I'm tired of Ten O'Clock Charley. (MASH fans will get the connection.) Charley is the twit that inevitably sends me 4-6 viruses by email a day or two after my newsletter is published. My anti-virus software picks them off like mosquitoes attacking a bug zapper. He or she) must have subscribed using an autoresponder that is programmed to send out the viruses according to a set schedule.

Maybe I'm just ready for a vacation, but I'm weary of the bad behavior that is so commonplace on the Net.

I'm tired of deleting 150-200 spam emails daily.

I'm tired of students contacting me to ask how much I would charge to write their term paper. Here's a tip, kids. If you want a helping hand, you'll find one at the end of your wrist.

I'm tired of people sending me scathing emails because they're confused by somebody else's pop-under ads that they think originated at my site. Come to think of it, I'm even more tired of all those pop-under windows in the first place.

I'm tired of web sites that hold me captive and won't allow me to use the Back Button on my browser to return to where I started. Why do designers do this? Do they believe that taking hostages will improve their chances of making sales?

Those are my minor complaints. These are my major ones.

I'm irritated that I had to spend most of a morning adding coding on my web pages to protect myself against Microsoft's Smart Tags. For those who don't know, Smart Tag technology causes little icons to appear beside certain key words on your web site. When visitors click on the icons, they will be taken to another site -- possibly your competitors. Microsoft has already included the technology in Office XP, but has bowed to pressure and promised (?) not to add the technology to Internet Explorer 6. To protect your pages from MS Smart Tags, add this line to your Meta Tags: <meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="TRUE">


I'm even more irritated by Ezula's TopText, which comes bundled with KaZaA, a third party plugin for IE. KaZaA is a freely distributed file- sharing program has been downloaded over 7 million times in a month and a half. The bundled TopText uses Smart Tag technology to hijack visitors from your site and send them elsewhere. Advertisers purchase keywords. When the browser encounters that keyword on your site, it underlines the word in yellow, then adds a yellow highlight when the mouse hovers over it. Clicking on the keyword takes your hard won visitors away and deposits them at the web site of the advertisers who purchased the keyword.

I don't recommend you install this program yourself to experiment, because it is inordinately difficult to remove afterwards. For more information, visit this link:

Ongoing discussions at: http://gethighforums.com/Forum10/HTML/001386.html

If you've already installed the software, removal instructions are at this link: http://www.whirlywiryweb.com/removeezula.htm

And lastly, I'm irritated by the six varieties of spyware that I discovered installed on my computer without my knowledge. These applications suck up computer resources, take up real estate on your hard drive and slow you down while you're surfing. Worse, they gather information (who knows what?) about yourself and your surfing habits. The information is used for targeted advertising, or s sold to companies that collect information on web users. Of the six varieties I discovered on my computer, only one -- the free version of Aureate Group Mail -- had been installed by myself. I had not understood that it was spyware. This spyware had gone so far as enmesh itself with the operation of my regular email client -- Eudora Pro. To discover what spyware resides on your system, try the Ad Tracker, freely available from LavaSoft at http://www.lavasoftusa.com/

Enough complaining for one day. Besides, it's almost time for Ten O'Clock Charley.

Articles Source - Free Articles
About the Author

June Campbell How to Write Business Plans, Business Proposals, JV Contracts,Human Resource Package, More! No-cost ebook "Beginners Guide to Ecommerce". Business Writing by Nightcats Multimedia Productions http://www.nightcats.com