Incremental Backup for Blogger Blog Posts and Comments

Abhishek is looking for methods to help him download his entire blog archive offline.

The good old option is to use website ripping software like wget or HTTrack to create a mirror copy of any blog with images on your hard disk.

If that sounds too geeky, here's an excellent alternative - Greg Duncan has created a free blogger backup software that's extremely easy-to-use and gives lot of control over the backup process. [enlarge the screenshot]



With Blogger Backup, you can backup your blog posts into a single file or one blog post per file or multiple posts per file. The future versions may even save your blog posts into PDF files that you can distribute as eBooks.

Blogger backup can download everything or you can do incremental backups meaning backup just the new posts since your last backup or download blog posts posted between any two given dates.

Best of all, Blogger Backup can also extract and save your Blog readers comments offline. No image support yet but you can always use Picasa web albums to download your Blogger photos.

Written by Amit Agarwal

9 Ways to Keep Your Online Identity Secure

In a world where you can do virtually everything online, one has to wonder where all the information is going, and how it is being protected. High speed Internet access and devices like Blackberry's give us constant access to the Internet, and therefore, the ability to exchange information via the World Wide Web. But with this convenience also comes a price.

Local and national news stations run stories frequently about hackers that have corrupted someone's database leaving millions of facing the possibility of identity theft. How do you go about protecting your identity when you're online? And, is it really safe to do business online?

#1- Install a firewall on your computer. A firewall is software that installs on your computer to prevent unauthorized access to your computer. Without a firewall in place, you become exposed to hackers while surfing the Internet or simply having your computer connected to the Internet. There are many available, both free and paid, stand-alone or part of a package.

#2 - Use anti-virus software to avoid contracting a virus which can monitor your computer habits. Remember, anti-virus software is usually an annual subscription, don't let your subscription expire.

#3 - Don't use the same password for all of your online accounts. It can seem tempting to keep them all the same just for the sake of simplicity, but if you do, and a hacker gains access to your desktop, you may find that they are able to also gain access to all of your personal accounts.

#4 - Use spam filters in your email. Most hosted email solutions now have anti-spam solutions. If they offer it, use it!

#5 - Avoid Email Scams. - Different than spam, email scams use social engineered methods to convince you to trust the sender. Often these scams talk about large sums of money that need to be deposited in your bank account. If you respond, you will begin emailing with a live person, maybe for months, that will work to gain your trust and then steal your money through gaining access to your bank account.

#6 - Don't ever click links in emails from senders you do not know; this is one of the easiest ways for hackers to gain access to your information.

#7 - Make sure websites you visit are secure. These are easily distinguishable just by glancing at the toolbar on your browser. A URL that begins with 'Https' indicates a secured and encrypted site.

#8 - Beware of phishing. Phishing emails are those that look like emails from reputable sites like PayPal, eBay and even your bank, but are designed specifically to steal your identity. The hope is that you will read the email, panic at its information and click on a link within to verify your account details. The website you visit appears as being from the vendor and you are asked to enter your personal information to verify your account. Once you do this, you will find your account at a zero balance within days. One way to avoidphishing is to avoid clicking the embedded link in the email and instead type in the organizations official URL in your browser and login on the official page.

#9 - Watch out for misdirected urls. When you type in a misspelled URL, you can be redirected to a bogus website, although it looks authentic. Often you are asked tologin with your legitimate credentials, which are captured by the bogus site. Then you are often given an error notice that the site cannot process your request and to return at a later date. This buys time for the criminals to take your stolen credentials, visit the legitimate site, and drain your bank account.

Keeping your identity safe online takes work and persistence, but it's worth it. The only certainty when dealing with identity theft is that the battle will never end. As the hackers become savvier, the solutions will become more high-tech and you will need to stay on top of what's current. Common sense plays a large role in keeping you and your family safe from online identity thieves.

How to Pick a Paypal Scam Email

Ever since I started encouraging people to take out Paypal subscriptions to support my ezine, I've had lots of questions along the lines of "Can Paypal be trusted?" and "How do I know that they are not going to empty my account?"

Well, the simple answer to these questions is that Paypal are the biggest and the best in online eCommerce, and as far as I know they are completely trustworthy. For the same reason though, they are constantly being targetted by scammers worldwide, who will email you, pretending to be representatives of Paypal.

I get one to two Paypal scam emails per day, so if you haven't received any yet, you've been lucky. You can't avoid getting them. The trick is to recognise them as you receive them, and consign them without hesitation to the virtual dustbin.

Let me give you a simple four-point checklist by which you can pick the scam emails, and then I'm going to show you a video where I actually open a few scam emails to illustrate the same points.

Here's Father Dave's checklist:

Does the email come from Paypal.com? If so, in my case, it's a scam email. I'm in Australia, so if I get a genuine communication from Paypal it will be from Paypal.com.au. If you're in Brittain it will be from Paypal.com.uk, etc. This is no help if you're based in the US but you get the idea.

The subject lines have a familiar ring. Admittedly, this assumes that you've seen Paypal scam emails before, but believe me, once you've seen a dozen, you've seen them all! 'Flagged Account' is a favourite subject line. 'Urgent Security Measures' is another. 'A new email has been added to your account' is a third. After a while, you can pick them.

The email does not address you by name. Even if the first two criteria aren't much help to you, this is an absolutely sure-fire indicator. When Paypal write to you they always address you by name. When scammers write to you they don't use your name because they don't know it. But they want to know it, or more particualrly your account details.

The link does not take you to Paypal.com. This is of course the crucial difference.
If you follow the link in the scam email, you'll be taken to a site that has been made up to look like the Paypal site, but is entirely designed to prize your account details from you! Sometimes they use html code to create a linking text in the email that contains a genuine Paypal URL! This is very sneaky! You can always check the real URL in the status bar
(if you're not sure what I'm talking about here, see the video).
The bottom line is that, if you think you have received an email from the real Paypal, go to your account independantly of the possible-scam email and see if there are any messages attached to your account. The real Paypal will do this.

If, after finding no notices attached to your account, you still feel it might be a genuine email, contact Paypal yourself! You email them. They'll tell you if the email was genuine.Author: Dave Smith