Recently, I started to receive more and more email from Boxbe, which means of course they are increasing their user base. So I decided to signup myself and check it out. Here’s my review of the service.

What is Boxbe?

Basically, it’s a free service that you can use to protect your email inbox from spammers and unwanted email. You can use it will all your existing Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail accounts. When you signup for Boxbe they will ask for your login and password, and they will automatically create (in the case of Gmail) a filter for Boxbe. They they will filter all your incoming mail.

When you receive an email, Boxbe checks to see if the sender (or the sending domain) is in your “whitelist”. If it is not, Boxbe will automatically send an email to the sender, asking him to confirm that he is a real human being. If the email was sent by a spammer, he will not confirm as he’s probably using a fake email, or he’s just not interested in doing that extra work.

So therefore, at the end of the day, you will have a squeaky clean inbox. No spam, no unwanted email, only the people you choose to hear from.

Here’s the problem:

• Boxbe overrides Gmail’s wonderful spam filter, and that sucks big time
• If you’re getting unwanted email, check at the bottom of the email and you will be able to unsubscribe anyways
• If you cannot unsubscribe from unwanted email, just mark it as spam and Gmail will automatically send all email from the person to the spam folder

Here’s a sample of the amount of hardcore spam that Boxbe allows to my inbox:

All these are clear cut spam, yet Boxbe delivers them to my Gmail inbox. Without Boxbe, Gmail would have automatically sent all these to the spam folder, but now I have to do it myself.

Therefore, here’s my conclusion – you don’t need Boxbe.

It only makes your life harder and gives you more work to do as you have to manually report all the spam emails, and manually accept all the legitimate ones. I’m an internet marketer and I receive on average 1,000 – 3,000 emails per week, yet I managed just fine without Boxbe.

Switch to Gmail. Their spam filters are great. Learn to unsubscribe to email newsletters you no longer want to subscribe to. Learn to create filters in Gmail to automatically sort email you only want to read later.

Perhaps they may improve later and overcome these issues, but for now I’ll pass.

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As an Internet marketer, you need to deal with hundreds (if not thousands) of passwords. The best password manager software out there that I have been using for almost 3 years now, is RoboForm Pro. I’m doing this RoboForm review so you know exactly what it does, before you buy.

• You can also download RoboForm free version here, and test it out.
• If you rather use a thumb drive to store your passwords, you can try the RoboForm2Go free version here.

My RoboForm Review

RoboForm is not just password manager – it also acts as a form filler and can store all your personal information securely. In fact here’s what you can do with RoboForm PRO:

1. Manage an unlimited number of passwords and login information
2. Automatically generate dynamic, secure passwords to be used in forms
3. Store your billing address, contact information and credit card details
4. Automatically fill up registration forms and order forms
5. Create multiple folders and profiles (for example Business and Personal) to organize data
6. Easily attach the RoboForm toolbar to Firefox or Internet Explorer
7. Integrate everything nicely into mobile devices (iPhone, Android, Windows Mobile)

Here are two screenshots: The main RoboForm window, and the password generator.

I’ve never had any issues with RoboForm. In find it easy to use and very convenient.

I can understand that some may have an issue with storing all your passwords and personal information in a single place. What if something goes wrong? What if my laptop crashes, and all my data is lost? To solve this underlying issue, the creators of RoboForm also introduced GoodSnyc, a backup / sync software designed to be used with RoboForm.

With GoodSync you can:

1. Synchronize all your data between computers using the GoodSync software
2. Sync all your data to RoboForm Online (Beta) using a secure online server
3. Sync almost any type of data between computers, external drives, thumb drives, and network locations

Here’s how to sync to RoboForm Online looks like:

You can download the free version of GoodSnyc here and test it out.

RoboForm Review – Final Thoughts

Let me conclude my RoboForm review by saying that for $29.95 RoboForm is worth the money. Add in another license for just $9.95, plus GoodSync for just $19.95. Every single penny well spent.

Any questions about my RoboForm + GoodSnyc review? Let me know.

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Maybank2U phishing scams are on the rise – I’m sure everyone here using Maybank2u would see messages like this. But what does “phishing” mean? Not its not catching fish.

Phishing according to Wikipedia:

Phishing is the criminally fraudulent process of attempting to acquire sensitive information such as usernames, passwords and credit card details, by masquerading as a trustworthy entity in an electronic communication.

In other words, someone is posing a legitimate business, by sending you fake emails and asking you to click on them. When you do click on them, you will see a website that looks almost like the real one. In this case, you may see a website that looks perfectly like a Maybank2u website, but it’s fake. If you end up entering your name and password inside it, the scammer will get access to your details and be able to login to your Maybank2u account.

Phishing scams are also very common with Paypal users, I still get phishing emails till today and there is nothing much Paypal can do about it. For more information on phishing, you can download and read the guide below, which I wrote back in 2005 but updated recently.

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Someone called me on my personal mobile phone, and didn’t introduce himself at all. He started speaking in Tamil and I told him I could not speak in Tamil. Actually I can but I prefer not to, especially considering once you speak in Tamil, they tend to treat you less professionally. Then our conversation continued in BM.

Then as usual when someone gets hold of my personal number I always ask them how they got it. If they refused to say, conversation is over. When I asked this guy, he said:

I ask my friend in Maybank to get your phone number, from the Maybank2u account number you give on your website.

I know the fact that my name appeared in NST would draw some unexpected attention, but I didn’t expect it to come this way. The fact that someone like this can easily get access to my confidential Maybank details made me angry. Does Maybank allow anyone with access to the system to see a customer’s personal details? Should it not be available to only higher level people, with limited access?

My conversation with that guy didn’t go well after that.

Although he apologized for getting my number that way (but refused to let me know the name of the person who helped him get it or his own name for that matter) I already felt that my personal information and privacy has been compromised. I was not in the mood to talk, and I wasn’t in the mood to be nice either..

Personal data security is extremely important, but do you really think any of your information like the ones in Maybank, your credit card, your EPF data etc is really protected? I think it will never really be 100% secure, especially when other human beings are involved.

Securing Your Online Data

There are many ways people can get your information, and the easiest way is to get hold of your login and password, which they can easily get by installing some type of keylogger software in your PC. Then, they are able to track ANY login and password you use to access your account. I strongly recommend you get RoboForm to protect all your online login data and please don’t do the same mistake I did; please do not use the same password for all your logins!

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It’s interesting to note however that the ads are only from opposition parties. The ruling party on the other hand still thinks that the Internet is for playing games and chatting.

However the ads are not targeted and all visitors are sent to the main page. Anyone familiar with Google Adwords knows that doing this is just a waste of money, but I guess these guys have a lot of money right now to burn.

Someone is obviously getting rich by helping the political parties to market their election websites and messages via the Internet.

Maybe they should hire me as their Internet marketing consultant…?

But the sites themselves are quite ok, with a blog-style layout and also the incorporation of videos.

They should be driving traffic to those page or better still a targeted page where users can find out venues and other stuff, not the general home page where the user doesn’t know what to do next. If I was doing Google Adwords advertising like this I’m sure I would go bankrap by now

I guess this is really the final frontier for Internet marketing in Malaysia – when politicians start using it for the election campaigns!

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A Malaysian government minister has accused bloggers, who have been writing avidly on upcoming elections, of being cowards and warned they are being monitored, a report said Friday.

Youth and Sports Minister Azalina Othman said opposition parties were using blogs to get their message out because they believed the Home Affairs Ministry was busy monitoring reports in the mainstream media, the Star daily said.

If there was ever a sign that the government is being run by monkeys, this is probably it. What do they expect when they control all the mass media? 

In a later article in Yahoo news:

The mainstream media in Malaysia are either government-owned or controlled by the parties in the ruling coalition. They also need annually to renew government licenses to operate. This has ensured that virtually every newspaper and television station broadcasts flattering reports of the government. The opposition rarely gets a good mention in the papers.

The Election Commission is supposed to be an independent body, whose members are appointed by the constitutional monarch. But it is largely seen as a pro-government panel that has done little to promote electoral fairness.

Why don’t they just cut the Internet, burn all the PCs and books, and lets all go back to staying in kampung houses..

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News Source: NST Tech & U, February 14, 2006

In NST’s Tech & U column on 14th February, I noticed an article that caught my attention. It seems that Asia tops the list of spam sources, and I can bet that somewhere in there are a big group of Malaysian spammers.

If you notice Asia contributes 32.1% of spam, but in the individual countries list the only countries from Asia are China and South Korea, which only amounts to 8.1%. So all the other Asian countries are listed in the "Others" section. I bet this report was done by a mat salleh company who didn’t know (or care) about Malaysia, but I’m pretty sure we’re up there among the best.

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We Malaysians love free stuff right

All you need to do is to register as a user, choose your card, enter the recipient’s address, and send it.

This is a great project by a group of young entrepreneurs in Malaysia. I’ve previously chatted with Avijit and I also met Rasel (or is it Russel?)in the Starbucks gathering in KL Central.

These guys are recipients of the MDEC Pre-Seed funding program, and I’ve been following their progress with great interest. I’m always thinking “How do these guys make money from something like this”. Well, I guess that’s the secret that makes them get this far and looking even better for the future.

They recently held a design competition and got massive feedback from a lot of aspiring designers. The contest is closed no however but you can still send cards as a normal user.

One of the good things about these guys is they participate and communicate with their users via their blog, and as we all know in today’s Web 2.0 world social networking is everything.

These guys have it down to an art – congratulations!

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