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Every day as more people become connected with the internet to communicate and conduct business, the prevalence of online scams has been on the increase. With the latest statics release by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC), online fraud had increased 16% last year, with about 20,000 people reporting becoming victims of online fraud and being exploited up to $70 million from Australians last year.

The ACCC last week launched an Australian Consumer Fraud Taskforce 2010 Fraud Week, issuing two new publications for online shoppers and small business owner’s advice and tips to help avoid scams/online fraud such as:
-    Protecting your identity online
-    Sending and transferring money safely
-    Dealing with suspicious or unsolicited offers sent by email
-    General online golden rules
The ACCC publications will be available free of charge from the ACCC website or by calling the ACCC Info line on 1300 302 502.

The basic ACCC internet tips to help steer clear from any online scams or fraud:
•    Talk to your internet service provider about spam filtering or, alternatively, purchase spam-filtering software.
•    If you want to access an internet account website, use a bookmarked link or type the address in yourself: NEVER follow a link in an email.
•    Install software that protects your computer from viruses and unwanted programs and make sure it is kept up-to-date.
•    Beware of free websites and downloads (such as music, adult sites, games and movies). They may install harmful programs without you knowing.
•    Check the website address carefully. Scammers often set up fake websites with very similar addresses.
•    Never enter your personal, credit card or online account information on a website that you are not certain is genuine.
•    Never send your personal, credit card or online account details by email.
•    Try to avoid using public computers (at libraries or internet cafes) to do your internet banking.
•    Do not use software on your computer that auto-completes online forms. This can give internet scammers easy access to your personal and credit card details.
•    Choose passwords that would be difficult for anyone else to guess.

Google has launched a new URL shortening service, which they claim will make the Internet a safer place. With the increase in use of Twitter, and other social networking services, there has been an increase in the use of URL shortening services. Rather than having a long URL string in posts (often which have a maximum character limit), you can punch the URL into a site, and they will give you a shortened version.

According to Google, here are the major advantages:

•    Stability: Google’s scalable, multi-datacenter infrastructure provides great uptime and a reliable service to our users.
•    Security: As we do with web search, shortened URLs are automatically checked to detect sites that may be malicious and warn users when the short URL resolves to such sites.
•    Speed: At Google we like fast products and we’ve worked hard to ensure this service is quick. We’ll continue to iterate and improve the speed of Google Url Shortener.

You may be asking yourself why Google would be doing this, however with the rise of social networks like Twitter, people are clicking a large number of these links. They could be heading to dodgy sites without knowing it. Or, when spreading links, they could be spreading incorrect links, which would not only hurt branding, but also make it tougher for Google to crawl the web. If a link shortening service goes under, the links will no longer be valid. This hurts both users and Google.

At the moment, this service can only be used within a Google toolbar and Feedburner. Google mentions that if it proves to be successful, then they may expand it to a wider audience.

Google recently announced a, soon be launched, real-time search integrated into search results page.

How does it work?
Previously, only a new search request since the last Google query from the user, would show any new relevant information. Now, a new section will be added on the main results page, which will include a capsule that automatically scrolls relevant information within a few seconds after it pops up in the Web index (see below screen shot).

With Google’s current partnership with Twitter and now recently announced, social media giants Facebook and Myspace to fill in real time data from these sources and utilise them in the ‘latest result ‘capsule. Yahoo answers, news articles and blog posts are other streams which will be regularly updated.
With this change, a person requesting information about the Whistler 2010 Olympic Games for example, would not only receive the static links such as videos, pictures and the official Olympic site, but could now see current updates such as people ‘tweeting’ watching the live race and results from events.
With the teaming up of Yahoo and Microsoft for a partnership in the New Year, Google’s bar has again raised try and trump these search engines to maintain their lead as the dominating search engine on the net.

A few months on from the launch of Google’s new tool ‘Sidewiki’, and already it has stirred up much debate as to whether it could be more detrimental to a business’ website than beneficial as perceived by Google.  Google Sidewiki is a sidebar/ popup tool which allows anyone with this feature to post comments and notes about the website, appearing alongside the actual webpage.

Whether you want it or like it, people can leave their personal opinions in the comments box. You cannot stop or moderate what people say, but can only leave it in the hands of the Google Algorithm designed to place the most useful and high quality entries appearing at the top of the comments, instead of its age.  What may need to be looked into is whether comments are legitimate complaints or opinionated users just wanting a say to have an online presence. Some have described it no more than a “glorified comment system” and too “under regulated and uncontrollable”, much like the other forms of social media such as Facebook and Twitter to be of any real value to their business. Just recently in the Sydney Morning Herald an article talked about the ‘PR headache’ that this tool could potentially create. All those displeased customers or disgruntled employees can use this tool to vent their frustrations and negativity for everyone to see, leading to brand business damage and bad press.

However this tool can allows users to provide useful information and different outlooks that could be very beneficial to businesses. Sidewiki emphasises the importance for business to track and get involved in the different types of media that their views and consumers are accessing. Keeping updated on these different avenues and developing ways to manage these forms of communication will maintain business presence as innovative and keeping up with the ever changing trends in such a technology driven society.

If you would like to get more information about Sidewiki, or see what others are saying, go click crazy here.