As part of Fraud Prevention Month — a month-long national initiative that helps Canadians recognize, prevent and report fraudulent activities. the Ministry of Justice and Consumer Protection BC are teaming up to help British Columbians avoid being the victim of a phishing scam.

Phishing or brand spoofing is when scammers create web pages or e-mail messages from what appear to be well-known and trusted businesses like a bank or credit card company. The goal of these fraudsters is to trick you into submitting sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, bank account information, social insurance numbers and passwords that will be used to commit fraud. By simply clicking on one of these phishing e-mails and supplying your personal information, you could become a victim of this prevalent fraud.

Don’t be a target for phishing scams:

• Protect your computer with anti-virus software, spyware filters, e-mail filters and firewall programs.
• Do not reply to any e-mail that requests your personal information, even if it looks like your bank is asking for a payment because they claim your credit card bill is overdue.
• Look for misspelled words.
• Do not send personal data over public wireless networks as they may or may not be secure.

If you receive a suspicious e-mail, contact the real institution as well as the Canadian Anti- Fraud Centre at 1 888 495-8501 or at: info@antifraudcentre.ca

You have all these different images because every time you sign up for a new website or sign up to comment online you’re asked to upload a picture to that profile.

In order to update those old images to something that better represents you, you need to login to each service and upload a new picture to each of these networks. That’s a lot of time spent uploading profile pictures, and updating profile information. Wouldn’t it be easier if you could sign up to one service that connected your e-mail address with your profile picture across the Internet?

When you register your e-mail address with gravatar.com the image associated with your registered e-mail address follows you from site to site appearing beside your name when you login, comment or post on a blog that supports Gravatars.

Gravatar stands for “globally recognized avatar.” An avatar is the earliest form of a profile photo and got its name from the icons people used to differentiate themselves when commenting on forums.

Although many social networks don’t have Gravatar integration, you’ll find they’re supported on most website commenting systems. Using a Gravatar can make your comment stand out from the rest.

With a Gravatar account you can add as many e-mail addresses to it as you like, assigning your personal photo to your personal e-mail address, and your company profile to your business e-mail address, making it easier to post comments either from yourself or from your company.

If your name is your brand and you write or comment regularly on posts you’ll want to have an image that represents you or your brand. Others who regularly post comments on sites will be able to recognize you just by glancing at your unique profile picture and might just visit your site or blog as they share your thoughts on a comment. It’s also a great way for a web manager to easily identify and reply to their loyal posters.

Many WordPress users may already be familiar with Gravatars as they’re integrated with that platform. When you login to WordPress you’ll see your Gravatar appear in the top right corner of the screen. sunpeaksnewsc.om uses Gravatars, they appear at the end of each online article with the writer’s biography.

If you’re wanting to keep your personal identity hidden then gravatar.com is likely not a service you’ll want to subscribe to. Most platforms and commenting systems usually assign you a default avatar and don’t require you to upload a photo.

It’s free and easy to get a Gravatar, just visit, register your e-mail address with gravatar.com, upload an image, connect your networks and fill out the biographical information. Now you’ll have one convenient place to update the majority of your profile photos, that sure beats having an egg for a Twitter profile.

“It takes too much time,” “I got annoyed with entering it, so I took it off,” “I don’t have anything on my phone that matters,” are the usual responses as to why there’s no passcode on the phone. Really, five seconds and entering four digits is too much hassle?

What a lot of people don’t acknowledge is that so much personal and confidential information is stored and accessible on our smartphones, such as e-mail accounts and contact lists.
For example: you’re out with a group of friends. You get up from the table and leave your phone unattended. Your friends think it’d be fun to mess with your phone. After realizing your phone’s unlocked they update the status of your social media accounts. Within seconds your status is updated to something inappropriate. Sound familiar? It’s all fun and games until someone looses . . . their job. Your friends may not have been aware that they actually posted to your work social media accounts—that doesn’t sound very professional does it?

Another concern is password resets. If your phone is set up to receive e-mails it’s easy to request a password reset. An intruder can choose one of your accounts, like amazon.com or godaddy.com for instance, and request a password reset link. That link gets sent to your e-mail address which is then received on your phone. Now the intruder can change any of your passwords when they have access to your e-mails, thereby locking you out.

This also applies to iTunes accounts. It would be easy for an intruder (who had gained access to the device due to it being unlocked) to simply request a new iTunes password, thus giving them the ability to rack up iTunes purchases, leaving you with a hefty credit card bill.

These situations could be combated by using an e-mail address that’s not attached to your mobile device, though most would find that a major inconvenience.
Passcodes may not be an end-all solution as thieves can find a way to hack them, but they will deter people from messing with your phone and buy you a little more time to have the phone deactivated or erase the data remotely from your phone if you lose it.

For iPhone users looking for an additional layer of protection you can select Settings | General | Passcode Lock | “Erase Data.” With this function turned on, the data on your iPhone will be erased after 10 failed passcode attempts. If you use this method be sure to back up your phone on a regular basis.

Don’t leave your mobile device at risk of identity theft or fraud, a simple four digit passcode can keep your information safe from prying eyes.

As the subject name implies the “1st Page on Google Ranking” e-mail promises to get your website to rank number one on the search engines, specifically the most used search engine, Google.

The e-mail reads similarly to the following:

From: Email

Subject: 1st Page on Google Ranking

I was surfing through your website “www.yourdomain.com” and realized that despite having a good design; it was not ranking on any of the search engines for most of the keywords pertaining to your domain. We offer a quick yet detailed assessment of your website with applicable recommendations to optimize it.

Kind regards,

Farah, Marketing Manager

At first glance the e-mail offer might give you the impression that Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a simple and quick marketing solution—pay someone to make a few changes to some words and you’ll instantly appear at the top of the search pages.

We all want our sites to rank high, ultimately in the top spot, but a high search ranking doesn’t always equate to increased web traffic. The e-mail example used above claims the website “yourdomain.com” was not ranking on any of the search engines for the keywords most important to the domain. Without conducting some research and strategic planning, it’s impossible to know whether your site is ranking high for your important keywords and phrases.

Optimizing your website for the search engines isn’t just about achieving high rankings, those high ranking search phrases also need to be relevant and valuable to your business. A website hit is considered valuable when the visitor views a web page for a period of time or clicks through several links within the site.

“Farah’s” email above states she’s a Marketing Manager, we’re just not sure who for! When you agree to let someone increase your site rankings, you’re agreeing to let them have full access to your web world. Handing over your usernames and passwords, or as I like to call them “the keys,” to an online stranger, could put you at serious risk.

Although the example e-mail is just spam, increasing or maintaining a high page rank for your targeted keywords and phrases is possible, there’s just no magic wand!

Depending on how your website was built you should be able to make regular tweaks, changes and additions to maintain or increase your search ranking.

If your website was built on the WordPress platform, then you’ll have access to several plugins that can help you manage your SEO. At the most basic level, these SEO plugins give you the ability to change the title, description and keywords on individual posts and pages.

No one can “guarantee” your website will rank number one on a search engine, so the next time you get that e-mail full of promises you’ll know if they’re empty or not.

Including regular content in your social media feed keeps the site active, and search engines love activity. A simple way to make sure you’re always distributing content is to schedule. Set yourself some time once a week where you pre-plan your social media updates.

Social media management programs like Tweetdeck and Hootsuite allow you to view feeds from, and add updates to various social media networking sites using one application. These programs also allow you to create search columns, and the big timesaver: schedule your updates.

Sometimes you may have several tweets or status updates that need to be posted in one day. By scheduling these updates you can span them out during the day or week without clogging up your followers’ feeds with your updates. Scheduling updates to your social media platforms also allows you to work when you want to. Status updates can be created late in the evening and scheduled for distribution at 10 a.m., which may be a more effective time to reach your audience.

It’s up to you how often you want to slate your posts to go out, but make sure you check your scheduled items on a regular basis to make sure the information is still relevant.

When you schedule an update in Tweetdeck it will automatically create a new column for scheduled items, allowing you to easily browse the column to assess if the update is going out on the right day at the correct time.

If Facebook is the only network your business is using you may want to skip the management programs and schedule directly from Facebook. To schedule a status update for your Facebook Business Page simply click the clock symbol that appears below the text of your update. Select your required dates and times then “Schedule” your status update. This method can also be used for adding back dated status updates.

To view scheduled updates for your Facebook Business Page select “Edit Page” from the admin panel, then select “Use Activity Log” from the drop down.

If your website content management system is WordPress you have the perfect platform to integrate your website with your social media platforms. Adding a post to your connected WordPress website can automatically distribute a tweet, Facebook post or e-mail campaign, all with one click.

Now that you’ve got your online media scheduled take some time to get out there and be active.

“What’s a hashtag?” is a frequently asked question by those new to the social networking scene. Hashtags were created in August 2007 by Google developer Chris Messina after he tweeted, “How do you feel about using # (pound) for groups. As in #barcamp [msg]?”

As the question above illustrates, hashtags are created when “#” is added to a set of words or string characters. They’re used as a way to group conversational topics for ease of searching. Although tags may appear on LinkedIn and Facebook or in text messages, hashtags are only searchable on Twitter, Google+ and Instagram and, unless using them for fun, they are the only platforms where hashtags should be used.

Simply clicking on an existing #hashtag will take you to a search result revealing tweets that use the clicked hashtag. Adding a hastag to your tweet brings you into the Twitter conversation giving it a higher chance of being viewed.

It’s particularly important to gain an understanding of the hashtag topic before adding it to your tweet as clothing company Celeb Boutique recently learned.

When @celeboutique’s social media person noticed #Aurora was trending they assumed it was related to their clothing line. Their tweet read:

#Aurora is trending, clearly about our Kim K inspired #Aurora dress

#Aurora was in fact trending due to the movie theatre shooting massacre in Aurora, Colorado. After a flurry of angry and upset tweets sent to their account, @celeboutique deleted the tweet and shortly after added a statement to their website and used several consecutive tweets to apologize for the insensitive tweeting error.

We are incredibly sorry for our tweet about Aurora—Our PR is NOT U.S. based and had not checked the reason for the trend, at that time our social media was totally UNAWARE of the situation and simply thought it was another trending topic—we have removed the very insensitive tweet and will of course take more care in future to look into what we say in our tweets. Again we do apologise for any offense caused this was not intentional & will not occur again. Our most sincere apologies for both the tweet and situation.

Although hashtags are often used in times of crisis they can also be used to promote events. When creating your own tag for an event there are a few simple rules to follow. Don’t make it too long. Tweeters only have 140 characters to get their point across, so long hashtags leave less room for the actual message. Use acronyms where possible. And lastly, let your followers know what your tag is for a particular event before the event, and make sure people attending the event know your hashtag so they can and add to the conversation.

Combining words to make a long hashtag can be used as humour such as #hadagreatdayattheoffice but should be avoided in everyday business tweeting. Also, using too many hashtags in one tweet is distracting to readers:

Great food at Earls restaurant #summer #dining #yummy #dessert #friends #cocktails #fun #hungry #whocares

Also, don’t tweet every word as a hashtag—it’s meaningless. @Marz_mcgehee illustrates how not to use hastags below:

#new #to #twitter #dont #get #hashtags #yet

July 25, 2012 5:39 pm via webReplyRetweetFavorite

@Marz_Mcgehee

MarshellMcGehee

You can also use tags to tweet about a location such as #sunpeaks #kamloops. Tweeters will often use a city’s airport code instead of its name #YVR (Vancouver) #YYC (Calgary).

Last of all, don’t confuse using @ instead of #.  @ refers to an actual Twitter name and will send a message to that tweeter.

Tweet me and let me know what your favourite hashtag is: @peaksmedia #hashtags

The letter is sent via the post and arrives in a government-style envelope with a maple leaf logo, both not so subtle marketing strategies to lead the recipient to assume the DRoC is affiliated with the Canadian government. Upon opening the letter, readers will see, in large letters on the top of the page, “Domain Name Expiration Notice.”

Most people don’t realize that domain name companies do not contact you by post, they send renewal notifications via e-mail. What DRoC is sending is a solicitation letter, which attempts to get people to switch their domain names from their existing registrar to the DRoC.

The DRoC preys on people who may not have a thorough understanding of how the domain registration process works. If you receive this letter in the post my advice is to rip it up and throw it away. It’ll save you from purchasing an overpriced domain name and the headache of trying to get your money back from the DRoC.

Here are a few tips to keep your domain name secure:

• Check to see if your domain is up for renewal. You can check this by running a whois.com search on your domain name. As long as you haven’t paid extra for domain name security, you’ll be able to see who your domain is registered with. If the company name matches the company requesting the renewal then it’s safe to go ahead and renew the domain. You have until the date of expiry to renew your domain, although I’d advise renewing it earlier than that, just not six months in advance, which is what DRoC is requesting.
• Make sure your domain name is locked. Locking your domain name stops the domain from being transferred from the existing registrar. The transfer process requires the domain be unlocked and an authorization code provided to the new registrar.
• Have more than one person listed on the domain registry contact information. Having a secondary contact listed spreads out the correspondence. Listed as the technical support contact for a client, I intercepted an e-mail requesting their domain name be unlocked. Had I not received that e-mail, I never would have known my client had fallen for the DRoC scam.
• Hide your contact information. This is usually an extra charge, but it will stop marketers and other unwanted eyes from viewing your contact information.
• Read the small print. If you’re receiving correspondence from someone, are they requesting you renew or transfer your domain?

If you’re still unsure about that letter or e-mail you’ve received, contact your web developer or web hosting company to ensure the safety of your domain name.

“Green” updates may suggest the latest WordPress upgrades were somewhat environmental, however the name Green was used to honour guitarist Grant Green whose soulful tunes kept WordPress programmers company during their long hours of upgrading to version 3.4.

Over 60 million people and over 300 of the world’s largest websites use WordPress, so it’s no surprise three million users updated their self-hosted WordPress sites shortly after an upgrade was issued just over two weeks ago.

Outlined below are some of the upgrades that may be useful to you, so you can implement these changes when updating your website.  I’m going to skip over the changes to WordPress Themes as Peaks Media Inc. creates custom themes for our clients.

In this article I will cover four great upgrades:
• Tweet Embedding
• Links in Image Captions,
• Admin Bar Scroll
• Login Redirect

Tweet Embedding:
This is a feature that’s been available on WordPress in the past using the “Blackbird Pie” plugin. Now it’s available without a plugin. Simply copy and paste the URL of a tweet into your WordPress Post or Page and once published the Tweet will be displayed as an image.

This is what the URL will look like: https://twitter.com/WordPress/status/218070795275091968

Once posted it will appear as a Tweet in your site:

https://twitter.com/WordPress/status/218070795275091968

Not only is a tweet displayed on your website but the visitor (providing they are logged in to Twitter) also has the ability to Reply, Retweet and Favorite the displayed tweet.

Links in Image Captions:
If you use captions on your images, you can now also add links within the caption section using HTML code.

Admin Bar Scroll:
By clicking the empty space on your admin bar you will be taken to the top of the website page/post or dashboard. The clickable section is marked below in Red.

Login Redirect:

Most of Peaks Media’s clients’ sites include a login link at the bottom of their theme template, however some clients choose to opt out of this link. Now instead of adding /wp-admin or /wp-login.php to the back of your domain URL you can add the following shorthands: /login will take you to the login screen and both /admin and /dashboard to the WordPress dashboard. (Providing you are not already using those short codes for a designed post or page).

In addition to the above changes WordPress released a second update: 3.4.1 that addresses 18 bugs and a few security issues. It’s always recommended you upgrade your WordPress site to the latest issue, especially when security issues are outlined in the upgrade.

If you’re a Peaks Media client subscribed to automatic WordPress Updates, you would have received an e-mail notification letting you know upgrades have been made to your account.

What makes content so important, and why is it considered king of the Internet? It all comes down to the power of the mighty search engine. The more content the search engine can find that’s relevant to a particular search phrase, the more chance your website has of being listed in the search results. Website owners not capitalizing on content creation to reach their target audience are missing search engine optimization opportunities.

“I don’t write well,” or “I don’t have time to write,” may be some of the fears you face when contemplating writing content for your website. Yet, content creation comes in all shapes and sizes; it doesn’t need to take a lot of time, and you don’t always need to write an in depth article. Content may be in the form of using photos to illustrate a story; the text that accompanies the story may be a paragraph, or even a sentence, to describe the images.

Alternatively you can always use a guest writer who’s knowledgeable on a particular product or service you supply. If you’re a restaurateur, you could have one of your staff write about serving etiquette or perhaps writing about the latest wines on the market would be an attractive opportunity for your wine rep to get more exposure in the industry.

An addition to Gates’ aforementioned catchphrase is “good content is king.” The key to good content is using content containing keywords relevant to the product or service you’re supplying. It’s great to see increased traffic to your site, but more importantly you want the visitors to be within your target market. There’s no point in spending a lot of time attracting visitors to your site if they’re only going to leave because the content isn’t relevant to what they were searching for in the first place.

I’ve previously spoken about viewing your analytics to see where your site traffic is generated; after you’ve posted a few articles on your site take a look at your analytics, I’m sure you’ll be surprised by the results. While viewing your analytics, be sure to pay attention to the entry and exit points of traffic. If they came from a blog post and exited your site right after reading the post, you may not be attracting the right visitors to your site.

To read Gates’ 1996 article in full visit: http://www.craigbailey.net/content-is-king-by-bill-gates/

< a href=“http://

With a little coded charm a link can take on chameleon abilities; changing its appearance prior to being clicked, while being hovered over, when reaching its destination and when returning to its initial starting point. Underlined, bolded, italicized, opening to a new tab in a browser are all tricks a link is capable of accomplishing.

peaksmedia.com/about”>
The Anchor Link is a text-based link that’s intended to move a reader forward in order for them to learn more about that text-based word. In the old school web-based days you would commonly see anchor linked used as [click here] for more information. Although click here or order today are still being used as sales links to entice the reader to a particular product, an anchor link in today’s web world is more commonly the new school resource link. A resource link aims to provide the reader with more information about a particular subject.

Often anchor links will appear almost like a Twitter #hashtagmashup, where an author will link lots of words in the same sentence or paragraph to get their point across. This linking style screams look over here. It’s not trying to emphasize particular words in a sentence, it’s a method of saying, hey I’ve got some important things to say and here are the links to back up my claims.

target=“_blank”>
Internal vs. External Link. Linking doesn’t have to lead people away from your site, but when it does it should generally be accompanied by code instructing the link to open in a new browser tab. Targeting a link to open in a new tab leaves your site hanging in the background rather than packing your visitors bags and asking them not to return.

You may also chose to use a friendly linking method by sending your site traffic to people, suppliers, or clients with whom you deal. For example, my dear friend Blake sells these great bamboo ski poles that you might want to purchase for your next ski vacation.

Internal links are often links to attachments stored on your server, most commonly PDFs. Another method of using internal links is to send a visitor to content contained on your own site. Most sites will add links to let you read more about our company however an internal link can also link to other related articles you have located on your site, giving you more clout with the search engines.

<a href=”http://farrellys.com.au>
Link Sharing was a popular method once used to con the search engines into believing your site was popular or worthy of being ranked. Webmasters would create separate pages containing links to completely irrelevant businesses; those sites would then scratch your back, adding a link from their site to your likewise non-related website. Link pages are still used today, however they often contain links to suppliers or client sites, not random or pointless sites. Sharing links from your site to another and having that share reciprocated still holds value with today’s search engine algorithm, it should however, be used wisely.

title=”Sun Peaks Realty”>
The Image Link. As its name implies, clicking an image will lead you somewhere new. Often image links are used to enlarge an image but they can be used for many applications. Clicking a logo for example could take you to the related organisation’s website, or simply to a page that contains more information on that organization. Image links should also use the <alt=” or title=”> meta tags to boost search engine rankings.

<”mailto:cathy@peaksmedia.com
E-mail Links allow you to send e-mails to a chosen e-mail address they may also request the e-mail contain a specific subject ?subject=”>.
When writing content for your site, use a variety of these link methods. And, it’s always recommended you analyze your statistics regularly. Without viewing your traffic results how can you tell if your linking methods are effective?