10 Tips to Avoid Cyber Monday Scams

It seems that the holiday shopping season comes earlier and earlier each year. Luckily, in the digital age, you can ditch the long lines of Black Friday and join the Cyber Monday crew by doing all your shopping online. However, even though shopping online is quick and convenient, there are risks involved.

According to Forrester Research, online shopping this holiday season is expected to generate almost $59.5 billion. And 90% of consumers will shop online, according to PriceGrabber’s winter holiday shopping survey. This increased traffic turns the virtual marketplace into a winter wonderland for hackers, who are gearing up to swipe credit cards and personal information to commit fraud and identify theft.

Cybercriminals exploit the holiday season and target Internet users through a variety of methods, including online shopping scams, fraudulent emails, e-card and phishing schemes and more. One of the main focuses for hackers this holiday season is social media. Beware of fake profiles on social networking and ecommerce sites that are meant to mimic well-known corporate brands and coax users into clicking on their content. Malicious content can easily hide in Facebook links and Twitter posts.

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10 Tips to Avoid Cyber Monday Scams

Social Networking : Quickest ways to get connected !

We are going to make a not-so -shocking revelation ."For an average users,social networking accounts for the most time spent online!"so here is how you can get even better at it.

Use all in one Messengers.
why use separate instances of Gtalk,Yahoo!,MSN,IRC,Facebook chat etc? Instead you can use a multiple-protocol messenger such as Digsby or Miranda  to aggregate all your chat and social networks into one place.pf these Disgsby is more visually appealing while Miranda is robust,offering Plugin support and customization.

Chromed Bird extension in Action

Use Extensions.
Extensions especially on Google chrome allow you to do a lot more and a lot faster when it comes to keeping track of updates and updating your social networks.Social networking be it Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or any other networks, is all about now. You need access to update all the time. Chrome extensions such as "Chrome Bird", "Facebook for Google Chrome", etc give you notification for comments, Updates and Replies. They will also allow you to Update status right from a Pop-up bubble without ever changing tabs. Head over to Chrome Web Store  for wide array of extensions.

Phone apps all the way
If you are not using your phone to networking on the go ,you are loosing out on a lot of precious moments in your daily commute where you could be catching up on lot happening ,iPhone and Android will have a host of apps but when it comes to lesser mortals like J2ME and Symbian we've found Snaptu to be a very good performer.It's Light and fast on the slowest of Phones.

Use one-to-many Updaters
One of the painful time consuming aspects of social Networking ironically is updating your status on all of those social networks you so enthusiastically joined .Fret not, services such as Ping Fm  will help you update your status in a jiffy on all of your social networks at once. The web app has an amazing number of services under its umbrella;from common one likes Facebook,twitter,Myspace to obscure one such as Identica,Tumblr and StatusNet. If you don't like ping.fm then there is always HELLOTEXT

SONY ERICSSON XPERIA ARC : the Slimmest

The Xperia Arc is certainly a large handset but still quite comfortable to hold and lightweight. It runs a 1 GHZ scorpion Processor with the Adreno 205 GPU got accelerating games and video Playback. The LED backlit display sports a 480 x 854 Pixel Resolution that's high enough to make colours  seriously stand out. It doesn't Have a hot swap slot for the microSF which could be an issur for some, however 320 MB of internal storage is available for apps. Sony Erisson has included the TimeScrape UI option and widget for simultaneously updating your Twitter and FB view all your Message, people's updates on FB/Twitter and New calls/messages form this one vertical scrolling interface.

The native audio player with its few EQ presets managed to dish out audio quite well . Tones, although slightly jarring on full volume were still decently well balanced. The Arc does not support DIVX or XviD video Codecs out of the box. So you'll have to download and use a third party media player from the android market. The Arc is well equipped for connectivity form 3G, standard EDGE/GPRS,WiFi with DLNA compatibility and tethering 8 megapixel camera is ccompanied by an LED flash that's quite handy in low lit areas.However the quality of immages shot was quite average especially in low Light.

The Arc's 1500 mAh battery serves it well. It lasts for a little over two days with Moderate usages. 

For it Price it should have offered more features such as Dual-Core CPU, Larger Screen and More Storage Space.

FOR:Smooth user Interface,Good audio Quality

AGAINST: No Divx and MKV supports

Blackberry-Bold-9900

The BlackBerry Bold 9900 looks like the Bold 9000, but is thinner and slightly smaller. He looks very serious and is built like a tank. Button position is a little different, but can be customized according to your preferences.

The 9900 is equipped with a 2.8 inch, 640 * 480 pixels capacitive touchscreen, which is accurate and responsive.The phone is powered by a 1.2 GHz processor, 768 MB RAM and has 8GB of internal memory expandable up to 32 GB via micro SD.There also supports NFC.

With the new Blackberry 7OS, the 9900 was a dream to use. MP4, AVI, 3GP, WMV and MOV works well and plays up to 720p. The camera is the same as the 5-megapixel fixed focus used in 9780, but now supports up to 720p video recording. Photos Clicked were correct in the right light and the colors are well reproduced.

RIM should have gone to the 1500 mAh battery instead of the 1230 mAh one. After 1.5 hours of talk time, 2 hours of free Wi-Fi streaming, the battery was on standby for 6.5 hours before giving up. Blackberry honors is top-of-the-line brand iconic GRAS.

Positive

Great looks , Good Performance, Responsive Touch Screen

Against

Could have Used Larger battery, Blackberry OS7 has some Compatibility Issues.