How to Create a Whitelist Instruction Page

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Jul 3, 2010 in Internet Mastery, Virtual Assistance Industry | 0 comments

Weekly Recommended Resource

Did you know that a recent whitelist study showed that only 22 percent of all email newsletters give specific instructions to recipients to whitelist their newsletter?

I came across this nifty free tool by Chris Lang that will create a detailed set of email whitelist instructions for all major ISPs, mobile devices and spam filters. None of your information is recorded or stored, it only creates a web landing page for you as you can see by the image below.

Once you have created your page, simply “View source” and copy the code to your html editor. Voila!

Beware of Phishing Emails Telling You That Your Mailbox Settings Have Changed

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Oct 19, 2009 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

This morning I opened my email client to view a flurry of phishing emails similar to this one:

From: customersupport @ yourofficeontheweb.com [mailto:customersupport @ yourofficeontheweb.com]

Sent: Monday, October 19, 2009 12:02 PM

To: mail @ yourofficeontheweb.com

Subject: The settings for the mail @ yourofficeontheweb.com were changed

Dear user of the yourofficeontheweb.com mailing service! We are informing you that because of the security upgrade of the mailing service your mailbox (mail @ yourofficeontheweb.com) settings were changed. In order to apply the new set of settings click on the following link:

I have removed the link so it doesn’t get clicked on accidentally but can tell you that there is a very long URL that they are asking me to click on.

Best regards, yourofficeontheweb.com Technical Support.

A different email for another address looked like it was a newsletter type of thing and informed me that my default setting for my mailbox had changed and I needed to download and execute a new settings file for my mailbox.

DO NOT click on anything in these emails. If you are in any kind of doubt about your email settings contact your web developer or hosting company but exercise extreme caution with these types of emails.

You can also report phishing to US-CERT who is collecting phishing email messages and web site locations so that they can help people avoid becoming victims of phishing scams.

Methods of Reporting Phishing Email to US-CERT

In Outlook Express, you can create a new message and drag and drop the phishing email into the new message. Address the message to phishing-report@us-cert.gov and send it.

In Outlook Express you can also open the email message and select File > Properties > Details. The email headers will appear. You can copy these as you normally copy text and include it in a new message to phishing-report@us-cert.gov.

If you cannot forward the email message, at a minimum, please send the URL of the phishing web site. If the suspicious mail in question includes a file attachment, it is safer to simply highlight the message and forward it. Some configurations, especially in Windows environments, may allow the execution of arbitrary code upon opening and viewing a malicious email message.

This information courtesy of US-Cert.com

**You have permission to reprint in your publication or to your website/blog any articles by Denise Griffitts found on this Website as long as Denise Griffitt’s name and contact information is included. Denise Griffitts, Virtual Assistance Industry Expert, http://denisegriffitts.com, info @ virtualassistantindustry.com, 888-719-6711.

Gmail and GMail Notifier

Posted by Denise Griffitts on Oct 24, 2008 in Internet Mastery | 0 comments

One of the very first things I tell new virtual assistants and members of my team is to lose the Yahoo and Hotmail accounts and signup for a free Gmail account if their business website or blog is not hosted on their own domain. Never, never, never use these free accounts as your business account. To be blunt about it, when I see a business using a free email account, particularly a Hotmail account, I immediately think: “this business doesn’t care about email, or using the internet to communicate with their customers”, and I don’t take them seriously.

Now I admit that I have several Yahoo and Hotmail accounts but these are used for subscriptions, newsletters, and junk. If you don’t have your own address at your own domain, the next best thing is to signup for a Gmail account, add a professional signature and use that as your business email address.

Once you have your email account set up you can download GMail Notifier which is a handy little widget that sits in your system tray and alerts you when you have new messages in your Gmail account. This way you don’t have to remind yourself to login several times a day to see what is going on. The appearance of the icon popping up at the bottom of your screen will ndicate that new messages have arrived and all you have to do is right click on the blue icon envelope in your system tray and you will be taken directly to your email account. As new messages arrive, you will see their subjects, senders, and exerpts of the message show up which is very helpful if you are waiting for an important message.