) ( ( ) Good Morning Family! ( \ .-.,--^--. ( Come on in. . . \* ) \\|`----'| - The coffee pot's on. . . .=|=. \| |// ...and we even have decaf, |~'~| | |/ tea, and hot chocolate! | | \ / _|___|_ ------ (_______) Today's topics include: 1. Welcome to new cousins 2. Protecting yourself from spammers 3. Protecting your genealogy and wallet from scammers TO OUR NEWEST COUSINS ~~ On behalf of the entire 4H family, I'd like to extend a most hearty welcome to those cousins who came into the family fold this past week. We are very glad to have you with us and hope you'll stay and remain a part of our online family. As soon as you're comfortable with us and the list, please send in your Howell lines so we can all see how we're related to you. We do not have a fancy format for sending in records or queries to the list. Post as many as you wish! If the data has anything to do with Howell ancestors or any of the 9 variant spellings we research that might help someone, please feel free to post it. Every scrap of information is appreciated. You have joined not just a list, but a family of cousins who are four teams of researchers combined into one family, the 4H. Although we are one family, we have two homesites and if you haven't visited these sites yet, you are encouraged to do so ~ Home for the HOWELL-L, HOWELLS-SOUTHERN-L, and HOWLE-L is the Howell Research Room (otherwise known as the HRR) which opened May 28th. You'll find it located at <http://howellresearch.com>. While not large in size yet, this site is to become a clearinghouse dedicated to global research of the Howell[s] surname and all her variant spellings. You're invited to submit material for display at the HRR. Simply let me know you want to house material there and what it is. We can display anything, provided it doesn't involve living persons. Contact me at <[email protected]>. Home for the HOWELL-SURNAME-L is the Edward Howell Family Association site at <http://www.ehfa.org>. This is a site dedicated to descendants of Edward Howell of Southampton, Long Island, New York. There you'll find an online transcription of "Descendants of Edward Howell (1584-1655) of Westbury Manor, Marsh Gibbon, Buckinghamshire, [England], and Southampton, Long Island, New York," Second Edition by Dr. David Faris. Web mistress for the EHFA site is Kristen Howell <[email protected]>. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Yes, this week's Coffee is about spammers and scammers ... and sometimes they're both! Last week I advised you to be wary of what information you put on the Web. This week's advice is equally important, hence has a Coffee devoted completely to the subjects. This is the third Coffee dedicated to our newbies and those novices who might still need the lessons. Both are rather long and intense subjects, so I'll just jump right into them. PROTECTING YOURSELF FROM SPAMMERS Spammer? What in the world is THAT? The term comes from the word 'spam' and no, tender newbie, I do not mean the canned meat. On the Web, spam is junk email ~ equal to the junk mail you get in your in-life mailbox. However, the spam you receive in your inbox can range from anything to qualifying for a credit card to some really disgusting porn messages. A spammer is [yep!] someone who sends spam. This all comes as a result of your email address being harvested from a site you placed your addy on for one reason or another, perhaps a message board, or signing up for a newsletter to someone who sells email address without your knowledge. In fairness, you should know that not all sites sell the email addresses that they gather. There are three keys to dealing with spammers: 1.) Never, but NEVER reply back to any spam ~ even if your name doesn't show up as the addressee. Spammers are *very* wily! Most times they actually WANT you to answer their spam. Your reply lets them know that they've reached a valid email address; then voila'! ...you've just allowed your inbox to be made available to every spammer in the world! Another ploy of theirs is to say something like, "This message is not considered spam because we have given you a return email address. If you wish to be unsubscribed send a message to [email protected]" Know right away that the email address they've given you to unsub is, 5 times out of 10, a fake one. The other 5 times it's used to harvest your very-available email address! You can't win either way, so save yourself the grief and don't respond at all. 2.) You can report the spammer, and the best site to do that is at <http://spamcop.net/accountadd.shtml>. Get yourself registered and use their free reporting service by clicking on their 'Reporting only' link, or upgrade the service and pay $3 a month for a 'filtered email account'. The free service works great but is slower; the filtered account prevents most spam from ever reaching your inbox. HINT: Save the email they send you once you've registered. That way you won't have to keep registering every time you want to report spam. Many people feel the best way to rid themselves of a spammer is to send the offensive message[s] directly back to the spammer's server <[email protected]_server.whatever>. A lot of people use this method. The problem with doing this is that a lot of times the spammer will use a redirect email server to cover up his/her real one, and most people don't realize that. [I told you spammers were wily!] The only way to ensure you send back to the correct server is to read the message's headers. No, I don't mean the to/from/subject/date block we all see. I mean the humongous string of data that we usually don't see because our email programs default to hide the headers. Unless you're experienced in reading headers, your safest bet is to head for SpamCop by clicking on the hyperlink above. SpamCop reports back to every ISP a message has taken to get to you. The reason you want to report the spam is because most ISP's [internet service providers like AOL, Earthlink, MSN, Yahoo, Hotmail, etc.] frown sorely on spam. They'll quickly shut down someone who's reported as spamming. By your actively reporting the spam and returning a copy of it to the providers, quick steps are usually taken to remove the spammer's service. 3.) In view of #1 and #2, you'll want a well-greased delete key! <g> Remember ... report it; DON'T respond to it in any way, at any time. PROTECTING YOUR GENEALOGY AND WALLET FROM SCAMMERS In addition, we genealogists are open to another variety of spam. It comes from people who know how desperate we are to find names, dates, places for our research. They are the most dangerous to us because they prey on our curiosities, frustrations and desperation. In no way are they dumb; they know *exactly* which buttons to push on us and make us do what they want unless ... we're armed in advance with the knowledge that they exist and ... we heed that knowledge! And THAT knowledge comes next... Unfortunately, as computering genealogists we're faced with "genealogy" Web sites contributing to the spam mail that you receive. They are of two varieties: 1.) this first type of site is the most insidious because it appears so innocent. This one profits from personal information gleaned from you under the guise of helping you do genealogy research when in fact, the site is a "front," with its main purpose being to gather personal information about you and then selling it. This is the one that will end up getting you loaded with spam till you're nearly crazy or can get your identity or even your hard-earned research stolen. Again with the stolen identity? Yes, I'm afraid so. We genealogists are a trusting bunch ~ too trusting sometimes. In our eagerness for answers we share our GedComs with each other, pass them to relatives who then pass them along to someone else you may not even know (and who may have the scruples of a snake), or we load them online to sites advocating something along the lines of, "share your genealogy with others and make connections!" Even more exciting is having someone else load your GedCom data along with theirs because they acquired from you or that relative/person with the scruples of a snake! Did ALL OF US who did any of the above think about removing the information about those still living? No. :( Did ALL OF US who did any of the above think about removing the information that shows our relationships to our mothers (and those maiden name passwords)? No. :( Do some of us have our GedComs online at places who use our uploaded information to build cd's and sell the information back to us? You bet! :( Identity thieves love you! And I *know* you can't wait to see your (living) mom's information come back around to you on a commercial site's cd and being sold globally! :( The point here ... B.E. S.O. C.A.R.E.F.U.L. with your information! It may not be just you or your mom that you're hurting; I (or any other inline cousins you've discovered online) could be on your GedCom with our own mother's information! 2.) the second type of site blatantly offers something too good to be true for money up front, usually by way of credit card. This is also the type of site that cleans out your wallet or checkbook! This site is more inline with what we live with in real life. Most of us can spot these rip-offs immediately. However, you can't see someone's eyes, read their body language, hear their voics when you're looking at an email or message board making all sorts of claims. Then it becomes important to thoroughly investigate ~ asking every question you can think of, find others who may be receiving the same message you did, head for the search engines. If you've noticed, I've not given you any specific site names or companies. To do so here would lengthen the Coffee another five or six pages (really) and I only have 20,000 bytes of room to work with. So, unlike what I would normally do, I'm going to send you to some sites that will enlighten you as to who you need to be wary of. I suggest that you not skip over these links. I am not putting them here to suck up your time, rather I am guiding you toward additional knowledge to protect yourself ... http://blacksheep.rootsweb.com/shame.html - Scroll down about 3/4 of the way on the page until you come to "Scams to be knowledgeable about: Visit these examples of our Inductees to the Genealogy Hall of Shame." There, you'll see links about 14 different sites. However, if you're short on time (who isn't), I suggest you definitely not miss this one <http://blacksheep.rootsweb.com/promises.htm> as it deals with sites that are currently giving us the most headaches. http://www.compuright.net/scamsandspam/index.shtml - This is a site dedicated to scams and spam. The principle site under investigation here is one that all genealogists need to be *very* aware of. http://www.censusdiggins.com/familydiscovery.html - This site picks up where Gene Olson's Scams and Spam site leaves off. Here you'll find online comments from researchers like you and me. Some of them are not pretty, either. http://www.ancestordetective.com/watchdog.htm#Warning - This is a genealogy watchdog site. Be sure to have a look. There are more I could send you to, but if you'll view just these you'll be as knowledgeable as anyone. We've begun a new year ... another year for our spam scammers to have at us. Don't be one of their statistics. If you're not sure about something, you're welcome to email me <[email protected]> and ask. The goal is just for you to protect yourselves, your families, your genealogies, and your checkbooks. Practice safe genealogy on Web, always. It's family ... and that's what we're all about. I so enjoyed spending this time with you today. Thank you for sharing it with me. I wish each of you a week filled with health, productivity, fun, and above all, filled with love and inner peace. ) ( ) _.-~~-. (@\'--'/. Colleen ('``.__.'`) `..____.'