LyricsDon.com
If you are looking for lyrics, you have to check out LyricsDon.com. It has over 390,000 lyrics. Everyone from Britney Spears to Beatles, to Michael Jackson. All laid out in a nice easy to read format.
We know there are tons of lyrics websites out there, so it's hard competition. However, we started the site because popular lyrics sites get upwards of 3,000,000 hits per day, so there is a huge potential for income here from advertising.
Saturday, July 25, 2009
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Monday, April 20, 2009
We moved to new dedicated server
About 3 weeks ago we moved to a lightning fast dedicated server, and this move was long overdue. Dedicated server is SO MUCH BETTER than a virtual server. No more having to reboot the server, no more slowness...all in all we should've done this a long time ago...
Sunday, March 8, 2009
Site seals, do they work? | ScanVerify.com Blog
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Trust seals, Web Seals, Site Seals
ABSTRACT
Trust seals, or web seals or site seals as they are sometimes called, are clickable graphics usually placed on online stores to provide proof of some kind of assurance or certification. A customer can click on such a seal to be displayed a certification graphic specifying the online merchants name, the certifier's name and what kind of certification it is. The purpose of a site seal is to let the consumer know that the online merchant is reputable and is safe to buy from.
BENEFITS OF WEB SEALS
Internet is a great place for commerce. However, as most people know, fraud on the Internet is rampant. Website seals, such as the one from ScanVerify.com, provide assurance to consumers that merchants they are dealing with have been verified by a third party. Today, pretty much anyone with an internet connection and a bit of web design skills can build an online store. Consumers have to be careful who they trust their personal information to. Web seals boost sales and revenue for online merchants, because more confident consumers results in more sales. Ensuring consumer confidence is especially imporant for first time buyers.
Vulnerability scanning - what is it and why do you need it? | ScanVerify.com
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Vulnerability Scan
ABSTRACT
A vulnerability scan is an automated process to find vulnerabilities (or security holes) in a network environment. A network can be internal (LAN) or external (an website server). The results of a vulnerability scan alert the network administrator of ways a potential hacker could break into or disrupt a system. It is a preventive tool. After seeing the results, it is up to the administrator to understand them and to take appropriate action. Since running a network or a server is a task for advanced users, people with limited knowledge of servers / networks could have a tough time reading the results.
INFORMATION A VULNERABILITY SCAN PROVIDES
ScanVerify.com vulnerability scan for an IP address (or server, since an IP address belongs to a server), provides a good amount of information. A lot of this information is simply useful in terms of knowing how your server operates. It gives a directory structure of the server (list of directories), type of server software run (Apache, Windows Server, Exchange, etc), SSL information, open and closed ports, various plugins running. If it detects any vulnerabilites, it will list them also. Common vulnerabilities include ability to run external server-side applications (Perl, ASP), unprotected sensitive directories, open ports that shouldn't be open. The actual list of potential vulnerabilities is very large and simply would not fit in this article.
WAYS TO PROTECT AGAINST HACKERS
1) Guard your login information
The most common way hackers gain access to sensitive information is still by means of somehow obtaining appropriate login information: username and password in most cases. The best thing you can do is guard that information, never share it with anyone, make it hard to guess and change it frequently. Get in place measures to prevent hackers from running password guessing programs. A good way to do that is to lockout a user after a number of failed attempts.
2) Do not keep sensitive data on an external network
By external I mean the one that is exposed to the Internet. This greatly increases the number of potential intruders. If you have any extremely sensitive data, such as credit card numbers, consider not storing them, or storing them on a harddisk of a personal machine, not a web server.
3) Monitor logins
Get software in place to monitor time, IP, user/pass and time of every user who has logged in. Then, in case there is any disruption, it will be easier to find the culprit.
4) Keep backups.
No matter how well your security is, there is always a risk things can go wrong. It could be a hacker, or it could simply be hardware crash. It is always a good idea to keep recent and easily accessible backups. For large networks, the RAID system works best.
Merchant Fraud - What is it and how to fight it
By SB
ScanVerify.com Founder
ScanVerify.com Founder
Click to visit ScanVerify.COM
Merchant Fraud
ABSTRACT
There is two types of online fraud that concerns most tangible goods: buyer fraud and merchant fraud. Each of these types of fraud's affects the opposite party in a negative way. In other words, merchant fraud hurts the buyers and buyer fraud hurts the merchants. In this article we are going to focus on merchant fraud.
WHAT IS ONLINE FRAUD
Online merchant fraud is rampant. Why? Because nowadays almost anyone can open an online store. And yes, it doesn't take more than one person to do so. Let's compare an online store to a real store. To open a real store, one needs to committ to a property lease, purchase invetory, signs, hire employees, register a business with the city. They can't simply disappear in one day. To open an online store, one needs to register a domain name ($10 a year) and purchase a hosting account ($5 a month) load shopping cart software and fill it with products. It is impossible to locate the identity of an online store owner, unless they reveal it themselves. Their hosting company will not do it unless they are served with a court order.
To illustrate merchant fraud, let's give a few examples.
1) Products sent not as ordered: you order a $1000 item, but receive a $200 item, or product arrives broken. This type of fraud is hard to fight, if the merchant insists they sent the correct product.
2) Phishing: fake websites that look like legitimate sites, such as a bank site (Wells Fargo) or Ebay. These are looking to steal your information, then use it in their own interests.
3) Fake stores: online stores, often looking sleek. The object is to get your credit card information. Often have very good deals, low prices, etc.
4) Simply unresponsible merchants. These people are not in business to specifically defraud you, however they have poor customer services, poor quality merchandize and overall not a pleasant experience.
HOW TO FIGHT ONLINE FRAUD
Online fraud, well just as any fraud, is impossible to eliminate 100%. Online fraud, or CNP (card not present) fraud is more frequent than CP (card present) fraud, because it is often conducted across large distances or countries. The perpetrator feels more safe from persecution. Plus the victim is unable to see the people they are dealing with and determine if they look and act suspicious. Also, neither the card itself nor any form of ID need to actually be present, most often the thieves simply have the information.
1) Feedbacks. Companies that uses this most successfully is Ebay and Amazon. However, there is major problems with feedbacks. A lot of times, satisfied customers never leave any feedback. Unsatisfied customers are much more likely to leave feedback, negative, of course and this creates a skewed negative image of the merchant. Also, feedback as an online phenomenon that is clearly not needed to be a successful merchant, just look at brick and mortar stores like Walmart and Best Buy, which are doing just fine with no feedback system. Another problem with feedback is that it only works if merchants sell through Amazon or Ebay and pay their fees. If a merchant wants to sell independently through their own online store, they have to use feedback from sites such as ResellerRatings.com or BizRate.com. Both of these sites feedback systems are flawed. They are too complex, requiring registration and email confirmation. They are also subject to false feedbacks. In other words, people that have not even purchased from the merchant can leave feedback. For example, a merchant's competitor can leave negative feedback. Also, the merchant themselves can pretend they are a buyer and put positive feedback. No foolproof feedback system has been developed for totally independent online stores.
2) Third party verification. Websites, such as the one I founded, ScanVerify.com, verifies an online merchants and issues them a "seal of approval", which is a web seal they can display on their website. A customer can verify this seal by clicking on it and making sure the url from which the seal is displayed is "scanverify.com". It is possible to fake the seal, however, the url will be different, so a foolproof way of checking legitimacy of a seal is to look at its URL. What does ScanVerify.com do? It verifies Driver's license, business registration, phone number and email of a merchant. We also collect customer complaints and mediate any disputes. We do not make any guarantees regarding outcome of a transaction with any of our verified merchants, rather we give the customer one more tool in their assertion of the merchant. A merchant that has passed ScanVerify.com security checks is much less likely to committ merchant fraud. The webseal also increases a merchant's sales, because their customers, especially first time customers, feel more secure about shopping with them.
3) Other ways of reducing online fraud. If a deal is too good to be true, it probably is. Before you shop from an online store, try to get in touch with them by phone or email. If you are not getting a reply from either, do not shop there. Google the merchants phonenumber and domain name and see if any negative comments come up. This could be misleading, but it's still helpful to read through. Use a gift-card when shopping. Gift-cards are like debit cards and can only be withdrawn to a certain amount.
Unfortunately, fraud cannot be eliminated 100% and will always be present. The current banking and credit card systems have major flaws that allow fraud to go through. Some companies, such as Capital One, will give a credit card to almost anyone, generating a lot of identity theft. Websites such as Paypal, which advertise that their transactions are secure, in fact are far from secure. Paypal doesn't advertise the fact that it can freeze your account anytime it wants, along with all the funds in it and keep it for 6 months or longer. Even the biggest merchants such as Dell sometimes do things like send broken merchandise and refuse to accept it back. Their customer services is outsourced to another country and makes it even harder to deal with them. Small merchants often have better customer service than large merchants.
ScanVerify.com - a hackersafe and buysafe alternative
Click to visit ScanVerify.COM
ABSTRACT
Hackersafe is a service of ScanAlert, an Internet security company. They perform vulnerability scanning of websites daily, also providing the owners of these websites with a clickable site seal to "certify" their enrollment in the program. Their average price is about $1700 per year (based on ScanVerify.com user survey from February 2008). ScanVerify provides the same type of vulnerability scanning, plus merchant background checking, internet based emailer, product search engine (BuyVerify.com) for a much lower price.
BENEFITS OF WEB SEALS
Internet is a great place for commerce. However, as most people know, fraud on the Internet is rampant. Website seals, such as the one from ScanVerify.com, provide assurance to consumers that merchants they are dealing with have been verified by a third party. Today, pretty much anyone with an internet connection and a bit of web design skills can build an online store. Consumers have to be careful who they trust their personal information to. Web seals boost sales and revenue for online merchants, because more confident consumers results in more sales. Ensuring consumer confidence is especially imporant for first time buyers.
PROBLEMS WITH HACKERSAFE
1) High cost.
Hackersafe caters mostly to small merchants that are trying to build consumer confidence, yet their price of $1700/yr is not affordable for anyone.
2) Daily scanning
As far as vulnerability scanning goes, this is not practical for all but the most important networks with very sensitive data, such as banks. Yet those organizations do not and will not use the Hackersafe service, because they have their own security experts working for them full time. Daily scans are not needed for most websites, because their security conditions do not change daily. A vulnerability scan would be in order after a software or hardware update or any other change in their structure. Hackersafe daily scans simply waste system resources and make the cost of the service higher.
3) False claims
Hackersafe claims to protect against 99.9% of hacker attacks, yet there has been a large number of sites, whose security was compromised while they were enrolled in the Hackersafe program. A vulnerability scan is only a tool to be used by the site administrator in asessing potential security risks. A lot depends on the site administrators knowledge in interpreting scan results and implementing the necessary security measures. Buysafe.com claims to offer a $25,000 bond guarantee if something goes wrong with a transaction they covered. This is simply unrealistic, and I doubt they will ever come through with this kind of guarantee. The potential for fraud is simply too great here and BuySafe.com will never be able to fully investigate internet transactions, especially for smaller amounts. ScanVerify.com will never make any misleading claims about our service, we simply state that our webseal and scan are tools to help merchants and consumers assess potential risks.
SCANVERIFY.COM DOES MORE
Buyverify.com only provides a webseal and an unrealistic $25,000 guarantee. Hackersafe only provides vulnerability scanning. Both charge exhorbiant prices, and do not post openly post their fees. The setup process is complicated in both cases and cannot be done online instantly. ScanVerify.com openly posts fees in the prices section and offers much more than just a webseal. You can advertise your products on BuyVerify.com, conduct email campaigns with our Emailer!, run vulnerability scans whenever you want, and tell your customers that your business background and details such as email, phone and address have been verified. We are very easy to reach by either email or phone.
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