Disadvantages of using Yellow Book/HIBU pages for Your Online Web Presence

May 9, 2016

Computer Tips, Web Wise

In the past (many moons ago), Yellow Pages, Yellow Book or HIBU have been a great way to advertise and promote your business to a large audience.

Then came the internet and it went to the web as yellow pages websites. However, over the past several years there has been a decline in these types of websites and for good reason due to the following disadvantages vs traditional web design firm or professional services:

Not Owning Your Website: This is probably one of the most important disadvantage of owning a yellow page website is that you are basically renting it from the yellow page company and do not actually own it.

In other words, you are paying a yearly rental to the yellow page company to host your website. To this regards you would lose your website if you dropped out of the program or don’t renew your contract.

Not Owning Your Domain Name: When registering your website (that WWW URL that distinguishes you from the rest) through a yellow page/HIBU company, you are essentially not the owner of your domain name .

Yellow page essentially owns the rights to that name, for minimum of a year. They say they will release it and transfer the ownership (generally for a price) after the contract is up but will do everything in their power to make sure you continually pay the expensive monthly fees for hosting and domain name.

They will also tell you how important it is to maintain your advertisement in the big thick yellow physical book that everyone tosses away, unless your in your 70’s, which is probably not the target audience you’re looking for.

And not only does transferring the ownership of the domain name cost money but they have the upper hand and it can possibly lead to legal issues if you no longer want your website with them.

Immensely Expensive Option: It is vital to note that by owning (renting) your website via yellow pages you have to pay an initial cost for creation and hosting along with paying a rather expensive yearly rental fee to stay in the program. The cheapest monthly options they have are still 70% higher than our monthly hosting fees.

Managed Web Hosting VS. Non-managed Web Hosting

October 22, 2015

Hosting, Security

Every website requires hosting service. Web Hosting service allows organizations to make their website accessible via the World Wide Web. Web hosts are companies that provide space on a server, typically in a data center, as well as providing Internet connectivity.

Since the average business or association does not own a web server and have the bandwidth to account for hundreds of visitors to their website, they will need to “rent” a portion of someone else’s server for their website hosting. The hosting service fee is commonly based on a per month or annual cycle.
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Beware of Heartbleed/OpenSSL Vulnerability Phishing Scams

April 18, 2014

News, Security, Web Wise

It seems like whenever there is a major virus outbreak or vulnerability announced, such as the Heartbleed vulnerability, scammers and malicious hackers are not too far behind trying to cash in on the moment and innocent.

Here is a phishing email (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phishing) recently received in one of my not-so-important email accounts. One that is used mainly for signing up for things like demos of products or coupons and promo codes.

Usually those places end up re-selling your email account, thus increase spam/phishing emails directed to that account. So I never use any of my main/important email accounts in those situations and neither should you.

Below is the subject and body of the message, along with a screen capture of what it looked like.

SUBJECT OF SPAM MESSAGE: Heartbleed/OpenSSL vulnerability: password change recommended

BODY OF SPAM MESSAGE: (hyperlinks removed for precaution)

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3 Pieces Of Information Every Website Must Contain

April 6, 2014

Web Wise

website-information When working with a web designer company, such as Northwoods Web Designs, we make sure your site is designed and created to meet your expectations and make sure 3 key pieces of information are presented well on the site for visitors.

Because you know your business and service offerings the best, all content is provided by the client for any website developments.This is the general direction of any website designer company.

Content writing is very important to a website. Not having good content on a great looking and professional designed website is like having a Toyota Prius 4 cylinder motor stuffed inside a Chevy Corvette. It will look great, but its performance will not be on par.

Be Cautious : Cryptolocker Ransomeware On The Rise

October 27, 2013

Security, Software, Web Wise

In the past month, several antivirus companies have discovered a new ransomware variant known as Cryptolocker. Ransomware is a type of malware on the rise that holds your precious files hostage for money.

It does that by searching your computer and shares for popular file extensions and encrypts them preventing you from accessing them ever again unless you pay up.

This type of ransomware does not spread to other PCs or replicate by itself. This program needs your interaction to do its evil work. Ransomware needs you to launch the program on your PC. Of course, like phishing scams, It does this by trying to trick you into opening up some random attachment from a random email.

This attachment (could be a picture, zip file or other) contains the simple script to get it started doing its havoc on your PC.

If your PC gets infected then your files will more then likely be encrypted shortly after and will not be able to access them. It is impossible to decrypt the files without the private key.