| Internet Tech Talk |
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 The Internet is a great place. You'll like it even more when you learn some of the Internet-related technology words.
Blog – A blog is a personal journal that is posted on the Web. The word blog comes from Web Log. This has become a very popular pastime, with many bloggers adding to their blogs on a daily basis. Blogs usually focus on a certain subject. There are political blogs, blogs about hobbies, and blogs that focus on many other subjects. Phishing is an Internet term that is used to describe a scheme which an unscrupulous person uses to “fish” for personal information like social security numbers, credit card numbers, passwords, and account information. Generally phishing is done by sending an e-mail that sounds like it is from CitiBank, Visa, eBay or another reputable institution. The e-mail requests that you verify your account information. The e-mail gives a link to click. The link goes to a bogus Web site. If you fill in your personal information at that Web site you are giving it directly to a crook.Spit is spam received through Internet telephony. As more people gravitate to making less expensive phone calls over the net, spit is poised to become a problem as big as spam. It will be easy for marketers to program their computer to send out spit in mass just as they now send out spam. Just as the National Do Not Call list has greatly lowered the volume of unwanted telephone messages, spit will soon infiltrate Internet telephony with a deluge of unsolicited and unwanted voicemail. Spim is spam received through Instant Messaging. It is already becoming a problem. Researchers expect that about four billion messages will be sent to instant message users in 2005. Although they haven’t yet come up with a name for it, text messages sent to cell phones promoting viagra, get-rich schemes, and mortgage offers, are also on the rise.
Dodgy Domains – These are fake Web sites that are masquerading as legitimate Web sites. Spammers and other criminal-types create these Web sites with names very similar to real Web site names. Then they use e-mail to direct people to these Web sites with the express purpose of stealing personal information. This type of online fraud has already produced domains similar to Citibank and EBay that have fooled thousands of unsuspecting users.
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