I swear, I'm not sending you SPAM emails

Chances are if you've received any from me in the past few months we're friends on Facebook and your friend list is (or was last summer) set to public eight months ago.

In recent months, three friends have told me they received at least one SPAM email that was sent from someone using my first and last name, but not a recognizable email address that they knew to be mine. I figured it must have something to do with Facebook because it was the only common denominator between myself and each friend.

A quick search on Google and I was able to confirm my suspicions:

Forbes: Facebook Says 'Misconfiguration' Allowed Spammers To Impersonate Users

CNET: Spam from 'friends' is actually result of Facebook hole
Facebook has fixed the problem and says spammers are using friend lists they scraped before the fix to send new e-mails.

Turns out last August (2012) there was a breach that allowed ne'er-do-wells to access the names of all of your friends on Facebook if your friend list wasn't set to private. In turn, the spammers were able to learn your email address then proceeded to use the names of people they knew you know to send virus laden messages to your inbox.

How to protect yourself in the future? Set your friend list to private like this:

Go to your profile page and hover over the upper right corner of your friends section until the small "Edit or Remove" box appears. Click on it.

Next it will ask you if you want to edit "Sections" or "Privacy." Choose "Edit Privacy."

Next change your settings to "Only Me" so that no one else can see your friend's list.

The only reason I'd already set my list to private was because someone I knew, who I accepted a friend request from, went on to use my friend's list to hit on at least one of my friends. Seriously. As soon as I finished apologizing to her I unfriended him and set my list to private to avoid it happening again in the future.

And these are some additional good tips shared in the articles (some I slightly modified) linked to above:

• Review your security settings and consider enabling login notifications.
• If the subject line reads "For Your-name-here" and the email address is one you wouldn't associate with your friend, they are signs it may be part of this scam.
• Don’t accept Facebook friend requests from unknown parties.
• Don’t click on strange links, even if they’re from friends, and notify the person if you see something suspicious. How do you determine if a link is "strange"? Hover over a link without clicking on it. You'll see the full URL of the link's true destination in a lower corner of your browser.
• Don't use the links in an email, instant message, or chat to get to any web page if you suspect the message might not be authentic or you don't trust the sender. Instead, navigate to the website directly.
• Be suspicious of any email with urgent requests for login or financial information, and remember, unless the email is digitally signed, you can't be sure it wasn't forged or spoofed.
• If you come across a scam, report it so that it can be taken down. Facebook earlier in the month introduced a dedicated email address for reporting phishing scams: phish@fb.com.
• Don’t download any applications you aren’t certain about.
• Visit Facebook’s security page.

But this may be the best tip of all for those who use public wifi: When accessing Facebook from places like hotels and airports, text "otp" to 32665 to receive a one-time password to your account.

As Facebook updates their site from time to time I check my privacy settings to make sure they weren't reset to the default which is usually something more public than private.

So if you get an email from me but the email address isn't one of my website urls be very suspicious and don't click on any links contained in the message. Also utilize whatever reasonable privacy options you can on your social media accounts as they may protect you from spammy attacks like this one in the future.

Pinterest: The New Social Media Sensation

A few weeks ago I took a peek at my blog stats and saw a lot of people had come to The Flirty Blog from a site called "Pinterest" to see the post I did about my dog Kitai's Chia Pet Halloween costume back in 2000. And I don't mean a few people, I mean hundreds in just one day!

A search of "Chia Pet" reveals Kitai is dominating those key words on Pinterest.

 As soon as I saw the site I was hooked.

The easiest way to explain Pinterest is to say that people add really beautiful, delicious, cute, inspiring or fun images from around the internet to virtual bulletin "boards" they've created that other people can then "repin" to their own boards to share with their followers.

Below is a sample of the Pinterest home page:

Above is what the Pinterest home page looks like. On the left side bar is recent activity from other members "liking," "pinning" or "commenting" on photos you have "pinned" on boards you create as you surf the net.

This is what a "pinned" image looks like with image stats and usually a short description about the photo.  See how ten people liked this photo of Kitai, one commented and 55 other people have repinned it? And this was just one of hundreds of people who have now shared this picture with everyone who has subscribed to the images on their boards.

So I joined and set up my own account. You can see it at: www.Pinterest.com/stacie_tamaki

These are my boards. I have categories that range from food to decor, beautiful images and backyard chickens.

Above are images I've "liked" on other people's boards.

Above are the latest images I've pinned or repinned to my boards.

And here's a close up of my Backyard Chicken board. It includes cute chicken hutch ideas and the breeds of chickens I'd like to have someday.

So how do you add a photo to your board? By adding Pinterest to your browser tool bar you can then visit a (non-flash) web page and save a photo to your boards.

For instance I liked this photo of a blue silkie chicken and wanted to pin it. I clicked on the "Pin It" link on my tool bar just below the little house and + buttons in the upper left corner of my browser window.

When you click "Pin It" images on the page will show up and you click on the blue "Pin This" button of the image you would like to share.

A small dialogue window opens that allows you to do two things: Select the board you'd like to add the photo to and create a short description about the image. When you're done you click on the red "Pin It" button.

When you're done with that you'll receive a "success" dialogue box to let you know the image has been added to your boards.

To view your pin you can can go the Pinterest home page and your image will be in the top left. Anyone else who likes it can then "Like," "Comment" or "Repin" it.

Yes, it's just one more place to spend time online but Pinterest is like a breath of fresh air. There's no drama or negativity. Just beautiful pictures on every page. Come find me!

Need a Website or Blog Critique or Help Setting Up Your Blog?

Small business owners nationwide often ask if they can hire me to: Critique their current website and/or blog, to improve their search engine optimization (SEO) and/or user experience, because they need help setting up their first blog or they want to learn how to blog more effectively.

Regularly updating your web content is important for every small business owner who cares about :

1. Creating a positive and professional impression to potential and returning clients by keeping them up to date on their latest new projects, services, promotions, press, etc.
2. SEO and placement of their web pages in search engine indexing

So, I've decided to run a private consultation sale rate for the entire month of August! I'll answer your questions during my "Two Hours for the Price of One" private consultation special.

Most popular topics are:

• Critiquing your current website or blog to create an action list of suggestions about how to improve your SEO indexing results and user experience
• SEO 101: How to use SEO to improve your website or blog's indexing results
• Creating Your First Blog
• Customizing Your Blog to Complement Your Website
• How to use Facebook
• More Effective Branding
• And more. . .

If you're interested in scheduling an in-person consultation just CLICK HERE to visit the Private Consultations page on the Girl Goes Geek website for more details. (Phone and email consults are also available at the sale rate.)

I'm also currently accepting a limited number of new clients for:

• Custom web design and web development projects. My specialty is small sites of three to 10 pages for small businesses (non-flash only for better SEO and user experience)
• Updates to existing websites
• Blog customization

CLIKE HERE to view my website portfolio

Signing Up for about.me

This morning my friend Vicki posted on Facebook that she had signed up for about.me a web directory where you create a single profile page and add links to other accounts you have on the web. You also get a dashboard that shows visits to your page, clicks to your links and links back to you. For free.

Click to view my about.me profile

While I didn't feel the need to sign up, I did because if I didn't sign up for my own name, someone else could. Same goes for other social media websites. For years I resisted creating a business profile on Yelp because it would be just one more thing to manage. Then I heard a guest speaker at a presentation point out that if I don't sign up for my own business name, someone else could, and often people do, with ill intentions. So I signed up. And will continue to whenever I see new sites that may be beneficial to my online presence or could be harmful if someone else takes them because I didn't.

You can do a little or a lot once you create a profile online. The point is to protect your personal or company name by making sure that you control the online dissemination of information associated to you or your company whenever possible. Plus about.me is a great way to help market my blog and website for free! I could have left the profile standard with a plain background and just my name and a brief bio but why not add my blog feed and link to my website? That's all I did. Oh, and of course I added a custom background. But I didn't have to :)

Facebook Places: Join in or Decline?

Facebook Places is, from what I've read, similar to foursquare, which is a more sophisticated version of someone tweeting where they are at any given moment.

For those of you who enjoy living in the now and don't mind the whole world (or the large portion or small portion you have friended through your social networking accounts) to know where you are (restaurants, concerts, bars, malls, etc) and where you aren't (home, so thieves have a better idea of knowing when to strike), Facebook Places will be another fun way to keep in touch with your friends and the world.

Call me a stick in the mud...

For those of us who are more wary and enjoy more (as opposed to less) privacy, the thing to know about the new Facebook Places is that even if you don't use the new feature, your friends can "tag" you into their Places updates to let everyone they know where you are.... And aren't. To remove the option (of giving away your location) from your fun loving and free spirited friends you need to go into your Facebook privacy setting and set your account to "disable."

This post on Gawker shows you how to do this step by step :)

Who to Friend on Facebook

"Find people you know on Facebook

Your friends on Facebook are the same friends, acquaintances and family members that you communicate with in the real world. You can use any of the tools on this page to find more friends."

That's what the top of the "Find Friends" page says on Facebook.com. So if that's the premise as described by the site itself why are you getting so many friend requests from people you don't know at all? Like never knew them in High School or College, are not friends with them now at work, or it's literally someone on the other side of the planet you may never meet in real life...

To accept, ignore, reject or wait is subjective. Some people try to friend as many people as they can, others only the people they really know in real life. I'm not saying either way is right or wrong but rather that different people approach their "Friend List" with different criteria.

And just so you know... I don't always immediately respond to all of the Facebook friend requests I receive.

Why would I wait to accept a friend request?

Well there's a few reasons. My most basic criteria for accepting friend requests are based on the following:

1. Are we really friends in real life?

2. Are we colleagues that share more then the occasional "Nice to see you" at an industry event? Have we got together to chat outside of an industry event? Have we ever worked on a project together?

3. How well do I know your work? To me, accepting a friend request is in itself an endorsement of both the quality of work and the way in which a company conducts their business. So if I don't know anything about who you are, what you do, or your company in general, chances are I'll want to wait until I do.

4. If we aren't work colleagues how well do we know each other? Whether you're a local friend or an internet friend the same "I have to know you and already be friends with you" standard applies.

So what to do to avoid the somewhat awkward situation of not accepting friend requests? You can always reserve your personal profile for family only (or no one at all) and start a Business Facebook Profile for your company that is open to the world to join.

If you're a colleague and I haven't accepted your request because I don't know you at all, and you see me at an industry event? Please come by and say hello. Let me get to know you. I'd appreciate it. Really I would.

(Just for the record: There have been a few time I accidently accepted the requests of people I don't know when my computer accepted not only the request I meant to but also the one directly after it. So a few people I don't know well are on my friend list. Rather then defriend them? I'm getting to know them better :)
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Some great articles about friending on Facebook:

Is it rude to not accept a friend request? Frequent users of social forums like Facebook will most likely say no. But to someone new to the scene it might feel rude. The thing to keep in mind is that some people are all about quantity. Your declining to accept won't devastate them. You're just a unit to bring them closer to a "target" number of friends. Or they might have accidentally hit the "send a friend request to everyone in my email address book" while setting up their account. So if you get a request from someone and wonder why they sent it? Maybe they didn't mean to in the first place: When you don't want to be Facebook friends

Another awkward situation created when you join a site like Facebook is defriending a friend: Meaning removing them from your friend list. If you join a site like Facebook it'll most likely happen to you at some point. It's nothing to get worked up over. Well at least not for me it wasn't. This is real life, you'll have ups and downs and may take breaks or just stop being friends with someone for good. Either way here's an article about how to deal with this issue on Facebook: Friends, Until I Delete You

You may find this surprising but most of my friends with kids, are friends with them on Facebook. I'm even friends with some of their kids. I'd recommend parents with teenagers on Facebook get online themselves. Even if your kid won't friend you as a parent I think it's good for everyone to understand how the site works so they have a better understanding of how especially really young kid(s) are potentially using the site when they're online: When Mom or Dad Asks To Be a Facebook 'Friend'