All about Phishing and Phishers

Have you ever encountered a mail saying you've just won a $#insert huge sum here# lottery? 

Or wondered why does the mail address looks suspicious? Such are just a glimpse into the evil machinations of a scammer that uses his online prowess and apparently your lack of, to scam you of your privacy and your money.

What is Phishing?

First comes the definition, Phishing is basically an attempt at finding personal and sensitive information about you. Such information if divulged can lead to compromised accounts and a lot of grief at the end. 

Where Does Phishing Occur?

'Phishing Nets' (Coined by codemakit) is the place from which the scammer starts getting your attention. Most common Phishing nets (in Order of preference of scamsters) is 

1. Email: The most common Phishing location. You can check if your mail is authentic or not (Too many Phishes out here)

2. Social Networks: By posting malicious links at Facebook, Twitter etc. You can check these too (Talking Phishes out here)

3. Websites: By hosting malicious Websites that let you fill forms thereby phishing for your personal information. You can check for Website Certifications (Fake Phishes around here).

What do Phishers want?

The Phishers want your personal information, everything from your email address (Which they can spam later) to your name, address, credit card information etc. (Though, I've given a few tips to protect yourself from divulging your passwords) Once they have enough information about you they can move on towards monetary pleasures. Meaning? They'll use your information against you. For an example, one of the most common phishing nets are Emails and the most common Phishing Practices include being a bank representative. They will probably tell you, that they're from a reputed bank and have your file with them. 

They’ll throw in a few informative pieces of information gathered from you before to let you believe they actually have an official file on you. Then they'll frighten you by stating that you're password is about to expire and if you do not send the required information, your account will be blocked. Once you send the information you can safely say goodbye to all your hard earned income.

The Types of Phishing Techniques

There are 4 different types of Phishing.

1. The good old Bland Phishing

They just send out millions of spams to every email address they could think of and wait if anyone gets caught in their Phishing net and replies.

2. Spear Phishing

As the name suggests, This technique is usually adopted by Phishers holding extraordinary grudges against some specific person. Which might be their second grade class teacher or a college professor who dropped him or a show-off neighbor who can't keep his dog quiet at night. The Phishers gain personal information about the particular person (Sometimes he/she already knows). Once they have the information, they'll use it in the way given above to scam you of your money.

3. Whaling

Again as the name suggests, Whaling includes phishing for a whale, i.e. a really big corporate honcho or just another person with a lot of green in their reserves. The victims can also be big shot executives who actually hold the rein to the security of their companies' databases. A successful whaling attempt can lead to divulging of company database passwords or the database itself, thus opening the door to countless other phishing attempts. No amount of extreme techniques to store your passwords will keep them safe unless you're willing to save the information from falling into the hands of cunning phishers.

4. Clone Phishing

This is a relatively new technique, where the Phishers create a mail that is really similar to the ones sent by authentic sources. For example, a bank website sending promotional emails are often copied and modified. Then, the modified email containing everything will be sent to the victim. All but one change, the links in the email will be changed so that the user is redirected to the scammers’ website where the user will give its Username and password to login. Only realizing minutes later that he/she was scammed.

Phishing Terms (codemakit)

Phishing: You already Know it.

Phishing Net: The place where Phishing Starts. (Email, Social Networks, Websites)

Phishers: Scammers who phish for your information

Phisheries: Shady places (might be in Nigeria) where scammers often sit in front of computers wearing an overcoat and dark glasses (Bazinga!). These are the places from where they send/create scam.

Related Reading,

You can read all about The Simple Steps to stay safe Online.
Find out about How Passwords are stored on Websites

Download Complete Report

Now you can download the Complete 23 Page Official Report on Different Types of Phishing Techniques.
You can also download the Funny Version of the Official Phishing Techniques Report, where we make fun of the phishers and their useless attempts at scamming people.

This gave you an introduction into

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Do Pages with questions as title receive more clicks (Part 2)

This article is the complete study conducted by codemakit Website Research. If you feel that the contents are too technical for you, you may want to read the simplified summary presented at part I of the article first. Based on the data obtained from 190 Web Pages and their page views, the following observations were found.

The data available were the number of views, and the date of publication of page. Since the pages were linearly published (i.e. one page after another), the difference of the number of days were found and Cumulative number of days were found. Cumulative number of days helped in determining the number of days a webpage was present on the website as published. As a page's page views and the number of published days are directly proportional. 

The Data Set

The complete Data Set containing information in pdf for all the blog posts is available for perusal here. To probe this even further, Consider Page A has 200 page views and Page B has 20. This cannot be called as the complete indicator of the actual worth of the page, As Page A might have been published a year ago and Page B just a week ago. Hence a balanced base is needed to determine whether a webpage is performing well or not.

V/D ratio was found out. The V/D ratio is the ratio of the number of page views per unit cumulative day. The ratio is a perfect indicator of the number of how well did the page do in terms of garnering visitors. Using V/D ratio the index for page A would be (200 page views/365 days) and for page B as (20 page views /7 days). The ratio for Page A comes to be 0.548 and for Page B comes to be 2.85. The page A which at first looked better in comparison to Page B, now doesn't look worthy at all. Hence a normalized base would help in determining the true worth of a page.

Types of Webpages

The complete analysis was done using V/D ratio. Graphically, V/D = 0.2 was obtained as the value to be used for determining if a webpage performed well or not. Complete Data was divided into three parts 

1. The lesser ones,

Now all Web Pages which had a V/D ratio less than 0.2 can be safely said to perform worse than its counterparts. Hence all Web Pages with a V/D ratio less than 0.2 come under its purview. There were 53 lesser ones.

2. The Greater Ones

Just like the name suggests, all the Web Pages with a V/D ratio more than 0.2 were called as the greater ones or the ones that performed better. There were 123 Greater ones.

3. The questions

Each webpage which contains a question in its title text is a question type webpage. There existed 63 question type Web Pages on the said website.

How did we arrive at V/D=0.2 ?

Note. It must first be understood how the value of 0.2 was obtained. The complete analysis being a really simple one, It was thought that the sample could be plotted on the graph based on its frequency. The graph was then created taking V/D ratio on the abscissa and the frequency at ordinate. 

The resultant graph was a sharp bell shaped curve. The sharpness was due to excessive variations among the sample group with different number of Web Pages having inordinate differences in their V/D ratios. Hence, The Graph was then magnified at its peak in the hopes of arriving at the dividing value. This graphically came near 0.2.

The Observations

Summarily, It was found that, The Webpages with questions as their title text that performed poorly was 21.21%. However, The Webpages/Articles/Blog Post with questions as their title text which performed poorly was just 21.21%. In Short, if you put your title text as a question for any webpage, you have 50% more chances of making it more famous. 

			Greater Ones	Lesser Ones
		Total Number of WebPages	123	66
		Number of Webpages with Questions	39	14
		Percentage of Webpages with questions	31.71	21.21

Disclaimer for the study, 

It is however pertinent to note that, the study took 197 webpages and had to exclude some to maintain the sample's integrity. The study was conducted on a single type of website with a single Page Rank and hence same results cannot be expected for any other.

The study could be extended to cover other types of websites too. These could be analysed and results displayed. Also, one must understand that the criterion for determining if a webpage performed good or poor, was created based on the overall performance of the website itself. Hence, there exists a need for determining independent criteria for websites of different types, page ranks and visitor interaction.

Also, you can bring people to your webpage, but making them stay there is wholly dependent on how you present the content. Bounce rate isn't too irrelevant you know.

Is the Study too technical for you?

For a much simpler version of this study you can visit the part I of the series. 

If you still have doubts or would like to share your own story, comment below, we'll be happy to answer.

This was all about,

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Do Pages with questions as title receive more clicks (Part 1)

There exists a very contended view that, If you write an article with a question as its headline or title, it will receive more clicks and the webpage as a whole would be more successful. 

codemakit in the past has published material on improving the readership of any blog like, using specific publishing schedule, controlling Spam, creating apps, organising your blog content etc.

Though some are of the opinion that it plays no part in determining the popularity of an article. However, Online marketing experts disagree, Several studies claim an increase of 100% (Though there are several more probable methods of doubling your website traffic) traffic to the website, i.e. "Double Your Traffic!", some claim a modest 10% increase.

The truth isn't inaccessible, its just hidden. Gregory Ciotti, who oversees marketing at Help Scout and is the founder at Sparring Mind, believes, there exists an information Gap Theory based on a paper by George Loewenstein, on "The psychology of Curiosity: A Review and Reinterpretation" 

The Online marketing geniuses often claim that once a person glances on the headline, She/he frames their question as per the one displayed. For example, You need to know how to plant a eucalyptus tree in your backyard. You put the search term as "Plant a big eucalyptus tree". Suppose you stumble upon the headline, "How do you plant a large tree", though the queries are different enough, you must understand that the person finds it irresistible not to merge the two and experience that Aha! moment where you feel "That is just the damn thing I was searching for! How cool is that, I must check this out!"

Codemakit Website Research performed a study and analyzed Web Pages to answer this question. Since the study can prove to be too technical for some, It has been included in the second part of the article.

In the study, We took 197 Web Pages and collected just two information from them, Their number of Page views and the number of days they had been public on the web. We divided the complete set into three parts. 

1. One was the Greater ones or the ones that performed really great. 
2. Second was the lesser ones, i.e. those that did not perform up to the mark. 
3. Third set consisted of those which contained questions as their headlines. 

You can take a look at part II of the article if you want to know how did we divide the articles/blog posts into good and bad (complete Data Set containing information in pdf format for is available for perusal here). Once that was achieved, We analyzed and are now presenting our findings. 

Read carefully, The Web Pages which performed really good had 31% of them as questions. However, The ones that performed really bad had 21% as questions. In short your webpage has 50% more chances of performing good if it has a question as its title/ headline. 

For more information on the study you can visit the part II of the series. If you still have doubts or would like to share your own story, comment below, we'll be happy to answer.

But, Don't you wanna know how did we arrive at this conclusion?

Check out the second part of the series. 

Also, tell us how much better did your website perform?

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The dangers of Trading an Article for a Service

“If you’re good at something, never do it for free”, Joker, The Dark Knight Rises.

Even you would agree that the dialogue is super cheesy. Fortunately the meaning holds perfectly true for current blogging atmosphere.  Take examples of bloggers, the one of the things they’re good at is writing, so the obvious question, Why not use the skills and get something done for yourself. 

Usually bloggers benefit from their writing skills through advertisements. But new concept dictates the use of this indispensable skill as a barter system. In simple words, “You do something for me and I’ll write an article for you”.

The same was true until an unnamed blogger decided to barter his services for something he wanted. So he went in search for the same and one day found a suitable firm which was ready to provide a service unless and until he agreed to write an article for the firm.

What went Wrong?

But little did he know about THE PERILS OF TRADING AN ARTICLE FOR A SERVICE. Here is an email thread between the firm and the unnamed blogger, The names of the entities have been changed to protect identity. Find the Email Thread about Sam and Sue here.

How did it go wrong?

Let us discuss what went wrong and how could it be rectified. The major reason why such arrangements fail is because; neither party is willing to work with full efficiency in the beginning. This is because there exists no monetary transaction. This was the precise reason why barter system failed in history. For that failure the reason was you cannot equate fixing a window and a sack of rice. Similarly you cannot equate an article and a service unless there is professionalism in both the parties. What do I mean by professionalism? 

Professionalism in any task is shunning the informal way of working and adopting a mean result oriented approach towards things. It the main reason why corporates thrive and small businesses do not. 

How could it be Rectified?

So how do you get into professionalism? 

Easy, you make sure that you follow the following points.

Before agreeing to work

1. This is not a deal, neither the party is working for free, nor are you. It is best if you could determine the boundaries of your relationship, i.e.. What you are planning to do and what you are expecting the party to do.
2. It is better to create a proposal document (just one page) stating the responsibilities you and the party are going to undertake. Sign the document and send them the signed copy asking them to sign on the document. When both have consent for the jobs to perform on a paper, both the parties will have an incentive to complete the job in the best way possible. Also a signature would save you from legal difficulties afterwards (If they arise)
3. Preserve the email threads between the parties
4. Always set a deadline for the job to be completed. Break the job into parts. And include penalties in the proposal document if a part of the work is not completed within the stipulated deadline.
5. Also work out about the license of the final product, you can look at some articles on creative commons or thy types of licenses you can use.

On English and communication

1. You must write proper English. People won’t take you seriously if you write like a kindergarten student.
2. You write complete sentences and no abbreviations unless absolutely required. Remember you’re writing an email and there is a difference between email and a text.
3. Try and keep informalities out of the equation. This is a business deal and not a social network.

After and during the work

1. Periodically inform about the progress of the work. To keep things simple, try and give the progress report in a tabulated sheet at the end of the week.
2. Once the job is completed inform about it and ask about their portion of the work.
3. Always reply to a mail, a bucket full of misunderstandings can be avoided if you just reply or acknowledge
4. If you have made the proposal document, after completion of the works from both the parties, drop an email stating that the agreement has been carried on in the desired way and tell them it was a pleasure working with them.

Show your availability for future jobs if you genuinely find the party to be a delight.

Front image credit HDW

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Image sizes/dimensions for Facebook Pages

It is not uncommon to see Facebook page owners bang their head on keyboards after spending hours of productive time just to keep resizing their images so that they fit perfectly on the Facebook page.

Webmasters and social media experts know that these are the things which a Facebook page owner must know to prevent embarrassments. So here are the different image sizes to be used on a Facebook page. 

This will ensure a seamless fit on the page saving hours of head banging and toiling on the page.

Each and every portion is provided with an example image link which has exact dimensions mentioned, saving you time to create one. 

Cover Photo size for Facebook’s Timeline
Height = 315px
Breadth = 851px

Example Image with actual dimensions

Applications Icon size for Facebook’s Timeline
Height = 74px
Breadth = 111px

Example Image with actual dimensions


Favicon size for Facebook Page
Height = 16px
Breadth = 16px

Milestone Image size
Height = 403 pixels
Breadth = 843 pixels

Example Image with actual dimensions


Profile picture image size
Height = 180 pixels
Breadth = 180 pixels

Example Image with actual dimensions


Thumbnail Image Size (picture which comes up during the sharing of URLs)
Height = 90px
Breadth = 90px

Example Image with actual dimensions

Facebook Offer image size
Height = 90px
Breadth = 90px

Example Image with actual dimensions

Image size for slideshow/album
Height = 720px
Breadth = 960px

Example Image with actual dimensions


Facebook Adverts image size
Height = 72px
Breadth = 100px

Example Image with actual dimensions

This helped you understand,

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The SEO and Content Guide, Free Ebook

The copy of SEO and Content Guide, consists of 7 different topics, 

The pdf is a 16 page report on Search Engine Optimization and Content improvement Techniques. 

A complete technical narrative on the Basics of SEO in addition to new and time tested ways to perfect your content. It is filled with ways on how to improve your keywords, keyword phrases, RSS feeds, internal and External links, Upgradation of your pages etc. The eBook is by Mohit Jain, Read more about him.

You just need to fill in the following form and you'll be good to go. A link to the pdf will be available to you once you submit the form.

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