Veem Money Transfer Service

October 10, 2018

Veem, a San Francisco-based money transfer service promises to simplify international wire transfers.

Designed as a platform to allow businesses to transfer money, Veem is the first platform to use blockchain technology to process transactions.

Technology aside, what makes Veem attractive is the speed and low fees compared to traditional bank wire transfers. According to Veem, a typical international transfer is processed in 1-3 days.

Veem money transfer home page screen capture

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A Cheaper Way to Send Money Internationally

September 12, 2018

One of the greatest inconveniences of working with team members outside the USA is figuring out an inexpensive way to send money for services performed.

Sure there is XOOM by PayPal, but fees tend to be high. In my case I am permanently banned from using PayPal, due to a dispute with an extremely dishonest person cretin. I’ve never been a fan of PayPal, but in the past I considered it a necessary evil.

Other options such as Payoneer exist, but the service is unreliable and transfer fees are expensive. 

Recently I’ve been using a service called TransferWise. Transfers are cheap, super easy and up to now, glitch free.

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Your Google Ads Account Was Cancelled

August 31, 2018

I recently received an email from Google Ads with the heading, “Your Google Ads account was cancelled due to no spend.”  My first reaction was to chuckle at the oddly worded sentence. I  assumed the email was a phishing attempt by someone to whom English is a second language.

However after looking more closely, I came to the conclusion that the email in fact had been sent by Google. What makes things interesting is I cannot recall ever having a Google Ads account associated with the address the email was sent to.

email from Google Ads

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Digital Protest, Fill ISP Databases with Noise

August 12, 2018

On March 28, 2017, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution to overturn the Obama Administration regulation (Jan. 3, 2017) regarding privacy requirements. Because of S.J. Res. 34, anything you read or search for online can be compiled, packaged and sold to corporations by your ISP. 

Corporations in turn can take information from your browsing habits and use it to serve you targeted ads

Imagine if your cell phone carrier listened to your calls and then sold the contents of your conversations to the highest bidder.  

Needless to say, this represents a serious privacy issue. 

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Bank Payments for 1% Per Transaction by Wave

April 22, 2018

Wave allows you to accept Bank Payments for only 1% per transaction. So what’s the catch? There is none— create a free account, populate your banking data and you’re ready to start accepting bank payments from clients.

Wave website

Wave, a fintech company offers a suite of financial services and free accounting software. Wave allows you to accept payments from your customer’s bank account via a new service called Bank Payments.  Your bank account receives the funds electronically in 4 to 7 days.

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How to Stop Your ISP from Selling Your Web History

June 1, 2017

The US Senate, based on a bill sponsored by Sen. Jeff Flake (R-Ariz.) voted in March to allow ISPs to sell your web history to advertisers.  This overturns an Internet privacy rule President Obama put in place, but was not scheduled to take effect until December 4, 2017.

screen capture of browser history Google ChromeThe new rules overturns the pending requirement that ISPs obtain customer consent before selling or sharing a consumer’s browsing history.

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Maintaining Strong WordPress Login Credentials

May 10, 2017

One of the more common problems we encounter on a regular basis is clients who have had their WordPress login credentials compromised.

Most of the compromised accounts are due to a weak password. It’s hardly a shock when we discover the password is an employee’s first name.

laptop computer on office deskWordPress installations are notorious for getting hacked via backdoor exploits in poorly written plugins, however there is no reason why a password should be discovered via brute force attack.

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