Like most everyone else over the age of 10, I spent a large portion of my early Internet years waiting. I waited for what seemed like an eternity for my modem to dial in to my ISP, make a connection (usually a pretty bad one), and authenticate my user name and password. Finally, if all went well and I had made no errors entering my info, the little “connection” icon would slide into its “home” in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Yoo-hoo, I was online…

for about 20-30 minutes, until I lost my connection or it simply froze up on me. And then there was the constant waiting for my email, web pages and any associated photos to download. I can vividly recall just sitting there staring at the screen as line by line of “content” slowly came into view. Back then the Internet was almost synonymous with Yahoo, and the Yahoo home page took forever to load!

For me, in the early days the Internet was a mixed blessing. All of a sudden I literally had a world of information available to me on countless topics and the ability to communicate via email with people all around the world in a manner of seconds. But accessing this new-found bounty was like trying to pull myself out of a tar pit without a rope.

Frustrations mounted daily, but at the time there were simply no real options for faster, more reliable Internet connections. You could choose between a local dialup ISP or AOL – period!

But then I moved to Charlotte, North Carolina for a short period where I heard about a new technology called “Cable Internet”. Dubbed “RoadRunner”, it was offered by Time Warner, the local cable television provider, and the promises they made in their ads were simply astounding: a rock-solid “always on” connection with no logon hassles or delays coupled with lighting-fast downloads that take seconds instead of minutes or hours. It was this old dial-up user’s dream come true.

Unfortunately, my stay in Charlotte didn’t last long enough for me to give RoadRunner a whirl, and once back in the hills of southwestern Virginia my options immediately reverted back to dial-up only.

Well, that brief introduction to the possibilities of Cable Internet whetted my appetite for it, and eventually Comcast began offering it in the more populated areas of the county. When I began dating Cheria, she was already using Comcast High-Speed Internet and she absolutely loved it. And after giving it a whirl myself, I quickly found out why.

With Comcast, gone were all the frustrations of dealing with the phone lines. I just turned on the computer and went right to work on the web. In a flash I could check my email, visit my favorite websites, buy and sell on Ebay… and all at a then-amazing speed of 1.5 megabits per second! Let me tell you, going from 26 kilobits per second (on a good day) to 1.5 megabits was like hopping off of a bicycle and jumping into a Ferrari!

Cheria and I have used Comcast as our Internet provider ever since, and we have never had even a single regret. On the rare occasions when we have needed it, their customer service and technical support have been superb, and they have increased both their upload and download speeds on several occasions without raising prices to compensate for it.

I have heard that the RoadRunner folks have problems from time to time, but I can honestly say that Comcast has the Cable Internet thing down pat. It’s a great service at a decent price, and in most areas its speed simply blows DSL (the phone company’s high-speed Internet offering) out of the water. Unless something changes for either better or worse, I don’t plan on ever switching to anything else.

Well, I knew it would probably happen to me sooner or later, and it did. I have been phished! If you’re unfamiliar with the term phishing, it simply means scamming someone into handing over his/her personal information, credit card or bank account numbers, or user names and passwords using any number of nefarious methods.

These days the most common (and most effective) way of phishing for sensitive information is via email. The scammer simply sends out a flood of emails that are designed to look like they were sent from legitimate companies requesting that the recipients log in to their accounts (PayPal, bank, credit union, Ebay, etc.) to update their personal information.

But instead of the targeted company’s real website, the authentic-looking link in the email takes them to a non-functional replica site – a fake site – that captures the unsuspecting user’s login details. The scammer then uses that login information to log in to the victim’s real account and clean it out or do other serious damage.

Another common ploy (the one that I fell for) is to set up a fake website at a domain that is very similar to that of a legitimate website. Careless users (I’m kicking myself now) mis-type the real domain name and end up on the scammer’s site instead.

In my case, I was attempting to log in to godaddy.com in order to renew a couple of expiring domains. Instead, I accidentally left off the leading “g” which sent me to a site named odaddy.com. Check it out for yourself if you want – just type www.odaddy.com into your browser’s address bar and you’ll see a website that looks exactly like www.godaddy.com.

The scary part is I would never have even noticed that I wasn’t on the real godaddy website if I hadn’t just happened to glance at the address bar and notice that it read www.odaddy.com instead of godaddy.com! Luckily, I did notice, and I logged into my account on the real site and immediately changed my password.

I have always been very careful to avoid being phished, but the scammers are extremely adept at their craft and it’s really easy to fall into their traps. Here are a few tips that might help you avoid falling victim to a phishing scam yourself:

1 – Never, ever click a link in an email that claims to have been sent by a legitimate company that requires a login to access your account. Instead, type the company’s URL into your browser directly or click on a known good bookmark and log in from the website’s home page. These phishing emails typically look quite authentic and they are designed to create a sense of urgency and an immediate call for action. Always simply ignore their links and log into your account directly!

2 – Be especially careful when typing in URL’s. A simple typo in a domain name can leave you in a whole heap of trouble if you don’t catch it. (Can I stop kicking myself now? It’s really starting to hurt!)

3 – Virtually all websites that collect, store, and/or share sensitive information are hosted on a “secure sever”, and if the URL in the address bar doesn’t start with https:// instead of the usual http://, you are almost certainly on a fake website. You should also see a little icon that looks like a padlock somewhere near the address bar indicating that you’re on a secure site. 

4 - Always remember that the IRS NEVER notifies taxpayers of unclaimed refunds via email. Yes, that’s NEVER. If you receive an IRS email notice explaining that you need to log in to some account to claim an unexpected refund, send it directly to the trash can. It is guaranteed to be a scam, each and every time!

Well, I consider myself pretty lucky. Even though I fell for an easy-to-avoid phishing scam, I noticed it quickly enough to log into my real account and change my password before the scammer had time to perform his/her dirty deed(s). I’m breathing a bit easier now, but I need to go take something to ease the pain in my sore leg.