Protect Your Domain Name From Theft

Your domain name is you on the Internet and not many people realise that it may be at risk of theft! It's a fact that many people leave themselves exposed to the risk of domain name theft, when all they need to do is take a few simple steps to significantly reduce the potential problem.

The root of the situation is that there are some significant weaknesses in ICANN's rules, which all accredited Domain Name Registrars must comply with.

The two main weaknesses are :-

1. You are only allowed to use one email address as the Administration control email, if you loose control of that email address then you loose control of you domain name as well!

2. Surprisingly none of the details that are given to a domain name registrar are checked in any way, this is wide open to abuse and allows a potential thief to operate freely.

There are other weaknesses and they all combine to make it easy for online crooks to steal your domain names and use your site and the hard won traffic you have built up for their own purposes.

So what can you do to protect your domain name?

The first and most basic thing you can do is not to use a free email address for your Admin Email Address, always use a regular POP email address in every case, it may not be quite as convenient but it is more secure.

Be prepared to register your domain names for more than one year at a time, the longer the better, but of course you do have to bear in mind the additional costs involved.

Be sure to change your password on a regular basis, at least every six months if not sooner and make sure that you use a secure password, no pets, children or spouses names!

Always lock the name you register with the Domain name Registrar and use whois guard or masking so you details are hidden. Again this costs extra but it is well worth it and it has the added benefit of reducing the possibility of spammers getting your details.

Finally keep a hard copy of all your details and passwords then you are covered when your hard disk goes down.

By taking the few simple steps outlined above you will be able to significantly increase the security of your domain name, but what can you do if the worst happens and you domain name is stolen.

The only person who can help you and restore the stolen domain name is your registrar, they will have come across this problem and will have a set procedure that they follow. It is going to take some time to sort out and the sooner you get in touch and the more information you can supply the quicker your domain name will be restored to you.

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How Social Bookmarking Helps Businesses Promote Their Services

Social bookmarking and media sites have become so popular these days, and this is something that many businesses are taking advantage of, since these sites can be utilized to reach large groups of people with various interests for little or no cost.

Unlike the bookmarking sites of old, today's sites allow people to openly share their bookmarks, which is the essence o how 'social' it gets. People can build their own lists that exist as a web page and others can come view the page. People can also discover Web sites without searching.

Searching as you well know is one of the most used methods for discovering information and Web sites but it does have it's problems. For example, how would you know what words to search for when you're don't know what something is called? You may know it's something you want but not know what the name or term for that item, problem or solution.

Relying Solely On Search Engines Is Not That Effective Anymore

Sometimes search engines aren't accurate at all. There have been a lot of times when users searched for something, and the results were a list of commercial Web sites or somehow useless sites that are way of the ones you really wanted. Search engines may like you to think you cannot manipulate them but if that were 100% true, you'd always find what you want to look for every time you search.

The truth is, they will list sites according to what they think makes a good Web site. So a Web master only has to 'play by their rules' and get decent results. Besides, there are some really good sites that don't make it to the top of search engines - maybe because their Web masters aren't SEO savvy or just don't have the time.

There Are Specific Bookmarking Sites That Help Businesses Grow

There are even topic-specific social bookmarking sites that can be used to promote your business to a more targeted audience. You can also write "article" type stories that promote your business without sounding too promotional. Then, potential customers are able to read your article and click through to your Web site.

Bookmarks Offer An Excellent Marketing Venue

Because of the fact that you can share your bookmarks with others with the same interests, social bookmarking can be an excellent marketing strategy. When you bookmark a site, like your business site, you are able to describe it with a "tag". A tag is a keyword that is used to find bookmarks on a site. By associating the right tags with each of your bookmarks, you can get a steady stream of interested visitors to your site.

Social bookmarking, in a nutshell, is all about labeling the Web, making it easier to find the content that you're looking for by passing on what you've found. The labels applied to web sites are generally called tags, and over time a kind of taxonomy grows, whereby persistent tags help information to be aggregated and mined for information. Where a taxonomy was, however, the product of specialists carefully categorizing items within their area of specialism, social bookmarking produces instead what has been termed a folksonomy.

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Vanessa A. Doctor from Jump2Top - SEO Company Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Vanessa_A._Doctor