We’ve Partnered with McAfee!

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We have been working behind the scenes with McAfee to start a new partnership. With this partnership we are able to offer our customers something that has never been offered by McAfee before. All of our customers can now get McAfee Secure for their websites absolutely free. This is a completely free lite version of McAfee Secure which will give you access to their website security seal, website scanner, and more.

Next time you log in to your cPanel you’ll see an icon for McAfee Secure located under the “Software & Services” section. Simply click on the icon, choose which website you’d like to add McAfee Secure to, and McAfee will test the security of your site. Once they’ve tested the security of your site and your site is certified, the certification trustmark will automatically display on your website for up to 500 visitors per month.

mcafee secure

mcafee secureSo, what does McAfee secure actually do for your website? It lets your visitors know that your website is safe by displaying a trustmark in the bottom right corner of your website. When the visitor hovers over this trustmark it will show them that your website is McAfee Secure certified and has no malware, phishing, or any other malicious content.

Adding McAfee Secure to your website will benefit both you and your visitors. It gives you the peace of mind in knowing that there is a product working behind the scenes to make sure that your website has no malicious content on it. If, by chance, something does happen to your website you will be notified so that it can be fixed immediately.

Not only that, but McAfee Secure will also allow you to:

  • Become Secure: Get weekly security screenings from the world’s largest dedicated security company, and then tell your visitors about it.
  • Drive Your Engagement: Easing security concerns will mean a reduced bounce rate and increased visitor usage of your site.
  • Increase Conversions: With McAfee SECURE Lite, visitors spend more time doing more things on your site—and that ultimately means more sales.

The best part of all? McAfee Secure Lite is absolutely free! This can be added to your website at no cost to you, and will display the trustmark to up to 500 visitors each month. Next time you log in to your cPanel go ahead and add McAfee Secure Lite and see how it can benefit your website.

Today is World Backup Day

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Today, March 31st, is world backup day. While most people tend not to back up their data as much as they should (myself included), today is an important reminder that at any time disaster can strike, and having a backup could mean the difference between an easy restore and hours, perhaps days of rebuilding a website.

Allow me to share a quick personal story. Last week, I was working on one of my personal websites. I was doing some account maintenance, which included deleting some old FTP accounts that I had created through cPanel. The problem was that I wasn’t paying close enough attention to what I was doing, and during the deleting process I selected the option for deleting the account AND all of the files in the folder for that account.

Oops. A whole website gone in the blink of an eye. The worst part is that I had no backup. Thankfully for me it’s a WordPress website and all of the posts and pages are stored in the database which remained on the account, but all of my template customization, images, plugin data, everything else was gone. It’s taken me over a week to recover and I’m still not there yet.

The moral of the story is if you value your website at all, I urge you to reconsider how often you take your backups. It’s also important to keep these backups off of your hosting account. Say, for example, multiple hard drives fail on a server. We have safe measures and redundancies in place on our servers to try and mitigate data loss, but sometimes there is no revering from hard drive failure. When this is the case, if you kept your backup on the same storage that failed, that backup is also gone.

To encourage everyone to partake in taking backups more regularly we are offering our backup on demand service for 50% off it’s regular price. If you order using the promo code backup50 you can get it for $9.97 for a year. Just Click Here to log in and order it on your account.

Email spoofing: what it is, and how to avoid it

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email spoofingWith the advances in email technology, spammers are finding more creative ways to get their messages in your inbox, and more importantly, to have you open these messages. One of the tricks that these spammers use is known as email spoofing.

What is email spoofing, exactly? Email spoofing is when a spammer changes the header so that the “from” address looks like a legitimate email address to trick both spam filters as well as the email recipients. These spammers send out legitimate looking emails posing as addresses you would recognize – either from friends, popular stores like Amazon.com, or even worse, a popular bank like Chase or Bank of America. All of this is in an attempt to get you to open the email and follow the instructions inside.

Opening emails from spoofers can lead to big time losses. These emails will try to trick you into clicking on a link or downloading an attachment. This, in turn, will install a malicious program on your computer that will easily allow hackers to steal your identity, credit card information, social security number, and other personal information without you ever knowing it.

These hackers can also spoof your email address to pose as you and send emails to people you know. People are more inclined to open emails from addresses they recognize, and the hackers rely on this to get their malware spread far and wide.

What can be done to protect yourself from email spoofing? The first, most important thing to do, is make sure you only open emails from addresses you trust. This minimizes your risk of downloading a malicious file. Even if you do open an email, be sure you carefully review any links and attachments that are sent, and download/visit the sites with caution.

MetroMail Secure Email will minimize your risk of even receiving these emails. This secure email system scans for malicious attachments and links that look like spam so that it never reaches your inbox. This allows you to look through your email worry free. To learn more about how HostMetro.com can protect you with their secure email, visit our secure email page by Clicking Here.

Introducing MetroMail Secure Email

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secure emailAs the internet becomes a bigger part of our lives so does the need to secure our online worlds. One of the things that people neglect most is the security of their email accounts. With that in mind we have launched a new secure email service called MetroMail Secure Email, which will help protect you in several ways.

MetroMail Secure Email is designed to protect you from hackers, spammers, identity thieves, and more. It also protects your email from being scanned by free email providers like Google and Yahoo who sell the information to companies so they can advertise based on your email contents.

Over the next few days we will release posts with more details on how each of these features work, but the short of it is that MetroMail Secure Email protects you from:

  • Email Spoofing
  • Spam Emails
  • Identity Theft
  • Viruses, Trojans, etc
  • Phishing Attempts
  • And More

Not only does MetroMail secure email protect you from threats, it is also a great way to stand out from the Gmail and Yahoo crowd. You can have personalized email addresses for you, your family, your friends, coworkers, and anyone else you can think of. It’s also a great way to enhance your business by showing your customers that you take yourself seriously as a brand.

Stay tuned for most posts as we cover just how much MetroMail secure email can protect and enhance your online world.

How to Stop Spam Comments

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How to Stop Spam CommentsIf you have a successful blog, or are considering starting a blog, you are going to undoubtedly come across spam bots trying to post comments on your blog. Finding out how to stop spam comments can be frustrating, especially when you are getting more than you can handle. There are a few things you can do to easily handle the vast majority of comment spam to keep your blog clean and safe for your visitors.

1. Moderate the Comments

This is a relatively simple thing to do when you start noticing your blog getting comments. Simply hold them for moderation, and when you have recognized it as not being spam approve the comment so it is displayed on your website. This can obviously get tedious pretty quickly when you start getting a lot more traffic and comments, but it is a good place to start.

2. Blacklist Certain Words

All of us know the common words that seem to always be sent through spam. Things like “viagra” are easily blocked by adding the word to a blacklist. Any comment with this word in it will automatically be flagged as spam. You can also use this to keep your comments as PG as you’d like. That, of course, is all personal preference.

3. Don’t Allow Links in Comments

More often than not, spammers are attempting to get you and your visitors to click through a link to take you somewhere else. Where you will end up is anybody’s guess. Blocking posters from being able to comment hyperlinks is a quick and easy way to stop spam comments in most cases.

4. Require Registration

While this isn’t a sure-fire way to stop spam comments, it may dissuade some spammers. Forcing visitors to register before commenting will stop basic spam attempts. It’s also a great way to build a mailing list if your blog is for a business.

5. Use a Spam Block Plugin

If you use a blogging platform like WordPress then you can quickly and easily install a plugin that will help you automatically block out spam. This will help you stop spam comments when you start getting too many to go through yourself.

These things are relatively simple to do, and following them will help stop most of the incoming spam you see on your blog. This will give your visitors a much more pleasant experience because they won’t have to sift through spam to see the real comments. It also shows that you actively monitor and moderate your website, something that will keep visitors coming back.