These days, one of people’s greatest concerns regarding online activities is security. Spyware, malware, adware, viruses, trojans, key loggers etc provide an easy way for certain unscrupulous people and companies to get into our lives and even steal valuable personal info.

Let me relate a small story that recently occurred in my family. My nine year old daughter was accused of cyber bullying a child via facebook. I checked into the time that it occurred and discovered that it was 4:00 am, a time when my daughter was not even online. She had inadvertently downloaded a keylogger which gave someone access to her facebook account. Naturally, I cleaned her computer and changed her password. Well, I guess it was a relatively harmless way for her to discover the privacy dangers associated with the internet. She will be much more careful what she downloads in future because she was very upset about the situation.

It’s so easy to have a breach of security online. Just look at all the emails that come in claiming to be from your online bank, ebay, paypal etc that request you to log in via a link in the email… Look out, someone is trying to get a keylogger onto your system. Not only can they use the information garnered by a keylogger to access your online banking, paypal or ebay accounts, they can use it to steal your identity with all the potential legal repercussions that involves.

Then of course, there is the damage that can be done by malicious viruses including corrupted software, file deletions etc. All of these things can be a real pain!

Yup, it’s scary out there in cyberspace!

Thankfully, it’s easy enough to get a 30 day Internet Security 2010 FREE Download from Kaspersky. Kaspersky is a relatively new kid on the block for internet security applications, but has quickly become one of the highest rating packages available. I have been a CA Antivirus user for years (have tried other programs also but always went back to CA). That was until I tried Kaspersky. I won’t be going back now. Kaspersky is easier to use, more effective (IMHO), uses less system resources (i.e. doesn’t slow the computer down as much) and is competitively priced.

Kaspersky Lab offers an award-winning line of antivirus software, anti-spyware and Internet security solutions for your home computer or laptop. If you would like to view the awards received by Kaspersky you can visit the Kaspersky Awards page. Want to try it and discover what all the fuss is about? Download a FREE 30 day trial today!

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Unfortunately, one of the most common issues faced by internet marketers that seriously cuts into profits is the issue of unauthorized downloads from their download pages and download directories.

Just imagine your irritation when you discover that the $97 product that you have sold 50 times has actually been downloaded 78 times (all from different IP addresses)… that constitutes a loss of $2716… Yipes, that’s one heck of a loss!

And how did it happen?

Well, there are several ways it can happen.

1. Search engines indexing your download page and people finding it
2. People finding your download directory
3. Legitimate customers bookmarking your download page with online bookmarking services

I’ll deal with these one by one.

Search engines indexing your download page

Because search engines regularly crawl your site, if you add a download page they are going to find it. But how do you stop them from indexing that page? Aha, that’s actually simple… all you need is the little meta tag below added to the head section of your download page.

<meta name=”robots” content=”noindex”>

This tag causes search engines to ignore your download page and not include it in their index. If it isn’t in their index then no unscrupulous rip-off artist can find it and download your products without authorization

People finding your download directory

Some unscrupulous people will visit an ecommerce site then add a simple /download or /downloads to the end of the URL and if the owner hasn’t been a little smart then the result will be a page containing hyperlinks directly to the downloadable files

The way to stop this is to add a simple index.htm or index.html file to the directory. Browsers automatically look for these files and load them if they are present. That way, if someone goes to the directory, whatever you have put on that page will appear rather than the directory contents… mine has a blank page. It’s probably also a good idea to name the directory something completely obscure, you could give the directory some completely screwy name like ad9cy45jm or whatever that no-one would ever guess would be a download directory. A combination of these two is probably a good idea just in case someone has a way of working around the index page.

Note that the index.html page works even with a directory inside a blog… for example, visit http://automatedblogpostingsoftware.com/downloads and a page with some stupid text intended as a joke will be generated… that is my index.html page (Note: This is NOT my download directory, it’s a complete decoy LOL)

Legitimate customers bookmarking your download page with online bookmarking services

This is the third way that unauthorised people can access your product downloads. Unfortunately, this is also the hardest one to combat. People are allowed to bookmark their download page and it’s a perfectly legitimate thing to do just in case something goes wrong with the first download.

To overcome this problem you need software that issues a temporary download link that is only active for a certain period of time or a certain number of downloads. One such software program is Smartdd (short for ‘smart digital download’). Click here for more info on SmartDD now!

I hope this post has helped you understand how unauthorized downloads occur and how to protect your products from the methods used… Here is to profitable online ventures!

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