British police said today they have made Europe's first arrests in the battle against an online Trojan which threatened to compromise thousands of computers in the UK.

The ZeuS or Zbot Trojan, a type of sophisticated malicious malware, is believed to have infected and accessed personal information from tens of thousands of computers around the world.

The Trojan was configured in a way that when installed in the systems of infected computers, it recorded users' online bank account details and passwords, credit card numbers and other personal information, including passwords for social networking sites, before causing the computer to forward data to servers under the control of distributors.

Officers from the Metropolitan Police's Central e-Crime Unit (PceU), said on November 3, they arrested a man and a woman, both 20 years old, in Manchester. Both suspects have been released on bail pending further investigation.

"The ZeuS Trojan is a piece of malware used increasingly by criminals to obtain huge quantities of sensitive information from thousands of compromised computers around the world," said Detective Inspector Colin Wetherill of the PceU.

"The arrests represent a considerable breakthrough in our increasing efforts to combat online criminality."

Police said computer users' should take the following measures to protect against malware:

* Run anti-virus and anti-spyware software - Always run these softwares and keep them regularly updated.

* Windows update - Enable automatic updates to keep the operating system patched against known vulnerabilities.

* Patch software applications - In add/> [...]

Thu Nov 19, 2009 20:00 pm

Why Popular People May Seem Negative to Some

I was chatting with a friend today about one of our projects and he mentioned how he stopped liking a few other internet marketers recently due to their negativity. Him stating that gave me a bit of internal reflection, and I think it comes down to a few things...

• When people get from a certain level of success to say 5x or 10x, many may feel guilty about making the money and become negative about others to justify their own behaviors (after all, in *many* cases, when you grow income beyond a certain level it can require either moral flexibility and/or the ability to sharply change your internal values).
• Some people forget where they came from and become arrogant.
• Market forces force you to value your time. If you don't the market will set it at $0. And so (the people they used to help for free) they now tell to screw off simply because their time is valued more and they keep having less of it to spread around to a larger pool of people. This is also a learned behavior because the neediest people are often the laziest, rudest, and least appreciative. If a person is not willing to pay you for your time they simply DO NOT VALUE IT.

That third point is worth thinking through from an economic perspective. The law of marginal utility states that the first x is worth more than the second x (be it Dollars, hours of free time, video games, pieces of food, etc). But if you are becoming abundant in one resource (cash) and scarce in another (time) the impact on the required rate of conversion is multiplied...not only is your time worth more, but even at a higher price you still have less of it to spread around.

I look to pass off some consulting projects I would have loved to have done years ago just because I have no time. (Or perhaps I lack the creativity to be able to derive sufficient yield from those projects). And, at the same time, in spite of having plenty of mo/> [...]

Tue Feb 09, 2010 12:15 pm

We hear things hundreds of times before they stick in. There was nothing new in little victories, but you reacted to it because you needed the message, and because you heard it said to you in a new way, with different, easy-to-chew words.

There’s a lot of that in self-improvement, in motivation, in marketing.

We say similar things a different way, working away at what’s inside you. When I think about you, and all the confidence hiding below your surface waiting to be pulled forth, I think about what we could accomplish if it were coaxed out. You’re confident in some things, and very uncomfortable with others. Imagine if more of what came out was the confidence, the conviction, the passion (which I recently heard described as the intersection of anger and love).

People say that I write about business the way others write about relationships. That’s because business is relationships. That’s how I see it. Who do you deal with? People. Who do you sit around with all day in office buildings? People. Everything you’re doing in your nonprofit to raise more funds, to get more awareness, to build a following is human-based.

We’re all looking for ways to sink the meanings in deeper. We’re all looking for tools to equip us. You came here for that today. You come here for that all the time. You trust me to say something that will spark an idea, and you will then take that idea and make some value of it. I shared with you the difference between recipe and restaurant, and maybe you got value from thinking of how you process (and then APPLY/EXECUTE the information).

Bu/> [...]

Tue Apr 13, 2010 07:00 am

Posted by laura

This post was originally in YOUmoz, and was promoted to the main blog because it provides great value and interest to our community. The author's views are entirely his or her own and may not reflect the views of SEOmoz, Inc.

Turn your computer up.

Now go here and play this song.  Ready, Creator?  We’re going to create the heart and soul of your SEO Strategy masterpiece right here, right now.  Large black coffee advised. 

If you’ve been following Steps 1-5 you’ve been taking notes on what you’ve found along the way, either in the Excel spreadsheets we’ve created or in a preliminary Strategy document for the customer or in a notebook or on your hand or wherever.  These notes are going to be the seeds for Step 6 – the Strategy & Recommendations piece. 

Like every other step of this 8-Step SEO Strategy you should do this in whatever style or format that feels best for you. I’m going to show you how I tend to put these documents together, but even my SEO Strategy documents change from client to client.  So use your properly caffeinated noggin to create what your customer or your site teams need. 

HERE’S WHAT YOU’LL NEED

We gathered some notes in previous steps, so let’s take a look back at what we might be able to throw into this document.

Step 1: We defined target markets & their needs

• You either used target markets or personas available to you, or you defined them.  We’ll revisit these in this in/> [...]
  
  Wed Jun 09, 2010 00:00 am

  ---