From internet news

Facebook users are on high alert this week for another e-mail scam advising that their accounts have been reset and asking them to reset their passwords through an attachment contained in the unsolicited e-mail.

But as security software vendor McAfee (NYSE: MFE) details in a blog posting, the attachment is actually a password stealer that is installed when users click on the link.

The potentially damaging e-mail is titled “Facebook Password Reset Confirmation! Customer Support,” and Facebook officials are telling users to immediately delete the message to avoid infecting their PCs and mobile devices.

Once the phishing agent is installed, it can access any username or password entered on the computer or mobile devices, putting users’ online banking account log-ins and other sensitive information at risk.

“This threat is potentially very dangerous considering that there are over 400 million Facebook users who could fall for this scam,” McAfee researchers said. “This is also the sixth most prevalent piece of malware targeting consumers in the last 24 hours, as tracked by McAfee Labs.”

With an estimated 400 million users worldwide, it’s easy to understand why hackers love to target Facebook with various phishing and malware scams on an almost weekly basis.

In January, a massive scareware campaign plagued the site for a couple days, attempting to lure Facebook users into installing bogus antivirus software on their computers.

McAfee officials said this latest malware project included “tens of millions” of spam messages sent to users around the world and would likely result in the infection of millions of computers.

McAfee recommends users install the latest version of its antivirus software to protect themselves from attacks of this type and reminds users to never click on any links or attachments contained in unsolicited e-mails regardless of how authentic or personalized they appear to be.

From CNNMONEY

As the tax deadline draws near, the IRS wants you to beware of fraudulent tax preparers, hidden offshore bank accounts and offers that seem too good to be true.

In its “dirty dozen” list, released Tuesday, the IRS urged taxpayers to avoid falling prey to — or carrying out — a number of common tax schemes that will result in copious fines or put an offender in prison for years.

Taxpayers should be wary of anyone peddling scams that seem too good to be true,” said IRS commissioner Doug Shulman. “The IRS fights fraud by pursuing taxpayers who hide income abroad and by ensuring taxpayers get competent, ethical service from qualified professionals at home in the U.S.”

Among the scams to watch out for this year are preparers who offer refunds that don’t exist, promoters who encourage you to argue with the IRS about taxes you owe, and IRS impersonators who may even use Twitter to obtain your personal information.

The IRS will also be keeping a close eye on misbehaving tax filers, so think twice before filing a phony salary, lying about charitable donations or trying to claim a tax credit for the gas costs you incurred during that road trip you took last year.

Hiring a sketchy preparer: It’s easy for an accountant or tax preparer to take advantage of you, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the tax code or paperwork involved with filing a return.

There are many preparers out there who — to make an extra buck — will skim a portion of a client’s refunds, charge more than they should for services and lure taxpayers to their office by promising unattainable refunds.

It’s up to the taxpayer to be careful when selecting a preparer, but the IRS is also taking steps to help decrease the chances that a taxpayer will end up receiving “help” from a fraud.

In future filing seasons, all paid preparers will be required to register with IRS in order to receive a preparer tax identification number. Preparers must also take competency tests and participate in continuing professional education, unless they are attorneys, certified public accountants or enrolled agents.

Hiding your money offshore: The IRS is cracking down on hidden offshore accounts, and as part of its enforcement, the agency is targeting offenders and seeking out anyone else who helped to enable the scheme.

If you have an offshore bank account, brokerage account, credit card or even an offshore insurance plan, the IRS urges you to come forward now and admit to your crime voluntarily in order to limit the possibility of criminal prosecution.

Phishing for personal information: Be careful before replying to that e-mail from the IRS notifying you of the thousand dollar refund you’re eligible for this year.

“IRS impersonation schemes flourish during the filing season,” the agency said. “Criminals use the information they get to steal the victim’s identity, access bank accounts, run up credit card charges or apply for loans in the victim’s name.”

These scams can come in the form of e-mails, phone calls, faxes or even tweets. If you receive an e-mail from someone claiming to be from the IRS, don’t open any attachments or click on links included in the e-mail. Instead, forward the message to the IRS at phishing@irs.gov.

Filing false or misleading forms: Scam artists are claiming refunds they don’t deserve by filing “false or misleading” returns, said the IRS.

Taxpayers are fabricating information returns and claiming made-up withholding credits in an attempt to make a little extra money from the IRS by way of a tax refund.

Some taxpayers carry out this scheme because they are under the belief that the federal government holds secret accounts for each of its citizens, said the IRS. These individuals believe that the funds in these hidden accounts can be accessed simply by issuing a Form 1099-Original Issue Discount, which is a phony information return.

Overvaluing your charitable donations: While giving to charity is a noble act, don’t reverse it by lying about the amount you donated.

It can be tempting to overvalue items you give away when reporting them on your return — especially for non-cash donations such as furniture or artwork — but the IRS is keeping an eye out for suspiciously high-valued donations this year.

Arguing with the IRS: Have a bone to pick with the IRS? Be careful.

Taxpayers are being convinced by scam artists to argue with the IRS in order to get back some of the taxes they owe to the agency.

“Promoters of frivolous schemes encourage people to make unreasonable and outlandish claims to avoid paying the taxes they owe,” the IRS said. “While taxpayers have the right to contest their tax liabilities in court, no one has the right to disobey the law or IRS guidance.”

The agency has a list of “frivolous” legal positions that have been “thrown out of court” and cannot be used against the IRS, so pick your fights carefully this tax season.

Fishy retirement plans: The IRS is on the hunt for taxpayers who abuse their retirement plan arrangements, including individual retirement accounts (IRAs).

Taxpayers who enter transactions that allow them to exceed the contribution limit of an IRA are wanted by the IRS, as are those people who fail to properly report early distributions.

Claiming gas costs: Trying to claim the money you spend on your hour-long commute to work each day? This could cost you a $5,000 fine from the IRS.

While taxpayers such as farmers who use fuel off highways as a means of carrying on their trade or business may qualify for the fuel tax credit, you can only claim the credit if it meets specific IRS requirements.

Disguising your company: It’s time to fess up to that business you own. The IRS is currently working with state authorities to identify corporations and other entities that disguise the ownership of a business.

These entities are often disguised through using a third party to request an employer identification number, and the businesses or financial services can be used for the underreporting of income, fictitious deductions, money laundering, financial crimes and even terrorist financing.

Giving yourself a pay cut: In an attempt to lower the amount of taxes owed, some taxpayers are filing phony wage-related information returns instead of the required returns.

“Taxpayers should resist any temptation to participate in any of the variations of this scheme,” said the IRS, adding that false filings could result in a $5,000 fine.

Abusing trusts: An increasing number of people are misusing private annuity trusts and foreign trusts to transfer income and deduct personal expenses.

“Some promoted transactions promise reduction of income subject to tax, deductions for personal expenses and reduced estate or gift taxes,” said the IRS. “Such trusts rarely deliver the tax benefits promised and are used primarily as a means to avoid income tax liability and to hide assets from creditors, including the IRS.”

Inflating your withholding credit: You could be fined $5,000 this year if you exaggerate your withholding when reporting nontaxable Social Security benefits, which would result in your falsely report zero income to the IRS.

Tell the IRS: If you notice anything fishy, report suspected tax fraud to the IRS using Form 3949-A.

From the Numbers News
Alice in Wonderland comfortably held top spot at the box office this weekend, according to studio estimates released on Sunday. In these days of 60% drops for big releases, its decline of 47% can be considered a victory for Disney and earned it an impressive $62 million in its second outing. Its total cume to date passed $200 million, and the movie is already Tim Burton’s second-highest grossing movie after 1989’s Batman.

New releases all struggled individually, but collectively earned over $40 million, indicating that the high level of competition was their biggest problem. Green Zone topped the list with $14.5 million, well down from previous Matt Damon/Paul Greengrass collaborations. She’s Out of My League picked up $9.6 million for Paramount, also below expectations but not terrible.

Remember Me scored $8.3 million for Summit. Again, that’s lower than pre-weekend projections, and something of a disappointment given Robert Pattinson’s fan base. However, it’s hardly a disaster considering the likely budget of the movie and the time of year.

Our Family Wedding was the final new wide release, and it actually did a little better than expected with $7.6 million. Its Per Theater Average was comparable with Green Zone’s, making it a fairly successful niche play for Searchlight.

Even if they are well paid in 2009, a couple of french athlete should envy the salary of 3 of the most  paid athlete in the world for 2009.

A french publication L’équipe Magazine put up that Tiger Woods, Phil Mickelson and David Beckham are way more richer then the French atlhete.

Tiger Woods won in 2009 73 millions or euros or 102 millions $. Another golfer Phil Mickelson show a gain of 54,4 millions $.

Star soccer player David Beckham on his side stacked 46,4 millions $.

So French athlete are far behind even if we look at the top 5.

Thierry Henry who play for the FC Barcelone won 26, 3 millions $, Tony Sparker from the San Antonio Spurs got 15, 5 millions $.

Karim Benzema from the Real Madrid have been paid 12,3 millions $. Sebastien Loeb the famous Rally racer won 11,9 millions $ and last but not least Franck Ribéry from the FC Bayern Munich got a check of 8,2 millions $.

How to Get Traffic to Your Blog

Original post by Alan View from  Moneymakerinfo

If you enjoy making money online by promoting products or services, then the chances of you being in affiliate marketing are fairly high. You might have signed up as an affiliate with one or more online businesses, who then give you a specific affiliate ID. Many of the online businesses that are involved in affiliate marketing might have provided you with a simple marketing package like banner or text ads and your affiliate sales page link. The only thing you really need to do now is to use these great tools and drive traffic to your affiliate sales page.

This is the strategy almost all affiliate marketers follow, but there is a problem here. Though this is a good strategy, in order for you to make a decent amount of money, you will need to have thousands of people visiting your affiliate sales page before even one product/service is sold. That being the case, you can imagine how hard it can be to actually make a $10 commission. Even if you succeed in doing so, the amount of time and effort you would have spent in earning those $10 would be huge!

Not just this, there is another problem with earning these commissions too. If you look at the terms and conditions of your affiliate marketing program, maybe they don’t pay commissions till you have earned at least $30. That means another thousand or more visitors and then, you might just have a chance at looking at those $30.

But here is something you need to consider without getting discouraged. Internet marketing is an excellent way for you to make extra cash on the side, and it honestly does not need much of an investment.

Four Step Affiliate Marketing Process:

Instead of advertising your affiliate program directly, make use of this four step process.

1. Providing value-add: Before getting down to advertising, provide something valuable to your potential customers. The simplest ‘valuable’ thing that you can provide without much effort is free information. You can provide this free information in the form of a series of email courses, eBooks and so on.

2. Give when you get: Don’t give away your free information till you get the email addresses of your potential customers. It is vital to know the name and email address of all the prospective clients, so that you can move on to the other two steps in the affiliate marketing process.

3. Earn trust: The next step in this four step process is to earn the trust of people, due to the valuable information that you have provided.

Just as you would closely monitor information provided by someone who gives you good advice on managing money, time or effort; others will start trusting you, provided your information is trustworthy. Since you have the name and email addresses of the potential customers, you can send them occasional emails with valuable information. Remember, don’t spam their mailbox. Else, they may block you and you will lose sales.

4. The actual sale: If you have been providing the potential customers valuable information regularly, they will trust you enough to buy a product/service you recommend. The sale is easier, if you can somehow make them realize that what you are recommending is worth the amount they will be spending.

In affiliate marketing, try to sell products and services that have helped you personally. This way, it becomes easier for people to trust you and you can share your experiences with them too!

In light of the credit legislation that recently went into effect, card issuers have come up with new ways to make up revenue. Watch out ! Your card may suddenly sting you …

BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT SPENDING ENOUGH : 30 $ TO 90 $

Annual fee for some Citibank cardholders who spend less than 2 400 $ a year.

BECAUSE YOU’RE NOT SWIPPING ENOUGH : 19 $

Charge for Fifth Third Bank cardholders who do not use their card within one year.

JUST BECAUSE :  29 $ TO 99 $

Annual fee beign tested by Bank of America on a variety of new and existing cards.

1- Where’s the nearest ATM that won’t cost an arm and a leg ?

App : ATM HUNTER

Why it’s great : This app from MasterCard lets you search for ATMs based on your bank, surcharges, and other features. You can look for ATMs where you are or at an adress you are headed to.

Cost : FREE

2- That house i’m driving past is fabulous ! What is it listed for 6

App : REALTOR.COM

Why it’s great : it uses GPS to produce a map of properties for sale and open houses near your current location, wich you can refine according to distance, size of house, price range, and more.

Cost : FREE

3- How do i know the price i’m looking at in a store is a good deal ?

APP : REDLASER

Why it’s great : This apps scans any bar code and uses Google product Search and Thefind.com to locate the best price. At BestBuy, example we saw two Blu-ray movies for $29.99 each; REDLASER found them for $19.99 at Walmart.com. Best Buy matched the price on the spot. Result : a 20 $ savings.

Cost : 1.99 $

4- i know i’m going to lose this receipt and i need it for tax purposes.

APP : IXPENSEIT

Why it’s great : it enables you to quickly punch in receipt info, even letting you take pictures of those scraps of paper and store then digitaly.

Cost : FREE for the lite version ( stores up to 200 records ) and $ 4.99 for the full version ( no record limit )

Leading online music shop hits another major milestone with the sale of the 10 billionth song, offering one lucky customer a prize for making the right purchase at the right time.

This news is from Kenneth Corbin from internetnews.com

Apple’s popular online music store iTunes has hit a major milestone, with the 10 billionth song downloaded sometime on Wednesday.

The landmark download was Johnny Cash’s “Guess Things Happen That Way,” Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) said.

The 10 billion mark comes a little more than a year and a half after iTunes sold its 5 billionth song.

Louie Sulcer of Woodstock, Ga., stands to receive a $10,000 gift card to the iTunes store for downloading he 10 billionth song, Apple said.

“We’re grateful to all of our customers for helping us reach this amazing milestone,” Apple Vice President Eddy Cue said in a statement. “We’re proud that iTunes has become the number one music retailer in the world, and selling 10 billion songs is truly staggering.”

As part of its 10 billion countdown, Apple ranked the most popular songs of the iTunes era. The most downloaded song is the Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeing.” The group also took the No. 3 spot on the list with “Boom Boom Pow.” Checking in at No. 2 on the list was Lady GaGa’s “Poker Face,” with Jason Mraz’s “I’m Yours” and Coldplay’s “Viva la Vida” taking the fourth and fifth spots, respectively.

Apple debuted its online music shop seven years ago, selling 1 million downloads in its first week. In the time since, iTunes has galloped to the top of the digital music realm, outselling by a large margin competitors such as Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart.com (NYSE: WMT).

In the meantime, iTunes has been looking to expand its offerings beyond online music. The site has reportedly been in talks with entertainment studios to roll out a TV service based on a $30 monthly subscription model.

Apple began offering Web TV content in 2005 through a deal with Disney-ABC. TV shows are currently available on iTunes for $2.99, and Apple also offers season-long subscription passes to certain programming.

Anybody will tell you that to make money working online you must have at least a basic knowledge of SEO. Search Engine Optimization is just another tool in your marketing bag. If used properly it can bring you more customers, more prospects, and more clients faster than any other form of marketing. But, like any other form of marketing it requires a plan. Before you even start to optimize your site you need to know what your goals are. What kind of person do you want to attract to your site? What keywords will you use? What kind of conversion rate do you want to achieve? Whatever your conversion goal is it will involve a living breathing person on the other end of the Internet connection. Before the existence of the Internet, before the existence of direct mail marketing, conversions involved face-to-face interactions. Keep this in mind while developing your marketing plan. Search engine marketing is NOT about tricking the search engines, it is NOT about how much you pay per click and it is NOT about how many websites link to yours. At the end of the day, it is about simulating that face-to-face interaction as closely as possible.

When your prospective customer reaches your website they probably will not know who you are. They are probably not familiar with your company and, most importantly, they will not want to be ’sold’ to.

‘But wait’ you say. ‘I have to make money. I have something to sell. That’s why I spent so much time and money bringing people to my website’.

Yes, but here is something to ponder. When you are shopping in a brick and mortar store, say for instance that you are shopping for a new stove. What are you initially looking for?

INFORMATION!

You want to know what makes the £600 model better than the £400 model. You ask yourself, “do I really need all the features of the £600 model or can I live with the £400 model?” So you are sitting there reading all of the information on the tags. You are gathering information. If a salesman walks up in the first few moments, you tell him that you are ‘just looking’ to get him to back off. It isn’t until you have settled on one or two models that you ask for help. It isn’t until you have gathered all of the INFORMATION that you even glance in the direction of the salesman, fearing that even looking at him before you are ready will cause him to come running over and pressure you into buying the most expensive model in the store.

You don’t want to be sold to, you want to make an informed decision. And when you finally do ask for a salesperson, what are you looking for? MORE INFORMATION!

You are looking for more information to support your buying decision. Only when you have answers all of your questions do you ever pull out that credit card and make the purchase.

Keep that in mind when you are creating your Internet marketing plan.

The successful salesman knows that he has products to sell. He knows that he must sell X number of stoves to put food on the table. But most importantly, the successful salesman knows that in order to make the sale he must know his product. He must have the INFORMATION his customers are looking for. He must know how to communicate that knowledge and how to make the sale passively without being a ‘pushy salesman’.

So, back to how to market ineffectively online….

If you really want to lose potential customers; if your passion is to sit around all day figuring out how to trick the search engines into ranking your website in the #1 or #2 spot; if you love paying way too much for pay per click traffic; if you are absolutely sure that you do not need to pay attention to proper search engine optimization, then here are a few sure fire ways to completely waste your time with your website. Here is how not to make money online:

· Use LOTS of cute graphics… especially the dancing cowboy one… everyone loves that right?

· Put everything you can possibly think of on the first page

· Include links to every single site you can think of

· Link exchange with everyone that asks

· Ask everyone to link exchange with you

· Make your contact information hard to find

· List your contact information everywhere and anywhere it fits

· Have no form of sensible navigation whatsoever

· Name your home page ‘home’, your contact page ‘contact me’ etc

· Use images to link your inner pages

· Have at least three broken links on every page

· Use the worst possible picture of yourself and make sure it is badly cropped

· Use the same title tag on every single page

· Use the same description on every single page

· Build your entire site in flash (remember to include the broken links)

· Hide text on your website so that only the search engines can see it

And the #1 thing you can do to completely waste your time with your website is….

· Don’t include any information anywhere about anything to do with your business

May your success be more than you can hold!