Online Shopping Myths and Realities

Things you should know before you buy electronics.

noreply@blogger.com (Yanice Crespo) — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 01:14:00 +0000

You are looking for an electronic product and finally you found it, you buy it and you are waiting for it because you are crazy to use it. Finally it arrives you open the package and try to assemble it, then you turn it on and "what?" It don't work, why? A lot of people thing that for example one Nintendo Wii, a TV, one DVD Recorder or other electronic devices that we use frequently in our houses all of them are compatible, but they are not. Why?

One of the things that you should know when you buy electronics if it is NSTC or PAL. But what is it? NTSC are electronic products that works with 60 Hetrz, we use this frequency on United States and America, usually 120 volts. PAL means electronic products that works in 50 Hertz, usually used in Europ. If bring one product from Europ to United States it is possible that it can not work because this. Some of them works because they have the option to swith the frequency from 50Hz (Pal) to 60Hz (NTSC) then you can use it, but exist another problem, usually the products that works in 50Hz have another king of plug to connect it to the electricity outlet, usually you have to buy an converter so you can change the plug from 240V style to 120V some people call it "traveler converter".

Here is another thing that you have to considerate and it is in what language are the features and menu of the product that you are going to buy. For example, imagine that you bought an DVD recorder, it came from China and it do not have the option to change the language, a lot of them have that option. It happens a lot with the Nintendo Wii that the people buy from China, some of them can be changed and some of them comes with the menu in english, but there is another thing that they call it "region", some items like the Nintendo Wii are "region free" but some are not, if it is not "region free" that means that you can not play games from United States and if you can do it, you can not do an update on his firmware because after the upgrade you are not going to be able to play games from United States anymore.

The same things apply to some items like Nintendo DS, mobile watch phones, cell phones and more. Sometimes we think because these items use chargers, they are not going to have this problem but the chargers works in one of those frequencies too. I remember that I bought a long time ago an Mp3 player from China, it came with the option to change the language, but guess what, the item came with the language setting in Chinese and I had to guess where was the setting for the language to change it to english because I did not understand nothing, it took me 1 hour to change it.

I recommend to read all the description of the item or contact the seller before you buy it and ask him anything about it. Make a search on the internet about the product that you are looking for and know about the features it have and things like I told you here then call them, learn anything about it, remember they want to sell and they asume that the client do not know anything about things like Pal, NTSC, region, menus or another important things, remember they can tell you anything just to convince you to buy the product.

If you got questions about it or another products, you can leave your questions here or add a comment to help the people about it.

How you can lose your money in your PayPal account just in five minutes.

noreply@blogger.com (Yanice Crespo) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 07:44:00 +0000

Paying with PayPal online still secure, but it depends of you.

Here I am going to explain or unmask how a "Hacker" If we can call it hacker or I think is a "Lamer" (a person that try to use softwares or another method that a real hacker developed).

Do not try this, it is ilegal and you can loose your PayPal account just in minutes.

I found this supose way of hack a PayPal account on the internet. Since I write it, I am going to explain you how it works and how they can hack YOUR account instead of you hack another account.

"The first thing is, they put something like this "PayPal account hack" on google so you can be interested on the article. They explain you in the article a fake way to hack somebody's account but what they are trying to do is hack yours."

"Here is how he explain how to do it:"

This is how to hack the paypal accounts hurry before it's to late and PayPal change the bots again. This is the new bot and everything you need to know to get into PayPal. My buddy who works for paypal told me about the new bots and all so yah.

This is my home adress and my name so if it doesn't work you can come kick my ass all around the world if you want, but remember that it might not work the first time so try it a few times and hopfully it will work.

"Ok in the first paragraph they say that his buddy use to work for PayPal, this is just to add veracity to their comments, but it is not true. In the second paragraph he gives you somebodys address not his address and he says to try it several times, it is just to be sure that he can hack your account for sure"

HOW TO HACK INTO PAYPAL ACCOUNT!!! (Hotmail accounts for paypal accounts, this is from october 22, 2008)

1) The following complete hacking tutorial contains materials that may not be suitable for irresponsible internet users, reader discretion is advised!
We have to put that so we don't get i trouble.

2) The hacking method is based on a secretly discovered security flaw in the PayPal (www.paypal.com) mailing address confirmation system. It will only work BEFORE PayPal discovers this serious security flaw and fixes it. Take your action FAST!

"There is no security flaw in PayPal confirmation system"

3) This method works for any body with PayPal accounts with CONFIRMED MAILING ADDRESSES. It will never work for PayPal user without a confirmed mailing address.

"Sure, your PayPal account got to be confirmed, so he can take your money out easy, because he do not have to confirm the address."

4) By strictly following instructions in the following tutorial, you'll gain unlimited access to various PayPal accounts with confirmed mailing addresses. Use those accounts AT YOUR OWN RISK. You're responsible for your action!

"Here he wash his hands, If you do it you are the onlyone responsible of the lose of your PayPal account"

5) When you use PayPal, NEVER log on to sites that do not start EXACTLY with www.paypal.com even if it contains the term "paypal" in it. PayPal is the latest victim of internet hackers. Despite the company's seemingly perfect security system, a serious security flaw in the ADDRESS CONFIRMATION PROCESS of PayPal's members accounts has been discovered by a few experienced hackers from Russia. The hacking process has been simplified a while ago and it was revealed on a Russian language hacking website.

PayPal was immediately alerted of this security flaw after the Russian language hacking tutorial was published on the website, but in order to prevent its customers from losing trust in internet banking, PayPal chose NOT to alert its customers of this security flaw and has then secretly BANNED numerous online articles that contained information of this security flaw.
However, it has been confirmed that due to technical difficulty, PayPal has NOT yet fixed the problem and at this moment right now, anyone can STILL hack into a great number of PayPal accounts with confirmed addresses.

"This security flaw do not exists, it is part of the trick"

To inform users worldwide of this problem, I've attached an English version of the hacking process. Remember, to get the whole thing to work, you MUST
STRICTLY follow the instructions and have a PayPal account with a confirmed mailing address!

HACKING PROCESS:
Every PayPal member is identified by his/her Email and the majority of the PayPal members use Hotmail or Yahoo. After completion of the mailing address confirmation process, usually by adding a CREDIT CARD, PayPal automatically sends the user's address confirmation info to a mailerbot associated with the user's Email, in most cases, it's Hotmail or Yahoo mailerbot.
The security flaw occurs RIGHT HERE! Both Yahoo and Hotmail mailerbots can be confused by a random user and sends out information saved on its server to that user.

"This is not true, it just add credibility to what you are supose to do"

To get PayPal account information of numerous random PayPal users from a Hotmail and Yahoo mailerbot, you have to do the following:

1) Log into your www.paypal.com homepage, and click on Profile, and then click on
Street Address, under Account Information.

2) Find the Address who's status is Home, and if it says confirmed, then please read on. Basically, A Confirmed Address is any address at which you receive your credit card statement. If you receive a credit card bill at this address, you can confirm it by entering your credit card information. This information will only be used to confirm your address. Your card will not be charged by PayPal so, if your Home address is NOT confirmed, then FOLLOW THE INSTRUCTIONS ON PAYPAL AND ADD A CREDIT CARD TO CONFIRM YOUR MAILING ADDRESS.

"Ok, in that way once he access your PayPal account, if it is confirmed already, he can do anything he want with your credit card account, you are just makeing his hack thing easy"

3) Okay, there are two bots which this will work for. If you want an account with hotmail email, then:
Log in to your paypal email account and send an email to:
paypalresponsebot035@hotmail.com (This is the hotmail mailerbot described above) (NEW) (Other mailer bots are not active now)

"This is an email account that he already opened and you think it is a robot email, once you send the information you are sending your information to the email that he opened in hotmail"

In the subject line, write:
789bot4*5%8verif-0e24 (To confuse the hotmail mailerbot)

"You can write anything in there, he say that just to let you think that it is a special code that you have to put to confuse the suposely hotmail mailerbot"

In the email body, please write exactly 11 lines, which MUST BE as follows:
In line 1:Subject-Type: ?text/plain="+1"?In line 2: charset=us-english
(To make the reply readable in your language so put you own language here otherwise it might come in a laguage you don't understand)

"Another fake thing to let you think that you are doing a real thing"

In line 3: botbody*78#9 confirmation0e24.hotmail.com
(To confuse the mailerbot)In line 4: p38ylec00rm::s%%(a href=http://www.paypal.com%%)
(To make the mailerbot start retrieving information acquired from PayPal.)

"You are not confuseing nobody, there is no mailerbot, just him"

In line 5: Your primary email at paypal
(To retrieve information from PayPal, The mailerbot now needs an email which is the primary email of a PayPal account with a confirmed mailing address, you have to use your own email as a bait email and you'll need to receive info of other accounts from this email too, so be sure this is your primary email at PayPal.)

"Ok with this now, you are telling him your primary email address"

In line 6: start (retrieve > 07)
(To activate the mailerbot's retrieval function at the highest speed)In line 7: verify#8% (*value= = float)
(This will trick him to send it to your email adress instead of the administrators)

"It do not activate nothing, it does not exists"

In line 8: Your PayPal password
(Now you have to enter your paypal password to confuse the bot so it thinks you are the administrator of PayPal and it can send you the emails and passwords of people.)

"Here is where you are lost, If you do this, you are sending him what? YOUR PAYPAL PASSWORD, he is saying to confuse the bot so it thinks your are the administrator of PayPal and it can send you the emails and passwords of the people. Bull Sh....t.

In line 9: #searchppagend72hrlog
(to get info from PayPal members who had their addresses confirmed in the last 72 hours)In line 10 send#%*idR20334-tsa-0583
(This will make the mailerbot send all the info to your email)

In line 11 (#%7*tmbot*="+098")
(this covers you trail so they can't find you. Last step!)

If you specifically follow the instructions above, you'll have email, passwords and all sorts of information of PayPal users who had their mailing addresses confirmed over the last 72 hours.

"He must write here, If you specifically follow the instructions above, you'll be losing your PayPal account in just 5 minutes"

So, do not try this my friends.

PayPal anti hackers account trick.

noreply@blogger.com (Yanice Crespo) — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 01:32:00 +0000

I came from my job today, ate someting and sit down infront of my computer and check my emails. PayPal sent me an email telling me that they need to upgrade their system for something and they need me to log in so I can make those changes on my account.

How can I know that it is a genuine email from PayPal?

Ok, the first thing is that PayPal never send emails to their clients regarding those kind of changes, they tell you about their changes if they have some once you log in to your account.

In some cases yes, they send emails to their clients about credit cards expiration dates and more but they never ask you to log in and check it.

But if you are not sure that the email is genuine you can do the PayPal anti hackers trick. All you got to do is click on the link on the email that you received, it are goin to redirect you to the PayPal page, on your log in space put your normal log in name, and here is the trick, now in the password space just put any word (NOT YOUR PASSWORD), if it goes thru, it is a fake PayPal page, if it says "WRONG PASSWORD" the PayPal page is genuine. That is because the hacker have no way to verify if your password is genuine or not.

IMPORTANT: You can try to put a wrong password twice if you want to verify again, if it say "WRONG PASSWORD" again do not still trying because with that test now you know that it is genuine and if you put a wrong password for a third time PayPal can lock your account and you will have to call them so they can verify that you are the owner, it can be fixed.

If you found a fake page of PayPal, you can contact them and reply the fake email to them so they can investigate and search for the person that is doing the fraud.

If you got any questions or want to add more information, you are welcome.

How can I buy online in a secure way?

noreply@blogger.com (Yanice Crespo) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:18:00 +0000

Well before you can make a decision on where and how can you buy something online, you must take in consideration the look of the store or site that you are about to make a purchase. The first thing you got to ask yourself is "it looks like a genuine site?" Sometimes we visit a store or a site and you can see all in the appearance of it, like the letters distorted, incorrect words in the description of the items, blury images of the products.

Another thing that you got to see is if the store have a valid email to contact the owner, I mean a domain email, like for example if the store name is http://bestforless.weshiponline.com the domain email should look like this bestforless@weshiponline.com, not bestforless@yahoo.com, bestforless@hotmail.com, some stores use them and not because that it can be a fraud store, but if the store got a domain email it gives you more confidece.

Look what they can offer to you, their policies and history, sometimes you can find that in the About Us link.

Another thing that is very important is the way that they accept payments, some stores accepts only money transfers or money orders, it is a kind of risky to pay with that method. For example can you imagine what can happens if you make a payment to somebody that you never knows with a money transfer? Note: Im not saying that all the stores that have that type of payment are fraud, we are looking here for a store that a client (you) can feel comfortable and secure at the moment to make a purchase.

I recommend to trust in sites that have a secure way of payment like (PayPal, AlertPay, MoneyBookers), those ways of payment offer to the buyer a lot of secure features, for example if somebody do not send you the item or the item is not as described, you can open a dispute and they investigate the seller and in case that something happens they refund the money to you, thats because the seller can not sell nothing without his credit or bank account on those sites, they got all the necessary information to track the seller and freeze his account at the moment of the dispute so you can have your money back again. That is why when you are looking for that store to buy something, you must verify if they accept one of these methods of payments and another impontant thing is, look for the logo specially for PayPal verified user, that is a certification that says that it is genuine. In order to use those services you got to open an account in PayPal or the other service providers.

Look if the seller are a seller on eBay, most of them are, there you can verify their feedbacks (comments about the sales that the people leave after the end of the transaction), if it got 100% of feedbacks and he is a Power Seller (high sales per month), you can buy with confidence from that seller you are not going to have any problem with your purchase.

Now what we learned?

1. Look at the content of the store (appearance)

2. Verify if it have a secure way of payment (verified and confirmed logos)

3. Verify or contact the seller asking him about his or the store background (ebay seller account history, feedbacks and seller status)

4. Verify if the seller or site have a domain email to contact them.

5. Look about what they offer to you and their history in the Abut Us link.

You can see an example of one genuine store and verify what you learned HERE

Have you ever went to shop something on summer or winter?

noreply@blogger.com (Yanice Crespo) — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 13:15:00 +0000

Trying to buy something under 90 to 99 degrees on your town, with that heat, a lot of people on the same store, sometimes without air conditioner. Sweating, getting thirsty and you are too far to get a cold bottle of water, maybe hungry because you did not had time to eat something before and you try to find what you want to buy for somebody's birthday, a wedding gift, or simply a toy for your son and at the end of the day you never found it.

Or if you go in the season of winter first you have to make an inversion for a real good coat maybe for more than $100.00 thats the beginning. With 5 to 10 degrees, with your child about to get a cold and now you got to go to the hospital to spent more money even if you got a medical plan. And you never found the product.

Online shopping is more than shipping cost, more than money, more than save, it is the most convenient and efficient way to get something without heat and cold, you can have a cold drink, a beer, something to eat, maybe one pizza in the comfort of your house with your family while you are searching for the SPECIFIC product that you want. That is another thing, if you want something that are not available on a regular store, an special item, maybe your son want an item like a mobile watch phone, an electronic gadget or a sexy lingerie for that special ocation, can you get it from the store at the corner of your neighborhood? Remember when the Nintendo Wii, the Playstation and the Xbox 360 came for the first time? What was happening? Everybody looking for one and what the stores did was they put the people on a wait list for maybe 3 or 4 weeks and you need that Nintendo Wii in 5 days. Yes, you can have an item from the internet sometimes maybe in 3 days, the stores on the internet most of them had an service that they call it "box ready", it means that if you order it, it is ready to ship the same day that you pay for it and you can have it in 2 or 3 days.

I invite you to post the advantages, disadvantages and experiences about your shoppings online and physical shopping, to help the people to make the right decision and tell the stores what you espect from them to make your purchases comfortables online and outside.