Honest, this is not a bad .info scam site!

AP has a story on the most dangerous domian name suffixes to visit.

.info’s along with .hk and .cn are amoung the domain suffixes that are most likely to be "dangerous" according to McAfee. I personally was surprised by the .hk’s (Hong Kong) being known for being bad. I could have guessed about the .cn or China suffix.

One of the primary problems is with Websites selling pharmecutical products.

The report recommends avoiding buying pharmecuticals altogether from .cn domains. Many sites with these domains have multiple pop-ups. Another problem is fake forms used for harvesting information and email addresses.

The Associated Press: New report identifies dangerous Web domains McAfee found the most dangerous domains to navigate to are ".hk" (Hong Kong), ".cn" (China) and ".info" (information). Of all ".hk" sites McAfee tested, it flagged 19.2 percent as dangerous or potentially dangerous to visitors; it flagged 11.8 percent of ".cn" sites and 11.7 percent of ".info" sites that way. A little more than 5 percent of the sites under the ".com" domain — the world’s most popular — were identified as dangerous.

The best domains?

According to the report, .gov, .jp, and .au are some of the safest. .gov sites are government domains and therefore a bit harder for scammers to use. .jp are Japanese domains. I think I have seen a few spammy .au (Austrailian) sites although the report lists them as amoung the safest. Spam does not nessarily mean dangerous though.

Choosing a domain is an important part of building your site.

Much like building your business in a bad neighborhood, a domain suffix could be a problem. You don’t want your domain property in a bad neighborhood. I still recommend a .com domain if at all possible. While .com domain suffixes were not amoung the safest domains, they still have advantages. They were not the worst domains in the report either.

I think if I had gone with a .com domain suffix this site would be doing a bit better.

There is always the stigma of being a .info and being labelled spam.

I recently had to contact Akismet to get off the spam list.

This is the second time I have had this problem. Yet, I always try to leave comments that are relavant to the post. I think .info domains and email addresses have a default suspicion on them. I know my spam filters sometimes don’t like good comments from .info’s. I have even not been able to use a .info email in registering occasionally.

Do you ever suspect comments from a .info are spam on your blog before you read them?

The AdSense Program is Free!

This is almost unbelievable!

A few weeks ago the Inside AdSense blog had a post about people thinking they had paid to join the AdSense program.

The complaint they had is that they had been rejected after paying. In some cases, the purchase was for a CD.

I am not even sure this is a scam or just outright stupidity.

When I first read the post, the idea of one company charging someone to join a program run by another program seemed like an outright scam. It is. After reading some of the comments left on the post over the past weeks, I begin to wonder if these people (those who were scammed) really just paid money and never read what they were doing. I would like to see one of these sites.

Some of the comments on the Inside AdSense blog were jaw-dropping.

• One person did not even seem to read the post. He was still confused because he had read you needed to by a CD that came with a free Website.
• One person wanted to know how to blog and advertise.
• One person had gotten an AdSense account but still did not know how he was supposed to make money.

There was a point that some of the programs the post was referring to used AdWords to Advertise.

This commenter wondered if Google was partially responsible. Maybe just a bit, but I would hate to see Google trying to check all the AdSense ads under this kind of scrutiny. It would take forever for ads to be approved and we would not have as many advertisers using the AdSense program. Not because they are bad, just because of the extended hassle advertisers would face.

It does not cost anything to join the AdSense program.

You do not need to buy a CD. You do not go through another company. You only work with Google. You will need a Website that they will approve I believe, but that is all. If you do not have a Website, you have no way of using AdSense. You can make a free Blogger blog and get into the AdSense program with that, but you need to actually have created content first.

If you blog, create Websites, or do Internet Marketing the Inside AdSense blog is a must subscribe.

It is a good source of information on many topics you need to be familiar with, including AdSense. Even if you are not in the AdSense program. It is also good for entertainment as well. I find it amazing that John Chow has more subscribers than Inside AdSense.

Check out the Inside AdSense post below.

What do you think? Are some people just too stupid? Were they looking for instant money? Was this an outright scam? Was it totally misleading? Were these people purchasing a Website and thinking they were purchasing the right to the AdSense program? Do you think Google shares in the responsibility?

Inside AdSense: A word of caution A word of caution Of late, we’ve received a few emails from new AdSense applicants about not being accepted into the program despite paying a specific amount of money or buying a CD package. We’d like to take this opportunity to state that we’re not affiliated with any third-parties that solicit payment to join the AdSense program or that sell CDs with money-back guarantee offers. AdSense is a free product offered to publishers by Google Inc., and there’s no cost or obligation involved. As a result, we recommend that prospective publishers exercise caution when presented with such offers.

 Let me know what you think about the AdSense scam.

It seems that some of the Nigerian email scammers have finally gotten caught.

It is not easy to catch criminals when they commit the crime from another country. Now it is easy to scam people who are on the other side of the world or be scammed by someone on the other side of the world.

*I seem to have lost the link to a video I had here. Sorry.*

Imagine, over $2 billion in fake checks.

And that is just the group that got caught. I am sure there are many more that are out there.

I even got one of these checks in the mail once.

I’ve been meaning to give it to a Postal Inspector that I know. I am still not sure it will really make a difference. The odds are still small that the criminal will get caught.

77 arrests.

I’ve gotten more that 77 Nigerian type scam emails this year alone.

You may want to read the original Reuters story.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – An international crackdown on Internet financial scams this year has yielded more than $2.1 billion in seized fake checks and 77 arrests in the Netherlands, Nigeria and Canada, U.S. and other authorities said on Wednesday.

The scammers, often West African organized crime groups, use ploys such as "spam" e-mail offering to pay recipients "processing fees" for depositing checks, which later turn out to be phony, and sending the ostensible proceeds to the scammer, authorities said.

The ruses are aided by U.S. financial practices that quickly credit a bank customer for deposits even though it can take far longer to discover a fake check and reclaim the money from the customer. The victims find themselves out the money they forward when the checks prove to be fake.

Spam-scam crackdown nets $2 billion in fake checks | Technology | Reuters

Now, if they could do something about the male enhancement spam that has been hitting my Gmail accounts lately.