I received a message couple of days before which claimed to be from Gmail accounts department, stating that my account has been automatically chosen for permanent deletion and I must reply with some information like account name, password, date of birth, country for verification. If I fail to so they will delete my account permanently within a week.

Just have a look what I have got.

From: Gmail <account-support@gmeasdcenter.com>
Reply-to:  Gmail <verifyscecences@gmail.com>
To:  accounts@google.com
Date: Fri, Jan 29, 2010 at 5:26 AM
Subject            : Your Account

We are shutting down some email accounts and your account was automatically chosen to be deleted. If you are still interested in using our email service please fill in the space below for verification purpose by clicking the reply button. Learn more

Account:
Password:
Birth date:
Country:

Warning!!! Account owner that refuses to update his or her account within Seven days of receiving this warning will lose his or her account permanently.

Thank you for using Gmail!

The Gmail Team

GMAIL

Some of my fiends also reported the same issue, in addition to the above information they were also asked to provide:

Please Also Include:

Operating system (e.g. WinXP):
Program and version you use to access Gmail (e.g. Internet Explorer 7 or Outlook 2003):
Your antivirus software (e.g. Norton 2007):
Any extensions, toolbars or plug-ins:

A thought struck in my mind that why would Gmail need my password, if they want to verify my account they could do it by using phone verification or some other method and why would they need the data about my operating system, my browser, my antivirus software and other stuff, when they can easily track it (and they do it for sure ).

So I gave a deeper look to the email and I found that the originating IP of the email was 41.19.212.145, and when I traced back the IP, see what got.

Tracing was done through a proxy which is situated on a server in US. So the map shows, starting from location India to the proxy in US and then to the IP which is being traced.

It was from some unknown location in Africa, now I was wondering that when Gmail shifted their headquarters to Africa and are they recruiting tribals as their operating staff.

So beware and do not reply to such emails and need not to be panic.

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Popularity: 46% [?]

Almost everyone on internet uses various online services like email, social networking sites, online payment processing and more.

Yes Right, so what’s new in it?

Here we are talking about password safety. People chose passwords without giving it much importance. Among popular choices are place of birth, date of birth, or some popular and easy to type phrases and digit combination like qwerty, asdfgh, 123456 etc. despite knowing the fact that there are hackers around who always try to hack user accounts for their malicious intentions.

According to a new research the most popular password for the last decade was “12345”.

Other popular passwords are:

123456
abc123
iloveyou
password
wordpass

Says a new research.

So the key here is to protect your passwords for the safety of your accounts. Some easy steps are:

• Use a mix of upper case, lower case letters and numerals.
  Use special symbols like @, $, &.
  Never disclose your pass word to any one.
  Never save your passwords in excel or word file and name it password, because if there is any spyware residing on your pc, it can transfer the data to other servers.
  Use keyword simulation software which works using mouse, instead of typing with keyboard while logging to different accounts.
  Frequently clear your cookies and temporary internet data.

So always keep your passwords safe and make it impossible to hack.

Do you have any more suggestions, please share with us.

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Popularity: 9% [?]

Hello friends, this is my second post on the topic of increasing Adsense revenue, if you missed the first one, you can read it here at: Steps to Increase Adsense Income (Ecpm) Part 1

Some of the points we have discussed in the last post, some more are here:

Search engine optimization: SEO is a very crucial factor for increasing visibility and higher rankings in search engines, so proper optimization of every page on your website is necessary. You need not be a SEO expert for this, but you must be aware of some basic things like, title and Meta tags, proper URL structure etc. If you are using wordpress then you can use different free SEO plugins available. Like All in One SEO Pack

If you like to read more about on page SEO factors, you can read it here:

On Page SEO Elements Part 1
On Page SEO Elements Part 2
On Page SEO Elements Part 3

Unique content: Always prepare unique and interesting content for your readers, write in a natural flow and do not insert keywords where it is not necessary, use synonyms and related keywords. This way your users will engage more on your website, increasing page views and more chances for your ads to be clicked.

You can read more about content preparation here:

2 Simple Steps for Preparing Great Content

Account age: Webmasters have different opinions on this topic, but according to my experience, Ecpm depends on the age of your account. In first few months, Google serves less paying ads for your account and if you maintain your account reputation for some time, they start serving better paying ads. So in my opinion account age matters

And at last but not least, always test alternative ad placements, different color combination and ad units and analyze your data. Use the best combination and enjoy higher earnings.

Best of Luck to you all.

Do you all know some more legitimate ways to increase Adsense Earnings, do share with us all. Post comments and feedback

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Popularity: 25% [?]

Are you an Adsense publisher and suffering from low eCPM, commonly known as smart pricing? Many of the Adsense publishers suffer from the same issue.

For new ones in the industry, eCPM or effective cost per mille refers to the revenue earned per thousand impressions of ads.

Means eCPM = (Total earnings/Impressions) x 1000

Total Earnings = Number of Clicks x Cost Per Click (CPC)

Higher Page Views = Higher Impressions

Today we will discuss about some steps to increase your ecpm. Increasing ecpm mainly revolves around showing high CPC ads and increasing number of clicks. So how can you do the same thing in your Adsense account?

Choosing high paying keywords: The first step to increase your Adsense earning is to use high paying keywords (keywords which have high average CPC), keywords with average CPC higher than $4 pays well. You will find some low paying and some high paying keywords in the same niche, select high paying ones

For an example: In dog training niche, some keywords like

have average CPC well above $5

whereas keywords like

have average CPC less than $1

So you can now easily decide which keywords to choose for your articles.

Some of you will be thinking that “High Paying Keywords have very high Competition”, and it will be damn hard to rank with those keywords on search engines. Yes you are right.

Here comes a unique strategy, leverage both high paying and low paying long tail keywords.

What does it mean?

It means do not leave those low paying keywords all together, instead leverage them. I will explain how.

In starting keep the ratio of high paying to low paying keywords, 3:7, means for every 10 articles you write, write 3 articles using high paying keywords and 7 using low paying long tail keywords which are easy to rank in search engines.

In this way you can bring traffic to your website, which will also be presented with the articles (which are of high paying keywords) and hence with high paying ads.

Using this strategy, after some time when you start getting steady traffic and stability in search engines, you can increase the ratio to 50:50 and later 70:30.

But I must remind you that this process is time consuming and needs lot of patience. On an average it takes around 10 to 12 months.

I would recommend to follow the first phase for 6 months, the second phase for another 6 month and then third phase after that.

And do not forget to keep your efforts ongoing with link building and all other stuffs because merely choosing high paying keywords is not enough.

Use less ad blocks: Adsense allows 3 ad units and 3 link units for content per page. But it does not mean that you shall use all. In my experience, use 2 ad units and 3 link units. Using less ad units will make the chances higher that Google serves only highest paying ads and this way you can get higher price per click.

Also integrate Google Adsense for search, which can fetch little bit more revenue for you.

They have their own policy. Complete details can be found here:

Google Adsense Program Policies

Proper Ad Placement: Proper placement of ad blocks are of prime importance, it will help in increasing your Click through Rate (CTR) .One big ad unit must be place above the fold (the webpage area which user views without scrolling down). Use Google heat map for finding prime areas for placing your Adsense ad units.

The colors fade from dark orange (strongest performance) to light yellow (weakest performance).

I think this article will help you in increasing your Adsense income, you will have to wait a little for part 2.

Do you have some other solutions and recommendations, please post it in comments….

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Popularity: 66% [?]

Couple of weeks ago Google China (Google.cn) reported that several attempts has been made to hack their security infrastructure, whose origin has been tracked to mainland China. Google is now investigating whether any of their insiders was involved in the cyber attacks which it faced in mid December.

The sources, who are familiar with the situation, said the attack, which targeted people who have access to specific parts of Google networks, may have been facilitated by people working in Google China’s office

After this announcement many Gmail users found that their account has been compromised. Many journalists reported the same issue. One journalist reported that Email messages from his account were being forwarded to an email address that the reporter did not recognize. The reporter said that other people the reporter knew in Beijing had suffered the same kind of attack, though none of the forwarding addresses were the same.

Worried about the practice of self-censorship of its Chinese language search engine Google.cn, the search giant said that it will talk to government authorities and if nothing.

Now someone needs to tell them ALL IS WELL

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Popularity: 8% [?]