Acro.net – Technology Rants & Raves by Acroplex®

I don’t use Facebook for non-friends or relatives so it’s odd when complete strangers send me friend requests.

The emails appear to be coming from Facebook’s notification service, with a subject such as “Khulood Abbas wants to be friends with you on Facebook.”

Of course, the sender is spoofed and it’s yet another phishing attempt that will lead the unsuspected to surrender their Facebook passwords.

The links that supposedly take you to Facebook’s login page point to a page on a freshly registered domain, permitds.com

On a daily basis, I receive half a dozen such emails. This is not your average annoying but innocent spam; it’s a brazen attempt to hijack your Facebook password.

The hackers then move onto other linked accounts, trying to test that password; you’d be surprised to know that more than 30% of Internet users share passwords across several accounts: personal and business email, social network accounts etc.

Never click on emails – no matter how authentic they appear to be – when prompted to visit a web site; simply visit the web site’s URL by directly typing it into your browser. Never share the same password between accounts.

Here’s some more info about security in one of my previous posts.

As a domain buyer, I’m often amazed by how easily people fail to follow my asking requirements.

It doesn’t matter how detailed I can get with my specifications – and I’m rather detailed every time – there will always be a group of people that either don’t read or fail to comprehend what I’m asking.

Being specific about the characteristics of a domain that I’m about to acquire is very important, both to me and to the seller.

I don’t want to wade through dozens of emails or messages offering me domains that don’t match what I want. Simply put, I respond to every email and inquiry that I solicited, and sometimes I have to shake my head in disbelief of how far from what I asked those offers turn up to be.

Here are a couple of pointers to how I handle my specifications and requirements:

Budget: when I set my budget range, receiving offers for domains that exceed my comfort zone shows that you can’t read numbers well. Sure, if you’re asking for $10-$20 more I might consider, but beyond that it’s not going to catch my attention, even if the domain is a gem. Setting a budget means I will only invest this much.

Keywords: when I specify certain keywords, don’t invent a new dictionary word in order to convince me of relativity. Most of the time, creative words aren’t befitting but it really depends on how my expert eyes see a particular domain’s potential. I’m not a newbie and I’ve turned many $30-$100 acquisitions to four and five figure sales.

Overall quality: when I ask for positive, usable domains that means that any negative or upsetting elements in a domain will make me turn it down. Save both your time and mine by providing exactly what I need; don’t just send me a domain just because it matches what I asked for by 50%.

And finally, don’t be upset if I don’t buy your domain, even if you think it’s a steal at your asking price, or if you think it’s the best domain in the world. I’m here to conduct business and not to stroke your ego. Likewise, I will tell you why the domain doesn’t fit my purpose, so that next time you will be a bit more detail-oriented with my asking specifications.

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