So you have a question? Has something gone very wrong and you don’t know what to do? Well, fair enough. Here are the questions that I hear all the time from buyers. 

Does eBay have a Customer Service Department I Can Phone? 

eBay are notoriously hard to contact, should you ever need to – it sometimes seems like they expect the site to run itself. You can email them, as long as you don’t have your heart set on a coherent response: go to http://pages.ebay.com/help/contact_us/_base/index.html. You might have better luck in a ‘live help’ webchat here: http://pages.ebay.com/help/basics/n-livehelp.html. 

Only eBay Power Sellers (sellers with a very high feedback rating) get to phone customer service. If you really want to try your luck, type ‘ebay [your country] phone number’ into a search engine and you’ll probably find something. Unfortunately, the chances are you’ll have gone to all that trouble for the privilege of leaving an answerphone message. 

It might seem cruel, but imagine the number of people who would call eBay every day with the silliest questions if they gave out their phone number everywhere. Its Wild West nature is, in a way, part of its charm. 

eBay Sent Me an Email Saying They’re Going to Close My Account. What Should I Do? 

This email asks for your password, right? It’s a scam, an attempt to frighten you, make you give up your details and then steal your account. eBay will never ask for your password or any other account details by email. eBay say that you should only ever enter your password on pages that whose addresses start with http://signin.ebay.com/. They even offer a special ‘Account Guard’ as part of their toolbar, which lets you check that you’re not giving your password to a dodgy fake site. You can read more here: http://pages.ebay.com/toolbar/accountguard_1.html. 

It Seems Too Good to be True. How Does eBay Make Money? 

For you, the buyer, eBay is free. Sellers, though, pay all sorts of fees: a listing fee for each item they list, a final value fee (a percentage of what the item sold for). They can they pay optional fees for extra services, including Buy it Now, extra pictures, reserve prices, highlighting the auction, putting it in bold, listing it first in search results or even putting it on the front page. You can see a full list of fees at http://pages.ebay.com/help/sell/fees.html. 

It’s obviously worth it to the sellers, though, or they wouldn’t carry on using eBay. The system is quite efficient, and basically forces both eBay and the sellers to keep their profit margins as low as possible – otherwise prices will simply go too high and the buyers will stop buying.

How Safe is eBay? 

Well, as it happens, that’s the subject of our next email! All of eBay’s safety services for buyers and sellers are in one place, called ‘SafeHarbor’. SafeHarbor handles fraud prevention and investigation, helps with dispute resolution and keeps rule-breakers in check. Read all about it next time, and be safe.

Security flaws have long plagued Internet Explorer (IE), the market-dominating web browser from Microsoft. IE won the early browser wars, not only because it was free and bundled with Windows, but because it had some features and capabilities that its only real competitor, Netscape, didn't have. But the behind-the-scenes programming that makes those features possible is the very coding that also leaves wide gaps in IE's defenses against viruses and malicious scripting. Among several browser alternatives for Windows users, the Opera browser stands out in functionality and integration, and is gaining a wider following as a safer surfing alternative to Internet Explorer. 

To be sure, there are other browsers such as the one from Mozilla and their newest release, Firefox. There are several flavors of IE "overlays", which use the core IE programming for web page display, and thus aren't any safer than the original IE. (You should of course always use anti-virus software to protect your PC, regardless of browser. Many viruses arrive as email attachments, and opening those on a Windows-based PC will cause problems). Among non-IE browsers, it seems to be down to a two-horse race between Mozilla and Opera. 

Opera, from Oslo, Norway, based Opera Software ASA, provides many popular features. An integrated email client, contact book, bookmarks with searchable notes, tabbed multiple windows, a built-in password manager, a pop-up blocker, multiple language support, saved sessions, privacy controls, built-in chat, and the ability to read RSS feeds from within Opera mail make the Opera browser a very powerful and worthwhile IE replacement candidate. 

Unless you have special need for IE, such as a browser toolbar or web interaction software that you use, there is really no reason not to give Opera a try if you're worried about safe surfing. While Opera does have a paid version, you can also download a sponsored version (with ads unobtrusively placed in the browser control area), which is free.

What in the world is up with the world of blogs? Blogs are meant to be this great new technology where people can share their ideas and interests with others around the globe. As far as I’m concerned the state of blogs is one of chaos, confusion, and anti-interactivity. The other day I decided to do some research on the Web and try to connect to some blog writers out there that interested me. Let me tell you it was not an enjoyable task as I had envisioned. I spent four painful hours surfing through around a thousand on-line journals, and I found only a few that interested me. What are we doing out there people? 

First of all, just getting to a blog can be a pain in the arse. For example, you type in the words ‘Philosophy blogs’ and a whole bunch of sites come up. Some are conglomerate sites with thousands of journals, but the area you’re searching for may have only one blog in it! This is because they separate the blogs into a million different categories, like ‘love’, ‘lovers’, ‘lovable’ etc. Why not have just a few main categories to choose from? 

The next problem is the content. People with ‘philosophical’ blogs are having personal chats with their mates about the local dance competition on Tuesday! Why not go to a chat room if you just want to talk to your friends? Blogs are supposed to be a personal viewpoint expressed to the whole Web community. Wouldn’t you actually like to meet more people like yourself? How is this going to happen if you talk in strange uncommon slang and acronyms that you and your friends can only understand? Please stick to the subject at hand, and take it at least half seriously. 

Another major problem is the fact that you can find a really cool blog that sparks an interest, but then find that the writer hasn’t added an entry in over a year! What’s it doing on the Net? Have these people passed away? I seriously doubt it, as there are so many blogs in this ‘lost’ state. Having a blog is a responsibility; it’s a shared diary for the whole community. How can someone form a relationship if you only write in your blog once a millennium? 

Back to the subject of content: These on-line journals are a real chance to communicate regularly with others with similar views to yourself. We can learn a lot from each other, as each human is an individual with special traits and skills that only they have. So why do we see so many blogs just talking about trivial nonsense like ‘Who the coolest movie actor is.’ Humanity is an intelligent species evolving everyday towards a higher consciousness. So where are all the thinkers out there, the people who have taken us to the next levels of spirituality and scientific exploration? I’d really like to hear what you’ve got to say, but all I can find are philosophical beliefs on why died pink jeans express one’s true inner self. 

The issue of making comments on someone’s blog is also a controversial one. Why have comments sections if you’re not going to reply to people who have expressed an interest in what you’ve had to say? How is this community going to function if all the conversation is one-way! Come on people, wake up and smell the onions! Let’s change the blogging community into the awesome structure of shared knowledge that it was intended for. Please don’t let it turn into the small-talk world of chat rooms.

The Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should Ignore 

The internet is undoubtedly a fantastic resource for 
families and offers a rich vein of educational content. 
However, there are potential dangers - welcome to the 
seedy world of viruses, spam, trojans, pornography, spyware 
and other nasties. 

Here are the Top Twelve Threats No Computer User Should 
Ignore: 

1. Viruses - A computer program that copies itself. They 
often disrupt your computer system or damage your data. 
Viruses are usually received by email attachments so be 
careful opening anything from a dubious source. They can 
affect anyone, for example, the destructive Mydoom worm 
affected one out of three small and mid-sized businesses. 

2. Spyware - Sends information about you and your computer 
to somebody else. Spyware may send the addresses of sites 
you have visited or worse still, transmit personal 
information. With today's concerns about identify theft 
this is a real worry. For example, CoolWebSearch may hijack 
web searches, home page, and other Internet Explorer 
settings. Spyware is normally received as part of shareware 
or freeware downloaded from the web. 

3. IP Spoofing - A technique to gain unauthorized access 
to computers, whereby the intruder sends messages to a 
computer with an address indicating that the message is 
coming from a trusted host. 

4. Trojans - An apparently legitimate computer program 
that is really intended to disrupt and damage computer 
activity by sending information, perhaps even passwords 
onto a third party without you knowing. As an example, 
recent emails entitled "Osama Bin Laden Captured" attempted 
to download the "Trj/Small.B." Trojan if the embedded URL 
was clicked. This trojan attempts to hijack the PC. 

5. Spam - Unsolicited mail often promoting products of a 
dubious financial or sexual nature. Don't leave your email 
address on websites and internet bulletin boards as they 
are harvested by spammers. 

6. Adware - puts advertisements on your screen. These take 
many forms including popups, popunders and advertisements 
that appear later, even if your browser is closed. Some are 
sent using the Windows Messenger service which allows a 
spammer to direct an advertisement straight to your 
computer by sequentially sending messages to IP addresses. 
Always irritating, they are also often of a pornographic 
nature. 

7. Diallers - for those of us still with dial up modems, 
dialler programs redirect calls to a very expensive number. 
You won't know until you get the bill. 

8. Hijackers - Hijackers take control of your web browser 
and may reset your home page, search bar and search pages. 
They can redirect you to undesirable sites or stop you 
going to particular sites. 

9. Hackers - With so much personal data available online 
to anyone with a password you must be sure your password is 
secure. If you are using your mother's maiden name, your 
cat's name or your birthday then your password is at risk. 
Here are two tips for making a secure password. Method One - 
pick two random unrelated three letter words and two 
digits. Mix them up and what do you have? A secure password 
such as "red19cat" or "hotpin73". Method Two - pick a short 
sequence of words such as Now Is The Winter Of Our 
Discontent Made Glorious' and you have a password of 
"nitwoodmg". You could even change the I's and O's to 
digits. 

10. Phishing - Emails purporting to come from reliable 
sources such as Paypal, Ebay or your bank. Often wanting 
you to verify your account details, they can look very 
realistic but are generally scams to harvest usernames and 
passwords. Always open a new browser winder and type the 
address there, rather than clicking on the link provided. 

11. Hoaxes - Chain letters, scams, false alarms. At best 
they take up time and bandwidth but at worst vulnerable can 
be victims of fraud. Pass it on! 

12. Stranger-danger - For those of us with children - do 
you know what they actually do when they are online? Are 
they working on homework tasks, downloading illegal music 
or pornography? Or are they chatting to strangers in chat 
rooms? You should consider blocking access to undesirable 
sites and logging their activity with a surveillance tool. 
Oh, and don't forget that where children are concerned, 
computers should always be kept in a family room and never 
in their bedroom. 

Three Step Action Plan 

There are three essential steps that should be taken to 
ensure your PC is kept threat-free. 

Firstly, be sensible when opening attachments or following 
email instructions from apparently reputable sites. 

Secondly, make sure you are using the latest service pack 
of Windows as Microsoft is continually closing loopholes to 
tighten up security. 

Finally, there's a range of low cost tools such as 
firewalls, antivirus, spam blockers and spyware killers 
available. Like everything else they vary in quality and 
you tend to get what you pay for so always do your research 
first and perhaps try a free trial before getting your 
credit card out. 

http://www.surfcontrols.com specializes in providing 
reviews and recommendations of top-rated tools to help 
protect your online experience. There's a quick reference 
list to dozens of top sites promoting different aspects of 
safe surfing packed with useful information and there's 
also a great set of top tips for safe surfing. 

Copyright Kai Chandler (#12t5109) 


About the author:
Kai Chandler is a project manager and journalist 
particularly interested in tools and techniques to protect 
his family and computer against spam, porn, viruses and 
malware. As a father of two he is keen to ensure that 
his children enjoy a safe surfing surfing experience. His 
reviews of the very best parental internet filters, 
anti-virus, anti-spam, anti-spyware and surveillance tools 
are at http://www.surfcontrols.comIt's essential reading 
for any parent and computer owner.