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Microsoft’s ad blitz for Bing is still going strong, and it’s starting to hone in on a new target: your wallet. Bing’s latest TV ad, which aired for the first time last night, is focused on Bing Cashback, the program that allows users to save money when they purchase items found using Bing search. Cashback has been around for a while, most people probably had never even heard of the program until now. This is the first time Microsoft has ever aired an ad for Cashback, and you can be sure that it’s going to strike a chord with plenty of viewers.

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It is now illegal to use your cell phone to text, check e-mail or surf the web while driving in New York State.
Governor David Paterson signed the bill into law Thursday.

The ban also covers using laptops or other handheld devices to read, view or send images or data while the vehicle is moving.

Drivers can be fined up to $150.

A Virginia Tech study released last month found texting while driving makes drivers 23 times more likely to be involved in a crash.

It is already illegal to talk on a cell phone while driving unless you’re using a hands-free device.

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E-Mail Versus Twitter
By Bill McCloskey, ClickZ, Aug 27, 2009

Could Twitter replace e-mail as the supreme marketing vehicle? Like e-mail, Twitter is a push medium: pushing out its marketing messages, conversations, and endless blather to cell phones and apps around the world.

The advantage of Twitter over e-mail, some would argue, is that it represents a more interactive, more viral, more everything platform for the marketer. Marketers pay big bucks to design an e-mail campaign to go viral.

With Twitter, viral is the norm, as tweets and retweets multiply themselves. Let’s face it, the promise of e-mail as a dialogue between company and customer is a long unfulfilled dream, but with Twitter it’s a daily occurrence.

The whole topic of e-mail versus social media, specifically the impact of Twitter on the marketing community, has become one of the most hotly debated topics on The Inbox Insiders, a private networking list for the leading e-mail marketers. The debate was kicked off by a blog post by Bob Frady, a marketer most recently at Live Nation. In the post, Frady lists the reasons he dislikes Twitter, including:

Twitter is a news vehicle, not a marketing vehicle.

Customers aren’t as connected as marketers (and thus those who tweet represent a minor segment of the audience).

Social media is overrated as a marketing vehicle.

There is a high rate of burnout with Twitter users.
Frady elaborates on these and other points in his post, which clearly touched a nerve for many marketers and pundits who are heavily invested in the world of Twitter brand building (both personal and corporate).

……

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By Geoffrey A. Fowler

Emailing has done little to make communication more expressive. But now Yahoo is trying to make emailing more social.

Yahoo

Yahoo announced on Monday that it is upgrading its popular Web-based email with social networking capabilities that make Yahoo mail look a lot more like Facebook.

Among a host of changes to Yahoo’s online services, Yahoo said its main mail homepage will now feature updates on what the folks in your address book are sharing about themselves online – including status updates they’ve posted, photos they’ve shared, and their birthdays. The new mail page will also show the most recent emails just from the people you select as your “connections” – Yahoo’s term for “friends.”

Yahoo began unveiling some of its social “connections” capabilities several months ago to people in the U.S. and Australia. Now social email will roll out to all of Yahoo’s users over the next four weeks.

“Listening to our users talk about how they want to manage their online lives,” said John Kremer, the vice president of Yahoo Mail, “they are asking us to bring this stuff together and make it easier to consume their world.”

In another nod to being more social, Yahoo has enhanced its email service’s photo organizing and sharing capabilities. Incorporating technology from Xoopit, a startup that Yahoo bought a few weeks ago, Yahoo mail will now come with a “My Photos” app that scans all of your emails for photos that have been attached or shared through services such as flickr, and collects them into one virtual scrapbook. From there, you can organize the photos and send them along to other friends. Yahoo also increased the attachment limit for emailing photos from 10MB to 25MB.

Yahoo says a forthcoming app from online invitations service Evite will also integrate right into its email service, enabling people to add attendees from their own contacts list and update calendars.

Many popular online services are encroaching on each other’s territory in the effort to become the preferred destination for uber-connected lives. Last week, for example, Facebook announced a feature that enables administrators of Facebook pages to publish updates to their Twitter accounts automatically.

One of the main drawbacks to Yahoo’s social efforts – at least so far – is that it really works best when your online friends are also Yahoo users. The company has lately tried to turn its user accounts into social networking personas; there’s even a spot on the new email homepage for a photo of yourself and a witty line about what you’re doing right now. Your Yahoo persona does allow you to automatically feed in updates from a handful of other social services, such as Twitter. You can also identify a “connection” as somebody who doesn’t use Yahoo email, but that person has to sign up for a Yahoo account to take full advantage of the sharing. Kremer said that Yahoo will add more outside connection capabilities over time, including the ability for Yahoo status updates to feed into other social networking systems.

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Good thing Gmail is out of beta. It is now the third largest Web mail service in the U.S. In July, Gmail nudged past AOL Email with 37 million unique visitors compared to 36.4 million for AOL, according to comScore estimates. (Gmail is the orange line in the chart below). That puts Gmail within sight of the No. 2 player, Windows Live Hotmail, which has 47 million unique visitors. After that there is a wide gulf separating Yahoo Mail and its 106 million monthly unique visitors.

The last time checked on Gmail’s progress was at the beginning of the year, when it seemed like it would still take at least two years for it to catch up to its nearest rivals. But so far this year, Gmail’s unique visitors grew 25 percent, while AOL’s declined 22 percent. Thus, the two crossed paths in July. (Hotmail grew only 8 percent during the same period, while Yahoo Mail increased unique visitors by a healthy 16 percent).

If Google wants Gmail to pass Hotmail quickly and gain the No. 2 spot, my suggestion is to keep pumping in new enhancements through Gmail Labs and to speed up the pace at which mail storage increases. Not that I am a typical user, but I am already at 97 percent of my allotted 7,358 megabytes. One of the primary lures of Gmail has always been its seemingly endless and ever-expanding storage limits. Please don’t make me pay for more storage.

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There are numerous ways to be scammed nowadays. Pyramid schemes, ‘too good to be true’ investments and of course the good old internet. There are literally millions of websites that will gladly take your money, personal info, bank details and a host of other things from you and then skedaddle.

Today, I’m going to talk about the top 5 email scams that litter inboxes all over the world.

Now, given the fact that 90% of e-mails sent world wide can be regarded as spam, undoubtedly a large proportion of that spam will be scams trying to get your hard earned money. Fortunately, given the huge amount of inactive email accounts most of this spam will go unopened and will lie dormant forever.

But some of it is opened in offices, schools and homes all over the world. They deceive you into thinking they are something they are not. Here are five email scams you should watch out for.

The Bank

When opening a bank account of any kind you are informed beyond any doubt that the bank will never, ever, send you an e-mail asking for your information. Why would they? They already have it. But millions of people still reply to e-mails asking for just that. These e-mails will normally have a professional layout and will have originated from a domain very similar to the banks in the hope that when you see the e-mail address you assume it is from the bank.

Popular ones include telling you your bank card is about to expire and they need your information or there is a sum of money on the way to you and they need your information to process the transaction. Don’t believe a word. They want your details to rob you of every cent you have.

Nigerian Inheritance

Ever got a poorly written e-mail from a bank manager in Africa (or just about anywhere else for that matter) telling you that a rich guy died along with all his family in a plane crash and he wants to transfer money to your account? These kinds of email scams are called “419 emails” or Nigerian scams.

If you reply and begin talking to them they will shower you in promises and may even up the amount of money you’re going to get. Then, before the transfer can be made they’ll ask you for a few thousands dollars to cover their expenses. More like their holiday next summer.

Phishing Email Scam

These e-mails will often appear to come from sites you actually use, such as PayPal. If they find your profile they send you an e-mail that looks exactly like one from the site. They will redirect you to a bogus site which, once again looks just like the actual website. Once you sign in all of your info will go straight to them meaning they can do what they wish with your money.

Virus E-Mails
Many people who want to scam you will create programs and spy applications that will send them your bank details as soon as you use any online monetary service. They normally skulk around in the attachments of e-mails. Many scammers will find a funny picture or video and will send it to as many people as they can.

They are getting into the mindset of your typical office worker who will forward the e-mail to all his/her family, friends and co-workers. When these email scams are successful, scammers can often retrieve thousands of peoples details. Think about it. If they send it to one person who then sends it to thirty, each of these people will again send it to all their contacts. Hundreds of peoples’ details all in a very short space of time.

Lottery Email Scams

These have a low forward rate and as such require a lot of work by the low tech scammers. They will tell you that you have won a substantial amount of money in an e-mail address raffle or something similar. They tell you that you must reply to the e-mail, just like the inheritance e-mails.

Eventually, you will be asked for a few thousand dollars to cover fees. Don’t fall for it. This is the real world and you don’t just win a $3 million prize in a raffle you never entered.

My advice to combat the above e-mails which are very popular comes in two forms:

Be aware that any e-mail asking you for any information such as account numbers, passwords or account verification long after you signed up is fraudulent. Legitimate companies will almost never contact you to ask for such information.
Install protection software such as Norton 360 3.0, McAfee Security, or Avast! Professional. They can be costly but so can having your bank account drained. Remember: you get what you pay for, so when it comes to security and protection, get the best that there is, not the free stuff. Now don’t get me wrong, a few free programs are as good as the paid versions, but for the very best protection possible, choose one of the above paid products.

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Businesses seem to be less concerned about social media, perhaps because e-discovery focuses on e-mail.

August 10, 2009
By Alex Goldman: More stories by this author:

Companies have become very serious about their data retention policies and use of corporate assets, according to a new report from data loss prevention (DLP) provider Proofpoint. Thirty-one percent of those surveyed said they had fired an employee in the past 12 months for violating e-mail policies, and 51 percent said they had disciplined an employee for e-mail policy violations during the same period.

Companies are also cracking down on the use and misuse of social media. Eight percent had fired an employee for posting sensitive or private information to a media sharing site such as YouTube and Vimeo, nine percent for doing so on a blog, and eight percent for doing so on a social media site such as Facebook or LinkedIn.

The survey, now in its sixth year, covered responses from 220 employees at companies with over 1,000 employees during the month of June, 2009. The latest version of the report is always available here for download for free, after registration.

The news comes shortly after the release of a survey that said that the majority of businesses lack written policies for social media. In Proofpoint’s survey, two-thirds of respondents had such a policy, Keith Crosley, Proofpoint director of market development and the author of the survey “Outbound Email and Data Loss Prevention in Today’s Enterprise, 2009″ told InternetNews.com.

In contrast, most (84.5 percent of those surveyed) have an e-mail retention policy and 93.6 percent have a policy governing e-mail use. “But why would anyone not have an e-mail policy,” he asked. “Not having a policy could put you into a grey area if you need to discipline or terminate someone. In a litigious state like California, you couldn’t get away with not having an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) for e-mail.”

The real costs of data policies

Crosley said that companies are more concerned about e-mail than about social media because of the cost of e-discovery (define). A single subpoena can cost millions.

“These are actual case studies,” he said. “One company that became a customer of ours had 5,000 employees. Their old data system was 1,000 tapes’ worth of e-mail backup and whenever they had an e-discovery event, the cost to get the consultant in and the cost of IT time added up to $2.5 million per attempt.”

Subpoenas are not uncommon. Twenty-four percent of those surveyed said that employee e-mail had been subpoenaed at least once in the past 12 months.

Many companies check outbound mail. Thirty-eight percent of those surveyed who work at companies with 20,000 or employees said they employ staff to read outbound e-mail.

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he fact that many customers are shifting from running their own e-mail servers to getting mail as a hosted service doesn’t have to spell doom for Microsoft, insists Rajesh Jha, the man who heads the Exchange business.

In an interview on Monday, Jha said that, although many see the rise of services as more of a benefit to companies like Google, he sees it as an opportunity for his business.

Microsoft’s Rajesh Jha, shown here in his office earlier this year, says the shift from a world of servers to a world of services need not spell trouble for the Exchange business.

“I feel we will grow our share overall with the move to services,” Jha said. In particular, Jha said that Microsoft has a better option for small and midsize businesses than it did when its only option was for those companies to run their own Exchange servers. “I think we have a huge opportunity for growth. I don’t think we are in a defensive position at all.”
In a year in which many software businesses–including a number within Microsoft–took a hit, the Exchange business continued to grow last year, Jha said, saying that revenue for the product nearly hit $2 billion and has 70 percent market share among corporate users.
Jha acknowledged, though, that competition for the in-box is definitely heating up.
“It is where people spend more of their hours,” Jha said. “It’s become a real critical part of the day. Our competitors are smart. They see it too.”
In addition to Google, IBM continues to push its Lotus Domino/Notes combination while Cisco has said it will have a Linux-based e-mail offering based on last year’s Postpath acquisition.
Sounding a familiar refrain, Jha said that he expects customers to warm to Microsoft’s strategy, which lets them have the option of running Exchange themselves or purchasing it as a subscription hosted service.
“With Exchange, we don’t give them any kind of technology ultimatum,” Jha said. “We don’t say ‘Thou shalt move to the cloud.’ “
Microsoft has shifted its priorities, though. Unlike past versions of Exchange, Microsoft developed Exchange 2010 as a service first, and only later has it done the work on the server product. That server product, which has been in testing for some time and reached the beta stage in April, is now ready in a near-final “release candidate” form.
Among its features is one that lets users “mute” an e-mail thread that they are no longer interested in being part of.
Jha reiterated that the final version of Exchange 2010 should be done later this year.
“I feel pretty good about how we are tracking,” he said, noting that half of Microsoft’s in-boxes–some 80,000–are now on the new version of Exchange. ” We’ll definitely be ready this year.”

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Joe has an email account he has had for over 10 years. He emails coworkers, friends, and family from the account regularly.
His mother still sends him e-birthday cards every year.
It is used for Turbo Tax, his online banking, and he often emails projects from his work email to his personal email so he can work on the finishing touches from home.
His order confirmation emails for Ebay, Amazon, and Travelocity all go to the same email. His doctor’s office and insurance send him appointment reminders and paperless statements to that address.
Recently, when he requested an address change online with his bank, the DMV and the Post Office and he was pleased to find he could do it all paperless. He’s very environmentally conscious, and keeps meticulous records.
Joe, in fact, is pretty average.
This email address for Joe is about as firmly established as his identity as a credit report- it contains details of his finances, his address history, and his birthday just as a credit report would.
His address book reveals his mother’s maiden name, and a compromise of the account could easily result in his tax information and social security number being revealed.
A compromise or lockout of this account could be devastating.
He doesn’t have a paper copy or other access to those email addresses. In some cases, the only contact information he has for people is email.
If someone were to gain access, he would not be the only target. All those individuals in his address book would be contacted and extorted for money.
It will take Joe a long time to try to track them all down and warn them, and by that time it is probably already too late. His company might be blackmailed based on intellectual property gained from the compromise.
His accounts could be taken over and emptied, his identity stolen and used for credit cards, utilities and medical services.
A routine traffic stop might result in jail time while law enforcement figures out that there was a fake ID provided during a DUI stop.
With the information available in that email, Joe’s life can be stolen lock, stock and barrel.
If your email is this tied up with your identity, it is important to protect it. When you use your email address to sign up for services or profiles, you are adding another avenue to attack your account.
How do you quarantine an email?
Security experts actually recommend that, “A good rule of thumb for the average email user is to keep a minimum of three email accounts. Your work account should be used exclusively for work-related conversations. Your second email account should be used for personal conversations and contacts, and your third email account should be used as a general catch-all for all hazardous behavior.”
Take inventory. Make a list of all the websites you have attached to your email, all the contacts in your address book and anyone you regularly contact via that account. The average user has about 12 online accounts registered with their main email. Then, go through your folders and archived emails and scan them so you have a good idea exactly what is in your account.
Make sure you have a disaster plan. After you have taken inventory, think about what you would do if you were to suddenly loose all access to that email. Are your documents backed up? Do you have phone numbers for your contacts so you can warn them? Do the websites attached to your email account have a 24/7 toll free line for assistance? Do you have any of this contact information for the companies or persons in a non-technical format in case your entire computer is compromised?
Never use the trusted email or part of the email address as a username. Never use the same usernames and passwords for all accounts. Also, many services are now offering an option to force your password to expire periodically (live.com has an option for 72 day expiration, for example). Find your security settings and use them.
Many websites now offer the ability to register two email accounts with your profile. If the option is available, use it. Create an isolated, secure email and keep it safe. This way, if your email is compromised or the profile hacked you still have a second account you can communicate the issues with the company or retrieve a password.
When signing up for social networking sites, use an email account just for that site or your “catch all” email. This prevents hackers from gaining access to your trusted email through the site or from scammers spoofing your email to try to extort money from your list of contacts. People will be more suspicious of an email coming from FacebookJoe@domain.net than from youtrustedemail@sinceforever.com and it will give you time to contact them to tell them of the fraud.
Never use your trusted email for comments, blogging, chatting, or any online forms. Your trusted email should be for communicating with real people only. There are plenty of services out there that will set up dummy email addresses for free. This allows you to keep your email address secure but still give contact information out and receive communication at the same inbox. If the dummy email address becomes tainted, you can easily amputate by shutting down the address entirely. Just Google “disposable email address” or “temporary email address” and you will find plenty of services to choose from.
Don’t unsubscribe from mailing lists you suddenly find yourself on. Clicking on the “unsubscribe” link or hitting reply could verify your account as “live” to a scammer. Instead, block the email address you are receiving the subscription from.
Determine if mobile banking risk is worth the convenience. Does your phone have antivirus? Can you get an antivirus? Contact your service provider and determine if there are additional security settings you can select. For more information on cell phone and smart phone security from the US government, click here.
Be cautious of wi-fi. There are plenty of cyber criminals out there who set up unsecured wireless connections in common hot spots to try to catch someone doing a little online banking or email while sipping their coffee. Check your wireless connection at home and in the office- is it secure? Encrypted?
When sending highly sensitive information, consider using encryption or stenography for the message and data.
Be discriminating about sending forwards. If the email were to fall into the wrong hands, a crook can use the contacts in the email to try to scam everyone included on the communications.

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(The Frisky) — I heart words and communication. This includes e-mails, text messages, Gchat, BlackBerry Messenger, iChat — the works. I am a sucker for a well-crafted e-mail or a witty text message. My motto: The way to my heart is through my brain.

Witty e-mails and text messages aren’t always signs of real-life chemistry, writer says.

That’s why I thought Joe could be Mr. Perfect for me. Joe and I met one night at a work gala. I had already put away an entire bottle of wine when I almost knocked him over on the dance floor.

“Do you like to dance, beautiful girl who almost stepped on my foot?” he asked.

“Only when I’m drunk. When I’m sober, I dance like Elaine from ‘Seinfeld,’ ” I replied.

It was a rainy October night and Joe offered to escort me to the subway when the event ended, impressed that I could: a) still walk and b) do it in 3-inch heels. “E-mail me,” I slurred, handing him my business card, “I loooove e-mails.” The Frisky: My dating disaster story

The next day at work, the misery of my hangover was interrupted when Joe sent me a long, witty, intellectually stimulating e-mail, complete with references to popular culture, long words spelled properly (so hot), anecdotes about his life, and plenty of questions about mine. Wait … what did he look like again?

The e-mails continued, getting more and more opus-like. He responded quickly — my number-one turn-on. Enough with that “hard-to-get” crap.

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Within a few days, he began sending me funny, random text messages along with the novella-esque e-mails:

I just passed the subway stop I walked you to the night we met. Good thing you didn’t incapacitate me by stepping on my foot. I want to see you dance like Elaine.

What’s your favorite kind of cupcake?

I just saw a man wearing a horse costume on Columbus. Ah … New York.

He even played along when a week later I told him that I was putting a ban on our e-mail communication because I wasn’t getting any work done. In response, he sent a handwritten letter to my office via courier asking me out for Saturday night. I was so overcome that I think I might have peed my pants. It was like this guy could read my mind. Finally, I would get to see him in person again! The Frisky: Real dating advice for the technological age

That Saturday night I walked into the fancy seafood restaurant ready to pick up our witty repartee right where it left off. As soon as we sat down across from each other, I felt my stomach drop. Something was very, very wrong. He was attractive enough, but I wasn’t attracted to him. Why? We had nothing to say to each other. I mean … nothing. How could this have happened?
…………

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