"You may not know me and you are probably wondering why you are getting this e mail, right?  I’m a hacker who cracked your email and devices a few months ago."

If you have received this email, chances are there is no reason to worry. This is just another scam used to trick people into paying a Cyber criminal.

Think of these emails like the daily horoscope. Thousands of people can read the same horoscope and think it applies to them directly. This is because horoscopes are so vague and general enough to be somewhat meaningful to a good percentage of people who believe in that kind of stuff.

So the Cyber criminal knows that a certain percentage of computer users aren’t all that savvy, may not be all that up to date on technology, maybe don’t have anti-virus installed, and are very likely doing something on their computer that could be embarrassing if someone else found out.

Like so many other spam email campaigns, "Hacker who cracked your email and device Email Scam" is designed to blackmail people. Cyber criminals send emails stating that your computer has been infected or hacked. Maybe they claim to have installed a remote access

Proud to be a sposor of the 50th Annual Devereaux - Kaiser Car Meet.

We also designed the flyer, T-Shirts, and Dash Plaques.  Hope to see you there!

I am often asked why I specialize in building Joomla websites when many other web designers seem to use WordPress.

The short answer is that from personal experience I prefer Joomla, I think it is more secure and has more functionality than WordPress.

Back in 2007 when I started switching from static html sites to content management systems I experimented with Drupal, Joomla and WordPress to see which one worked best for me. Being a graphic artist first and a web designer second, I found that Joomla had more flexibility and was much more robust than WordPress.

The basic difference between WordPress and Joomla is that Joomla started out as a CMS meant to serve larger portal-like websites and WordPress is often associated with simple blogs, but it can also be a great solution for landing pages and basic sites.

Joomla is more geared towards developers who want to have creative control and are not afraid to “get their hands dirty” working with servers. WordPress, on the other hand, is more beginner friendly and very-easy to get started with. Many cheap web hosting companies offer one click WordPress installs for those who want to set up a simple site or

It doesn’t matter if you are a large corporation or a grandmother with a computer full of family photos – we all need to have good backups.

I’ve had people contact me regarding photos of their wedding I took 8 years ago that they lost when a computer crashed. I’ve had clients crash accidentally delete important files, format hard drives, and lose laptops – all without a good backup of their data.

Having your computer backed up is simple and inexpensive, especially when you consider what your data is worth and how hard it would be to replace.

A lot of people use Carbonite because it’s a well-known backup service with a generally good track record, but recently when I had trouble retrieving files from Carbonite I started looking into alternatives.

The problem with Carbonite happened while I was out of town and had to retrieve some older files for a client. To this day Carbonite can’t explain what happened – but basically, I was able to log into my account but unable to see or download files. Matters were made worse when a technician at Carbonite tried to help and accidentally deleted all of my backed-up files. They claim

Business owners get overwhelmed with emails daily. Clients, potential customers, and way too much spam.

For someone trying to grow their business an email claiming to get them maximum traffic can sound tempting, and occasionally, an email will come through that says, “SEO Proposal” from a person who is an “Expert Online Strategist” who has reviewed your website and “only wants to help”.

It’s nice to imagine a perfect world where complete strangers would go out of their way to help your business do better.

These mysterious people claim they can magically unlock the secrets to Search Engine Optimization, grow your company’s online presence and make your website the most beautiful powerful website on the internet while sending you so many new customers you won’t know what to do with them all. How can this all not sound amazing? Unfortunately, when you dig a little deeper you find this is nothing but a total scam and these criminals are only out to get as much money as they can from you.

You may think the email is real and that their intentions are pure but if you look closely you will notice that the body of the email is quite

Last week, Governor Rick Scott issued Executive Order 18-221 declaring a state of emergency due to impacts of naturally occurring red tide in Collier, Lee, Charlotte, Sarasota, Manatee, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties. 

Following Governor Rick Scott's emergency order, VISIT FLORIDA launched two programs, the Tourism Recovery Grant Program for Red Tide and Red Tide Recovery Marketing Program, to assist the counties. 

Through the Red Tide Recovery Marketing Program, the following programs are available immediately at no cost to core tourism businesses located in the affected counties. For additional information about red tide, click here.

Complimentary Brochure Distribution at all

five Official Florida Welcome Centers

Available through February 28, 2019, businesses may ship a maximum of 2,000 brochures per Welcome Center for distribution. For more information and to secure your brochure placement please contact the Visitor Services Department at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..

Complimentary Lobby Booth Program at four Highway Welcome Centers

Available through February 28, 2019, businesses may schedule a time to participate in the Lobby Booth Display program. Please contact the Welcome Centers at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. to schedule a

location and time. 

Complimentary VISIT FLORIDA Marketing Partnership

Core tourism businesses located within the affected areas of Florida have the opportunity to get a Small

Be careful of cheap online web design companies that offer "free domians".

If you are dealing with an ethical web design company, and you prefer to have them manage your domain that’s fine. But be careful of shady companies that offer cheap web design and a “free domain”. When the time comes to move on to a different company you may find your domain is being held hostage.

Recently a company contacted me to build a new website for them. They had originally used a cheap web design company and quickly found that customer service was nonexistent. The website had multiple grammatical errors, wrong information, the wrong logo was even used. After calling and emailing for months the customer got little to no response and nothing on the site was ever fixed.

Finally in frustration the customer decided they had to move on to another company to get the website they wanted but soon found out it wasn’t going to be so easy to get their domain name.

This is the email we received when we requested a domain transfer:

"Dear All,

We provided him domain free of cost. The value of the domain in today's date is $285. We

Life would be so much better if we didn’t wake up every morning to a mailbox full of spam.

Usually when I get unsolicited emails from companies that do not include an opt-out I will reply to the email and ask them nicely to remove me from their list. I normally give them a link to the FTC site and try to educate them about the CAN-SPAM Act. 9 times out of 10 they are grateful because some people still do not understand that there are rules to sending emails.

Occasionally I get someone who will just not listen. For example – over the last 6 months I’ve received emails from a person named Adam J McLean who has what he refers to as a referral website called the Jofi Dream Team (JDT) and he keeps asking me to join for $50 a month. 3 different times I’ve politely told him I am not interested and asked him to remove me from his list. The last time I gave him a link to the FTC website and suggested he read about the CAN-SPAM Act, and this was his reply:

“You are ridiculous. How tough is it to delete an email?

A few weeks ago I received a disturbing screen shot from an upset client.

A client was notified by one of their customers that while searching the internet to find the business’s phone number the customer saw an ad that had my clients name but did not go to their website.

Upon investigation we discovered the website was hvac.zone and they were running PPC ads using the business name of my client. The PPC ad directs people to a website and asks them to enter information to receive a free HVAC quote.

Turns out hvac.zone is run by Local Clarity Internet Marketing out of Irbid Jordan. So I went to the website and entered my information to see what would happen.

I received calls from Sears and one other local AC company which is a competitor of my client. When I explained to them what I did to initiate this contact and why, they both informed me that they received my information as a lead through Home Advisor.

About 15 minutes later Home Advisor called me to make sure I found an AC company and I explained the whole situation to a pleasant lady who acted like she was very

Over the years clients have asked about this letter, and just this last year I probably got 25 of these letters myself.

If you receive a letter from iDNS – throw it in the trash.

You do not have to send them a cent, you do not have to transfer your domain name to them, and there is no risk of losing your domain. This is a scam to trick you into transferring your domain to a different company that will most likely take you to the cleaners.

According to the letter: “ You must renew your domain name to retain exclusive rights to it on the Web, and now is the time to transfer and renew your name from your current Registrar to Internet Domain Name Services. Failure to renew your domain name by the expiration date may result in a loss of your online identity making it difficult for your customers and friends to locate you on the Web.”

I imagine that since so many of these letters are obviously mailed out that there are a lot of people who get confused and fall for this trick. Thankfully none of my clients has done that so I’m not