Update: Someone is Using my Yahoo Email Account to Spam

Hi all,

I received a response from Yahoo regarding my earlier post. This is the response:

"The sender seems to have forged your email address in the "reply-to"
and/or the "from" field of the message they sent out. Please know that
we are currently aware of this type of spam and are investigating it."

Yes indeed, someone forged my email address. It directs to a store selling imitation Rolex Watches and the like. Uhm, ticked off? You betcha. Especially as I have never heard of this online store and someone obviously picked up my email address and is using it to cover his or her own scruple-lacking butt!

Yes, I did use a hyphen. I read that hyphens are going by the wayside according to this news story but hey, I still like 'em sometimes. They remind me of 3rd grade.

If you are a victim of email forgery as I seem to be, take action. Report it. Do NOT let your email account be sanctioned or deleted due to the actions of others.

I'm Too Tired to Think right now to tell you what to do. I think I'll save that one for my cuppa joe in the morning.

Enjoy the weekend, all, and be well.

M.

Someone Is Using My Email Account For Spam!

Greetings, all.

Just a warning to those of you who use Yahoo Mail: I recently found out that someone is using my Yahoo email address to send Spam emails!!! No, I'm not spamming, this is what happened.

Last week I noticed a large number of "undeliverable" email notifications in my mailbox. At first I thought it was some kind of spam or virus email so I didn't open the notifications because I knew that I hadn't sent any emails recently. Certainly not that many. As the number of notifications increased, I opened one out of curiosity to see who I had supposedly emailed. Well, the email was addressed to someone I don't know, hawking a product I've never heard of! I then went to my Bulk (Spam) folder and lo and behold, there's an email to me from me hawking some nonsense! Knowing that I hadn't sent it, I contacted Yahoo Support.

I don't want to lose this email account because of the actions of some unscrupulous email spammer. I've had this particular account for ten years and it has all of my friends, relatives, and acquaintances in the address book. I sure hope that the people at Yahoo can get to the bottom of this.

So, my message to you is to be wary if you start noticing these "undeliverable" email notifications, especially if you receive numerous notices when you haven't sent that many emails. It's possible that someone is using your email address to spam. Spamming is against Yahoo's TOS, and I'm afraid that my account will be deleted over this, even though I did not send them. That is why I reported it in the hopes that this can be resolved before my account is sanctioned.

I checked online, and it seems that this is happening to other people as well. Google "forged email address" or "undeliverable email spam" and you will see that this is a common practice for some unethical scumbags. I don't know about you, but I'd be pretty upset to lose my account because some dirtbag spammer is using my address.

Why do people do things like that, huh? I sure hope that whoever did this gets what is coming to them. I will keep you posted on the outcome with Yahoo support.

Be aware of this in case it is happening to you as well.

Take care and enjoy the day, all.

M

VOIP and Cash Crate

Earlier I posted that I was having difficulty in verifying my phone number for a payout through Cash Crate.

Here's an update: their system should indeed accept a VOIP (I use Vonage) as a valid phone number.

So whatever problem I had in verifying my phone number was not due to having a VOIP. Hmmmm, user error maybe? :) Wouldn't be the first time...

SO go ahead and give Cash Crate a try. I made a few quick bucks which will buy a nice pizza. Not bad for an hour's work.

Zlio Shops, Part 2

Hi all.

I have three Zlio Shops up and running, and I am indeed generating traffic. But no sales :(

You can visit my shops at:

EGift Baskets
Simply Soap
Platform Shoe Zone

I've made a whopping $0.27 in adsense revenue so far. I know that I sound negative, but I'm becoming discouraged. I can see from my statcounter that visitors are clicking on items; however, it seems that I'm not being credited for any sales resulting from the click-throughs. Yes, I'm discouraged.

Setting up shop is easy. Adding products somewhat tedious. Promoting? Well, you know that's 99% of the game. Will I spend hours promoting a website that is garnering zero sales? Probably not, but it's still to early too give up. Lol, I'm not a quitter, and you shouldn't be either.

So, my friends, please do not take my negativity at face value. My next plan is to find the source of the problem and work on resolving that issue. I am guessing that most people give up when they do not see immediate results. I will admit, I'm an "instant gratification" groupie, so this is a lesson in discipline for me.

For some reason, my Platform Shoe Zone shop receives the most traffic. I don't mean a few more hits, I mean exponentially more. So what did I do differently there? Don't know. That's what I need to find out. If anything, I thought that this site would be over-saturated and would receive less traffic. Go figure.

So keep the chin up and never surrender. I hear that good things come to those who wait. Still waiting....

Good luck,

M

Create Your Own Free Online Store at Zlio

Surfing the net, looking for something to explore when I ran across Zlio. It allows you to create a free online store. Hey, I like "free" so I gave it a shot.

Signing up was a breeze, creating the store a no-brainer. They offer countless items for your store, pretty much anything you can imagine. To be honest, adding items to my store was a bit more time consuming than I'd have liked but it's free and beggers can't be choosers, right? Another thing that troubles me is that whenever a potential customer clicks on an items they are told that the items isn't sold at this store and redirected to the "main" store for purchasing. According to Zlio, any sales generated from the redirect will lead to a commission for me, but I personally prefer to shop at the main site when buying online.

Now to get traffic. I don't know how to do that yet. Study, research, trial, and error are sure to follow. In the meantime, feel free to visit any of the stores (giftbaskets, soaps, and costumes/shoes) that I made. If nothing else, I had fun making them :)

Be well all,

M

Cash Crate Addendum - Phone Verification

If you are trying to pick up a few bucks on Cash Crate (as I am) I need to let you know about a snafu that I experienced.

It seems that in order to receive a check (minumum $10) you must first verify your phone number.

No biggie? Probably not for most people, but they want a land line or cell phone number. I have neither, as I have used Vonage for over a year and am quite pleased with it - it'll probably be another blog post.

Anyway, I sent the folks at Cash Crate an email asking how I can receive my check with no landline or cell.

I'll let you know what they say in case any of you are in the same boat.

Be well, all.

M

Extra Money with Cash Crate

I enrolled in Cash Crate yesterday and made an easy $11. It's not gonna pay the rent, but it's a start. My goal here is to discover ways to make money online and this is a start.

What you do is complete offers such as doing surveys, etc. Some of the offers require a credit card (I personally don't do those), but many do not. Now this isn't going to pay my rent but it's a start and I'll tell you why: Cash!


I've tried online surveys in the past and guess what? Most offer me reward points or "bux" but not cash. Let me give you a scenario:

"Hello, rental office, I don't have $ for the rent but I DO have 6 million reward points. Is that okay?" The answer is obvious, a resounding "NO!"

So will this make my rent? No. But for those of you who have jobs, it might help you to have an extra night out, buy a pizza, or rent some movies. I highly endorse this program.

Now this is the important part: set up a special email account for this. I don't know about you, but I hate spam in my personal email account. So register a free email dedicated to surveys to avoid all of the spam. I would also highly suggest setting up a free virtual phone number for registration. Here's why: I enrolled in Cash Crate yesterday and already have 16 emails in my dedicated email account. I also have 2 voicemails on my virtual phone number. Don't get me wrong, some of the emails are informative. For example, I found out (through one of Cash Crate's offers that I can save $200/year on my auto insurance. I may actually investigate that one. My point is, however, that a dedicated email account and phone number will save you the hassle of unwanted solicitations.

Be well and learn how to increase your income with Cash Crate. It took me less than an hour to make an extra $11, and I think that's pretty good.

For more information, visit Cash Crate.

Too Broke to Think, and I'm Not Gonna Take It Anymore!

Hi, my name is Mimi and I'm flat broke. I don't mean "can't take a vacation this year" broke, not even "can't buy those sweet new shoes" broke. No, I'm talking "can't pay the rent or utilities" broke and "completely freaked out about it" broke.

So I'm exploring my options to remedy this situation and have decided to make a go of it online.

Get a job, you say? Working on that too. You see, I lost my job a few months ago and have since been unable to get another one. Not for lack of trying, mind you. I've been working exponentially harder to find a job than I ever did when I actually had one.

So this is my plan: When I'm finished with the want ads, Monster, Careerbuilder, and all of the rest I'm going to investigate making my own job. How? Dunno. I've been reading about affiliate marketing, blogging for bucks, etc., but I'm an utter and complete newbie. Oh yeah, and too broke to buy a domain name let alone pay for hosting. I don't even really know what those two phrases mean, I just know that I've seen them regarding internet marketing.

So I'm starting from the bottom. My first look will be at online surveys, and I'll let you know what happens.

Be healthy and happy,

M