB affiliates about what’s coming.  I did not and will not EVER click a spammer’s link, no matter how appealing they might make it sound.

Without opening ANY of them at all, I mass-delete them all…… WHOOSH! -  never even looking at their subject lines.  I suggest you do the same.  If we all join together and stop opening them - it will eventually come to an end and they will be forced to use their minds for something productive, worthwhile and useful in life.  Won’t that be a day to celebrate??

Have a great evening,

Granny

Not to mention save a few lives.  This video says more than I could EVER say, so please, please, do yourself a favor (and someone you care about, too) and watch it…

Have the best day you ever had - and brighten someone else’s with this newfound knowledge. :)

In light and love,
Donna

Well, I am VERY happy to report that thanks to a wonderful blog I discovered, yet another idea was gleaned and tested and it worked - because this time, I didn’t wait until the next day - I used the restart function to test it, and hooray, it worked!

The How-To-Geek saved my time and tons more frustration with his post about windows compatibility. I went to my PopTray folder, and right-clicked on PopTray.exe and chose properties.  Then I chose to run the program in Windows XP SP2 compatibility mode, and it worked!  His site contains TONS of great info to help you with several problems.  Excellent site!

Now I won’t have to reinstall PopTray every day like I had planned, because it retains the configuration settings I had so carefully entered for around 25 email accounts.  Now I can preview them without downloading anything nefarious and delete spam right off the server and create rules based on the spam to prevent future garbage with the same subject or body or email.

Viva PopTray and my sincerest thanks to the how to geek!

Donna

PS:  There are two more posts about this that contain links you will need if you’re another frustrated Vista noob like me.  The first is: http://donnamaher.com/email-filter-that-works-with-vista/   and the second is: http://donnamaher.com/vista-is-really-ticking-me-off/

Internet marketing has undergone a bazillion changes over the past several years and I wasn’t really liking where it was going - or the questionable ethics of some marketers, but unable to really do much about it other than minding what *I* choose to do with my own business.

I have always said that I would ALWAYS make my income online without resorting to lies, BS, hype or any other unethical, immoral ways of doing business.  I did and still do believe that you can market without hurting others and *still* make a profit.  Maybe not as much as a cheating, lying monster makes, but at least those of us who truly care about others can sleep well at night!

Sylvie Fortin (she’s my ’shero’ anyway - plus she’s an amazing lady in so many ways) decided to let it all out, and boyoboy did she - I’m in the middle of her unvarnished ebook about marketing online.  If you are sensitive to tell it like it is language that gets a bit “colorful” at times, don’t bother downloading it.

If you want to become a better marketer and don’t mind the brash, realistic tone of  a really GOOD book - then go here: http://www.internetmarketingsins.com/ and download your copy.

Here’s to you, Sylvie - one outstanding human being!   I hope that everyone who markets online will read this book and realize it’s always best to be an ethical marketer.  The truth will set us all free!

Donna

Yesterday, I created a post to help others not go thru the agony of Vista’s arbitrary monster (it lives inside of Vista itself) regarding the greatest anti-spam software I’ve ever found….

And today when I booted up - guess what?  That freaking Vista EDITED my PopTray config file AGAIN, the sneaky ba*tard!  It only collected email from one account after it was collecting from about fifteen last night (like it’s supposed to be doing).

Well, I decided to test reinstalling the PopTray software and sure enough, it does what it’s supposed to do, flawlessly!  So, until I find a solution, I guess I’ll be reinstalling it every day because I love it THAT much!!

How freaking weird is that??  I wish Gates would get his stuff together before equipping computers with an OS that screws up the installed software without permission or desire by the owner of the machine.  GRRRR… a few more times of that stuff and I’ll be going back to XP.

*sigh*  I think this qualifies as one of Granny’s Rants!  I don’t give up easily……

Donna :-\

It may not be a big deal for some people, but me?  Oh yeah, it’s been a BIG deal!  I have used PopTray for years and have loved it.   Well, when I bought my laptop, it had Vista Home Premium already installed and the latest version of Poptray would NOT work past the very first email entered (I need for it to check about 15 accounts, not just one!!)

We all need something to screen our email BEFORE it ever reaches our computers, and PopTray is FREE and it does the job beautifully!  The link I’ve included in this paragraph is for the version before the latest one and it is the version that WORKS WITH VISTA!!   That’s why I put the download link in this article for you - to save you all the hours and hours of searching, downloading other stuff, etc, trying to find something akin to my beloved software that had worked so perfectly with XP Pro.

Over the past week, I have downloaded and installed about five different programs (not one was easy or intuitive like PT is) and uninstalled every one of them within a half hour or less.  I was at the end of my rope, and it hit me tonight… hey, the older 3.1 version worked on XP, so it’s worth a shot… and lo, and behold, it installed flawlessly right over the newer one and started working immediately using the config file I had used on the old computer that died.  So it saved a ton of time reconfiguring, since it was already done many many moons ago!

The  newest version (v. 3.2) had the strangest thing happen on my Vista machine - I was inputting my multiple email addresses (which in itself is a P.I.T.A. because I don’t have a list made up and it refused to use the old config file, so I was using another program to find all the user ids and passwords etc. 

That took ‘forever’ and it checked the mail fine that first day, but then after I had shut down for the night, VIsta went into the PopTray config file and screwed it up so NONE of the emails I had input the day before,  except for one would even appear in the top bar that had been full…. which I found to be super weird.

So then, I had the bright idea of copying the old config file over to the newer OS, and that was a pretty dumb idea… cuz it didn’t work at all AND Vista changed it right back to it’s own version AGAIN which also didn’t work beyond the first email on the list.  Needless to say, that I wasn’t having fun with my new machine when it seemed nothing would work like it’s supposed to…

So, naturally, I had assumed that PopTray simply wouldn’t work with Vista.  Until today (over a week later and lots of hunting for something to replace it, etc) when it hit me like a ton of bricks… why not use an earlier version, and that’s what I did.   Nothing ventured, nothing gained, right?

What a bunch of wasted time I spent dealing with this important issue, so hopefully, some of you flustered Vista users will benefit from my struggle and not have to go thru it to get the best email and spam filter around.

PopTray is totally amazing and it checks up to twenty accounts for you, and you can delete the SPAM nasties, and the other obnoxious unsolicited junk right off the server without ever downloading a thing to your hard drive.  It is like having a brilliant secretary without the extra payroll.  It also has a blacklist and a whitelist, and a rules list, and more.

So… if you haven’t tried this free software, I would suggest that you do… it’s a godsend and even comes in other languages… and it may save your computer some day by not allowing downloading your email until YOU push the button in your email proggie after reviewing the incoming stuff, deleting suspicious emails and creating new filtering rules as needed.

I might add further that MailWasher Pro (another very much used software program I had on my XP machine) simply will not download mail from the server within Vista’s environment - it worked flawlessly in XP but just doesn’t play nice with Vista and is now useless to me (and it was the paid-for version).

Namaste,

Donna

This video was brought to my attention on Facebook while I was looking something up… thanks to Michel Fortin (the success doctor who married a very brave and beautiful woman last summer). She survived breast cancer at age 36 and she shares her story to help and guide others.

Without further adieu… every woman (not just those of us over fifty!!) but young women also NEED to watch this Mastercard(tm) Priceless Parody about Breast Cancer Awareness video and then visit Sylvie Fortin’s wonderful healing site. She is a shining example for all women…

Regardless of your age, CHECK YOUR BREASTS EVERY MONTH!! Your life is worth the few minutes it takes to do so. It costs nothing but your time. Love yourself enough to do this simple exam, please?? Here’s an illustrated guide to breast self-examination to help you get started.

Stay aware, healthy and strong,

Donna

I just created a new (my first, actually) page there on BlinkWeb to see how the little built-in page editor works. It was an interesting hour… but I posted my first tip about it on my FaceBook page to help others not have to struggle *quite* as much just trying to make a space between paragraphs!

It has its little glitches as all new products do, but basically it’s pretty slick (and you can’t beat the price - it’s FREE). A link to get your own free blinkweb is at the bottom of my page. Really, all they ask for is a page name, password and your email account to send you your lost password and you’re IN! It’s kind of cool of Brad and Matt Callen to do this for you and me and everyone!

Check out BlinkWeb as another FREE one-way inbound link to YOU! My page there on BlinkWeb is about DeadEasy Multimedia Ebook maker - testing the add image, etc. while creating. Sign my guestbook while you’re there?

Thanks & have a super day,
Donna

You can activate the law of abundance in your life with wonderful, inspiring audios.  These self-empowerment audios are helpful and right on target.  The site is managed by a couple of very caring Indian gentlemen (Sridhar and Prakash) who want to help you succeed.

Check them out here and listen to the sample mp3:  http://seechangeworld.in/online/sample.htm

Enjoy and may it bless your life,

Donna