With all the buzz Twitter receives in the tech world, I assumed that everyone had heard of it and that I was a relatively late adopter. (I created a personal account in December 2008, and I created a TechKathy account in January 2009.) And while it has taken me a few weeks to understand what all the fuss is about, I have to confess that I’ve grown to like the service.

In a word, Twitter is “microblogging.” What does that mean? If you think of blogging as writing about your thoughts, feelings, activities, secret crushes and other things on your own personal site, then imagine Twitter as a miniature version of this. You get your own page (mine is http://twitter.com/techkathy), and you write about whatever you want in 140 characters or less. How much is that really? Here’s a post that I wrote that’s exactly 140 characters:

I made my first animated gif using a cool Twitter logo I found thru Smashing Magazine. My new gif is now at the bottom of www.techkathy.com.

So obviously, you’re not going to tell your life story in 140 characters. Twitter tells you to just answer the question, “What are you doing?” One thing I really like about Twitter is that only people who actually WANT to know what you’re doing will see your Twitter posts. When you join Twitter, the site prompts you to find friends to follow so you see their posts, and it allows others to choose to follow you. You’re never spamming people with your posts, and you’re not getting spammed either—what you see or don’t see is completely up to you.

I have chosen to follow tech writers like David Pogue and Gina Trapani and tech-related organizations like Macworld and WordPress, so most of what I see on my Twitter homepage is tech-related news.

Most of what I write and post on Twitter is also tech-related. When I first joined Twitter, I started out writing rather mundane things, but it recently dawned on me that I could use the service to provide additional small tech tips to people as I discover them. My tips are usually for websites and services that I’ve found useful that I may or may not have time to write a full blog post about. You can see my tips, and all my Twitter posts, without having to join by visiting http://twitter.com/techkathy. If you do decide to join and choose to follow me, you’ll get my posts delivered to your Twitter homepage automatically.

If this all sounds interesting and you want to learn more, please check out this two-and-a-half-minute introductory video from the Common Craft:

And for still more on Twitter, here are a few articles:

• Twitter Tips for Beginners, by David Pogue,
• What is Twitter?, by BBC Panoramic, and
• How to Use Twitter Like a Pro, by Sean Tibbitts, (a response to Pogue’s article).

As always, thanks for reading my blog, and happy tweeting!

Copyright © 2009, Kathy Keating and TechKathy.com. All rights reserved.

“Phishing” is an illegal method of tricking someone into providing very personal and sensitive information (like usernames, passwords, credit card numbers and etc.) to people who are not who they say they are. Phishing typically happens through email or instant messages, and these messages may have real business names, real logos and/or legal-sounding language requesting immediate action. The messages often include forms to fill out and return by email or links to fake websites with online forms to fill out.

What makes this phenomenon something to worry about is the ever-increasing sophistication of phishers’ methods. The messages they send look more and more legitimate, which is how phishers deceive people and then hijack their email accounts, drain their bank accounts or do some other harmful and fraudulent act.

Some internet browsers (including Internet Explorer 7 and Firefox 3) include anti-phishing filters, which display a warning if a site you try to visit is suspected of phishing, and some anti-virus and spyware applications also include anti-phishing filters. These filters, however, do not catch everything, so it’s important that you learn some basic strategies to keep yourself safe.

Here are a few warning signs that you can look for when reading messages from people you don’t know personally and from companies. First, look closely at any logos in the message, the “from” address and any website addresses the message asks you to visit. If they look odd or the email or website address is suspiciously long, the message is likely a fake. Second, read the message carefully for odd typos and grammar mistakes. Company CEOs and bank managers don’t send out messages without proofreading them first. Third (and most importantly), don’t trust messages that ask you to provide your username, password or account number in a message.

If you’re still not sure if the message is legitimate, call the person or company using their phone number from your statements or the telephone book and ask them about the message. Or do a little checking online. Snopes.com is dedicated to debunking urban legends and exposing misinformation, and it has a good article about phishing and many examples of past phishing attempts. In addition to reading that, you can also check out Snopes.com the next time you get a suspicious looking email – it’s updated daily with the latest exposed schemes. Simply go to the website and do a search for the company who appears to have sent the message.

Another great resource I found while researching online for this post is a quiz by SonicWall called the Phishing and Spam IQ Quiz. SonicWall’s quiz presents you with 10 email messages, and you examine each one and state whether you think the message is legitimate or phishing. I scored a 9 out of 10 – I was a little too wary, and I thought a legitimate message was a scam. The best part of the quiz is the detailed results at the end. SonicWall shows you each individual message and shows you why it was legitimate or not. You can take the quiz here:

www.sonicwall.com/phishing/index.html

Good luck!

Copyright © 2009, Kathy Keating and TechKathy.com. All rights reserved.