MY IN BOX QUESTIONS ANSWERED


(FAQs) Frequently Asked Questions (Part
4)


I know it has been a very long time since I have updated the pages on my sites,
but with a nudge from a friend or two, here we go.

I have been seeing some frightening security issues coming up everywhere lately
and thought that I should try and help with a few warnings. Before get into that, I
need to revisit another issue.

I still have a few people asking why I insist on being so old fashioned about
manuscript formatting, screenplay page count, etc.. I'll try to explain it another
way. When you look through any directory of publishers, you would see
thousands of listings of houses and details for submitting your work to them. Not
everyone knows this, but there are only five or six truly independent top publishing
houses in the united states. Huge conglomerates such as Viacom, AOL-Time
Warner, CNET and dozens more, each own dozens and dozens of publishers,
television stations, production companies, magazines, Internet sites and more.
Most of those also have any number of secondary imprints under them. For
example, Harper Collins and the site I'm first posting this on, (Myspace) are owned
by Newscorp and CNET. VIACOM owns Showtime and a large number of other
major television outlets and production facilities. . If you just give that information
some thought, you can understand, they all do things pretty much the same way
and follow the same corporate procedures and rules. The editors and publishers all
know each other and have relationships with the same agencies and publicists and
so on. It is very, very hard to get a manuscript or screenplay read and find the one
publisher or producer willing to invest in you and your work today. Why in the
world would you want to make it more difficult by insisting on doing everything
your own way instead of the old tried and true that they all follow. I'll tell you the
same thing I've told my both of my daughters and my son in law. You don't stand
outside a persons front door and scream your demands at them. You follow the
rules of proper behavior and get yourself invited in, then work with your editor or
producer etc. inside to make the changes you need from your point of view.

A dozen years ago we were all breathlessly waiting for the major publishers to
become a web entity so that it would be easier to deal with contacts and
submissions. The trouble is, now that it has happened, a huge new problem has
appeared to undermine the usefulness of having such a convenience for authors and
agents. Most of the major publishers have now stopped online submissions
because as I'm told, over 95 percent of what they receive is not worth reading or
publishing by anyone.. It seems people are sending first drafts and unpolished,
unedited material by the truckload because it is so easy and convenient. No one is
willing to do the hard work required for a polished and printable manuscript now.
In other words, a great Internet submissions convenience is now being
compromised by persons unwilling to take the time to be professionals.



Let's get into the bad guys now. I'll start with the phishers. I don't know why
they spell it this way but they are ALL very bad people, fishing for two things by
sending these scary web messages to thousands of people from every list they can
find in the hopes a few will respond and update sensitive accounts. They want one
of two things. They want your identification to sell for big money to persons
needing a non legal way to do something shady, OR simply get your account
information to take your money or buy things you will have to pay for. In the past
month I have received 4 of these phishing e-mails from 4 different banks saying
there are problems with my account and I need to update my information to
activate it again. The problem is, I don't have an account at those banks so I knew
it was a scam. Just think though, if some other person got one of these that did
have an account and were not aware of the scam, they might just follow it up and
give up the information. I even got one the month before last saying I had a tax
refund coming and all I had to do was just fill in the information requested to
receive the check.

Now, you wouldn't see these things month after month, and year after year if
they didn't work for the bad guys. They work because there are dozens and
dozens of new people getting on-line every hour of the day that are not aware that
this kind of dangerous activity going on. The best thing for us to do is spread the
word to as many places as is possible in the hopes curbing it somewhat.

Here is how they do it. They go to a web site like a bank, paypal or a credit
card service and save or duplicated all of the pages. Then they will use a simple
html editor to change all the links on the pages to their own duplicate site. Next all
they need is to bulk e-mail a scare message to huge mailing lists and hope a few
people click a link back to their site with the information they are looking for. It
really is simple, yet works for them perfectly. As soon as they get a nice collection
of IDs and account information they will do as much damage as they can to those
people, then delete the site and move on to another scam. The only safe way to
deal with these messages is to NEVER click a link in an E-Mail of this type . Use
your address book or favorites folder etc. Go directly to your account site and ask
their security people about it. If you find it is a scam message forward it to those
security people there and at your own Internet provider site and let them investigate
for you. Do NOT click anything yourself. That is your bank or providers job.



Now I'll look at spam and adware. First of all we are not talking about a
danger like erasing your hard drive or anything. We are only talking about the new
breed of advertisers learning to be more and more creative in order to get your
attention and sell you something, but here is the new trick to it. These
advertisements are coming through a middleman, not from the advertiser direct.
This middleman is a person who will get you to download an application from
perhaps a social network like myspace with a trojan or adware worm attached to it.
When you install it the code embeds on your drive to allow the ad service access to
your machine any time you are on the web. Then they can charge other advertisers
a lot more to mail advertising in bulk to more persons that have that worm or trojan
installed. You will get this type of spam in places like the site you are looking at
right now. If you click on a friends site with adult material on it for example, a box
will pop up to get you to download the special application that in turn installs this
adware. As I said before, there is no damage and it is your choice to install or not.
It's just a nuisance and very difficult to get it off of your system later. These
people are even using u-tube clips and greeting cards to send their spam to you
now.


I could probably do two or three of these posts about the mistakes being made
with credit cards today. I'll be brief and only touch upon a couple of them while
hoping most of you will investigate these things on your own and find a way to
pass the information on to others. It is much easier for hackers to get your credit
card numbers and information from secondary sites today as opposed to hacking
the institutions or you personally. They can hack the places you use your card
faster. Many of the companies on the web that are in other countries are not able to
protect this information or have the same laws to help them as we do in America. I
think the best way to handle the use of cards on the Internet is to use the prepaid
cards on sites that you are not a hundred percent sure of. If some bad guy gets
that number they can only get a few dollars and you can just throw it away. You
can find prepaid cards like the Greendot card in drugstores, supermarkets and all
over the place. All of the major card companies also have them along with the
cards you can have issued like the teen spending cards. Just be sure when you
activate them they are not tied into your regular bank accounts and so on. Pay
attention to how you need to get the money on them though. I personally don't like
putting money through the web for them. I would recommend your buying a ten
dollar Western Union card that you can build up at any local Western Union office.
No personal info or bank connection to you that way. You just go in and put 10,
20, 50 or 100 dollars on it and pay the two or three dollars for the charges up front
instead of a monthly statement You can check them out on the web and right now
I think they will even forgo the ten dollar purchase of them. I cetainly hope some
of this is helpful and will save some of you a headache or two.


Until next time,

Elaine





Lastly,
same as the last post, open the "View all my friends"

section here and see all of the important contacts
you
can get to and talk to one-on-one for help.
You'll find
book publishers, magazines, film makers,
comic book
publishers, editors, authors, agents,
publicists,
producers, and artists to do
illustrations for you.
Click on any of the pictures
and look at their pages.

Until next time. All my
best.
Sincerely
Elaine


http://www.kedcostudios.net