Lord Jeffery once said, “A good name, like good will, is got by many actions and lost by one.” Today, this statement rings true to web users everywhere, as “phishers” impersonate a vast number of reputable businesses, including PayPal, eBay, Inc., Bank of America Corporation, and Citibank. According to Phishtank.com, an organization committed to eliminating phishers, around 77,709 phishes were sent out in April 2007. With one click of a button, an unsuspecting user can give away their precious information to criminals! It is important to try to protect yourself from getting hooked by their extremely enticing and advanced baiting techniques.

Phishing is the illicit act of luring internet users to give up their valuable personal and account information. The first phishers started out stealing AOL users’ passwords in the 1990s by sending out instant messages to unsuspecting victims. When they got passwords, the phishers gained access to all their victims’ account information. Phishers now use a variety of techniques, including fraudulent emails, pop-ups, links, websites, and phone calls.

The damage caused by phishers ranges from cluttered email inboxes to financial failure. Estimates suggest that between May 2004 and May 2005 computer users lost approximately $929 million USD. For businesses the picture is even worse, as US businesses lose $2 billion USD a year because their clients fall prey to phishers.

To combat phishers, companies are coming up with creative solutions. Some companies use user specific details when corresponding with clients. For example, the Bank of America Corporation sends the client’s image on any emails or messages. The goal of such incentives is to help users differentiate between legitimate correspondences and false ones. With the launch of Firefox 2.0, an open-source browser, Firefox included Google, Inc.’s anti-phish software. This software alerts users when they are on a phisher’s site (see photo). As the presence of phishers climbs, more and more companies are having to take action against them.

As for now, here are some tips you may find useful to fight phishermen:

• Do not click on the links of any unexpected e-mails alerting you that you need to confirm your billing information.
• Look for multiple misspellings.
• Look for the “lock” icon, which indicates a secure site, on the browser’s status bar.
• If you’re unsure about something, contact the company in question.

If you do smell something phishy, you can visit antiphishing.org or phishtank.com to report it.

Chris Tingom had the right idea when he posted an article entitled “Receipts by Email” on his personal blog [link]. He had recently made a purchase at an Apple Store, and was pleasantly surprised with how they handled his receipt. When he went to the checkout counter, they asked if he wanted a paper receipt or if he would rather have one emailed to him. For the first time he realized what life would be like without paper receipts.

What’s funny is that we all deal with paper receipts on a daily basis. But they still seem like such an insignificant part our life: just a little piece of paper that comes with a new ipod, new shirt, or groceries. They come in handy when you need to return unwanted purchases, but otherwise they are just a pain to organize, store, and track.

But this is the thing: receipts are not an insignificant part of our lives. In fact, if we could just use them correctly, we would save time, money, and make our lives a lot simpler. For Chris, it only took one trip to the Apple Store to realize that there had to be a better way:

Andrew and I spent some time thinking about this and came up with this idea. What if their was a way to associate an email address with your credit card, and then whenever you used your card you could get a receipt in your email? What we need is a way to format this data (xml?) and get a feed for it, and then have shops and stores offer the email or xml feed option in addition to paper receipts.

When you really stop and think about it, we can all imagine this perfect world: one in which all your receipts could be automatically managed for you. You would log online and be able to categorize and organize your purchases. No more wasted paper. No more wasted time.

Well that day is finally here. Shoeboxed.com will automatically manage your receipts, fight spam, and help you get organized. It’s free, it’s easy, and it’s fun.

Sign up below and we’ll shoot you an email when you can start Shoeboxing!

We’re all looking for ways to keep our receipts neat. And with the advances in computer and internet technology, wouldn’t it be great to have a system that automatically managed your receipts? We could save time, save money, and make life a little simpler.

I was recently reading an article from the Salt Lake City Deseret News that discussed the option of storing your receipts in a computer file [link]. Marilyn Reston wrote to Heloise, a local columnist, recommending that she copy her emailed receipts and store them safely in digital files on her computer:

Dear Heloise: Don’t print receipts for online orders — just highlight the information, copy, paste and save to a computer file. Like everyone else seems to be, I’m drowning in clutter. This past year, I ordered most of my Christmas presents online, and I pasted the order information into a computer file rather than printing it out. I labeled the file by the vendor and date so I can find what I’m looking for if necessary. I have saved myself a lot of filing!

-Marilyn M., Reston, Va.

This is a great idea; you’ll also save paper and printer ink. And when the item is delivered, you can make a note in the file, along with any remarks about the item such as quality and shipping comments, as well as pros and cons of ordering from the particular company, for future reference.

-Heloise

Marilyn had a great idea. Email receipts are a valuable tool that can help you simplify your life - If you use them in the right way. These days, email receipts are only good for one thing - clogging up your personal inbox with unwanted, impersonal messages. They aren’t as useful as paper receipts because they are hard to read, hard to sort, and scattered among personal emails to family and friends.

Marilyn devised a great way to make digital receipts useful — by getting them out of her email box and into a clearly filed system on her hard drive. And as Heloise pointed out, she will be saving paper and ink the whole time. Al Gore would be proud. But there’s one problem. Marilyn must have a lot of time on her hands, because filing each and every one of her online purchases would take forever. I love the idea of organizing my finances and simplifying my inbox, but I don’t have the time to do it myself.

Lucky for me, Shoeboxed will take Marilyn’s solution to a whole new level. After signing up with Shoeboxed, your receipts will be automatically organized without cluttering your inbox. And as an added bonus, you’ll stop getting annoying corporate spam.

Now if I could only get in contact with Marilyn and give her the good news!

According to several high-tech retailers and technology firms, popular chains will start to offer emailed receipts when a product is purchased either online or in-store. Over the course of the next several years, shoppers will be given the opportunity to eliminate the hassle of organizing their paper receipts by choosing to accept digital receipts.

If email receipts are accepted as an industry standard among major retailers in the United States, shoppers will no longer have to worry about losing receipts because there will always be a copy stored online. Email receipts would represent an eco-friendly alternative that would help eliminate the need for unwanted paper receipts. They would be stored in a private database so that their information remains secure. Additionally, paperless transactions would improve the efficiency of transactions and would allow retailers to more accurately track consumer behavior.

Unfortunately, this may mean that your inbox will be filled with more and more receipts and promotional spam in the coming months. And even worse, you will be forced to give out your personal email address for all your impersonal transactions. Also, email receipts will continue to pile up in your inbox, but there will be no way to view and manage all of your receipts in one place.

Shoeboxed.com will automatically organize and manage these digital receipts for you and prevent corporate spam from reaching your inbox. Now you’ll have an easy way to track your purchases and keep your email address safe, secure, and personal.

Spam is such a crazy thing. This year, spam messages are expected to overtake human-issued emails—that’s right, the average person will receive more corporate mailings than person-to-person emails in the year 2007. That’s pretty scary, especially since spam has become increasingly sophisticated. I find it more and more difficult to decipher between what is safe and what is not. I guess I have some decision rules that I live by — when the email is sent from someone with numbers in their name, I usually steer clear. But can I trust emails sent to me from online stores? How do I know who to trust?

Recently, spam volumes have been increasing faster than expected due to the use of image-based spam. Rather than using traditional written text, these emails contain large image files that include the spam advertisements. This means that most of these messages are able to bypass spam filters and end up in your personal inbox. By the end of the year, more than thirty-five percent of spam will be in the form of an image—and as of now, no one has been able to create a product that would universally block these messages from reaching your inbox.

Until now, the team at shoeboxed.com was just as frustrated as everyone else. So we made it a priority to find a solution. When shoeboxed.com launches, we will eliminate spam from your inbox for free. Image files, non-image files—our service will take care of it all. For the first time, you’ll have total control over your inbox.

If you want to be the first to know when you can prevent all spam for free, click here and give us your email. Don’t worry, I promise we won’t spam you.