ETD: 870 Product sourcing sites; Small Business Cons; IBM
Spams the Spammers
E-Tailer's Digest
etd_post at gapent.com
Tue Mar 22 12:16:47 GMT 2005
E-Tailer's Digest --- Everything for the Retailer
Issue #0870 March 22, 2005
George Matyjewicz, Moderator mailto:georgem at gapent.com
Published by: GAP Enterprises, Ltd. http://www.etailersdigest.com
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CONTENTS
[1] Greetings
[2] Product sourcing sites
[3] Small Business Cons
[4] IBM Spams the Spammers
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[1] Greetings.
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Hi All:
List member Janet Attard is looking for sites for sourcing of
products. Which sites do you use?
As a small business owner, you are susceptible to scams which are different
than those directed to consumers, and, perhaps more costly. It's something
you should be aware of, and know how to control. IMHO, every business
owner/manager needs a good independent advisor - either a business-savvy
person or your accountant - who can advise you on the intricacies of
business. Unfortunately, many CPAs cannot guide you. Rather they present
the numbers after the fact. Heed these warnings.
IBM has announced a new service to spam the spammers. It's going to be
interesting to see how effective it may be. Can you imagine an Internet
without all the spam? Maybe we will return to the "good ol' days." eh?
Tell us about your business which will remain for posterity at
our "Members: Who Are You?" site. This is a courtesy to our members who
contribute to our forum, and not merely a way to advertise for
free. Anything to do with the retail world, i.e., supplier, retailer,
consulting, etc. http://etailersdigest.com/resources/members/index.htm And
we have a form there for you to tell us about you. As I said when I first
proposed this idea, we have "known" each other for a long time, yet we
often don't know anything about each other. So, tell us who you are and
what you do.
Now, let's get to everything for the retailer.
Sincerely
George Matyjewicz, PhD
Chief Global Strategist, GAP Enterprises, Ltd.
mailto:georgem at gapent.com
http://www.etailersdigest.com
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[2] Product sourcing sites
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There are a few (maybe more than a few) sites on the web that are/claim to
be wholesale product directories. Some charge a monthly fee to be able to
view the listings.
Has anyone here tried any of them, and are they any good? Are any of them
not worth the time to fill in your credit card info?
What do members of this list think is the best and fastest way to find
products for resale.
--Janet Attard
Business Know-How Small Business Resource Center
http://www.businessknowhow.com
Free newsletter: www.businessknowhow.com/subscribe.htm
+++ [Moderator's Comments] +++
Excellent post Janet. Everybody seeks sourcing information.
One source for giftware is Gifts & Dec Product Wire which is a free
newsletter announcing new products. You can subscribe here
http://www.giftsanddec.com/subscribe.asp List members Quinn Halford,
Editor In Chief and Matthew Kalash, Managing Editor are frequent
contributors to ETD.
Another source is the National Mail Order Association
http://www.nmoa.org/ List member John Schulte
frequently offers sourcing information and a place to see new products.
Does anybody have any others?
George
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[3] Small Business Cons
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If you think scams only happen online, you're wrong. They happen to small
business owners every day. If you don't have a good CPA or a business
advisor, you need one now. Your CPA shouldn't only prepare financial
statements (after the fact, I might add). Rather the CPA should advise you
on how to improve your operations and become more profitable. Business
Week published these oldies that continue to proliferate throughout the
business world.
Toner fraud.
One of the things small-business people pride themselves on is paying their
bills on time, so they tell the person in charge of accounts payable to pay
as soon as the invoices come in. The people doing the books may not have a
lot of familiarity with the company, so they don't know if an invoice comes
from a legitimate vendor or not.
The office manager is trained to be very open and friendly, not suspicious.
So when a con artist calls and says they're a copier-service company and
they need to get the copy machine VIN numbers, that person jumps up and
gets them. The guy posing as a copier-service representative gets all the
details on the make and model, and then gets the name of the person who
handles ordering.
Your customer-friendly staff gives it all to him, and two weeks later you
get toner and paper arriving COD, directed to your office manager. The
staff signs for it and the accounts payable person pays for it, but the
toner is not only twice as expensive as it should be, it's also low-quality
and will completely gum up your machine.
This is a scam that has been going on for 28 years, and just as many fall
for it now as did during the '70s. They do the same thing sending you
overpriced paper and light bulbs that are basically worthless.
Hijacked Phone Service.
There are a lot of ways to hijack your phone service, so that when you call
an 800 number to return a fax survey, for instance, the call rolls over to
a 900 number after the fax goes through and your line gets tied up for a
long time at a high cost per minute. There's an announcement on the line
telling you that it's a pay-per-minute call, but since no one's monitoring
the fax machine, no one hears that. Some businesses find hundreds of
dollars on their phone bills that they can't account for, but they pay them
because they aren't watching closely.
Free Money.
Another clever one is the con artist who sends your company a check for a
small amount. Your bookkeeper doesn't know what it's for, but he stamps and
deposits it anyway. Turns out there's very small print on the check stating
that you agree to a monthly withdrawal from your account. Once your company
has signed off on that, and the scammer has your account number on the back
of the check, he starts siphoning a small amount from your account -- so
small that nobody notices it until hundreds of dollars are gone.
Prevention.
It's all about education. Your accounts-payable person should act as a
guard at the front door -- and at the door to the checkbook -- watching
very closely what's coming in and going out. You need to institute strict
controls in the accounting department. The handling of invoices, for
example, should be centralized, and authorization should be closely
checked. Anybody who makes purchases or writes checks has to know the red
flags to look for. If they don't, they're going to be taken advantage of.
Details at...
http://www.businessweek.com/smallbiz/content/mar2005/sb20050317_9857_sb006.htm?campaign_id=nws_smlbz_mar22&link_position=link3
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[4] IBM Spams the Spammers
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The most-common spam defense used to date -- software filters that attempt
to identify and block out the unwanted messages -- hasn't stopped the flood
of Viagra pitches, cut-rate mortgage offers, and solicitations for
foolproof investment schemes swamping many inboxes. Some recent studies say
50% to 75% of e-mails carried over the Internet are spam.
An alternate approach -- counterattacking, in effect -- has been available
for some time to users of open-source software, for which code is posted
free of charge on the Internet. But adoption in corporate offices has been
slow, partly because of fears of exposing companies to certain liabilities
-- especially if a target is actually innocent of spamming.
But now the practice is going mainstream. IBM is expected to unveil today
its first major foray into the anti-spam market with a service, based on a
new IBM technology called FairUCE, that uses a giant database to identify
computers that are sending spam. One key feature: E-mails coming from a
computer on the spam list are sent directly back to the machine, not just
the e-mail account, that sent them. The more spam that comes out, the more
vigorous the response.
"We're doing it to shut this guy down," says Stuart McIrvine, IBM's
director of corporate security strategy. "Every time he tries to send, he
gets slammed again."
The IBM move follows security giant Symantec Corp., which released a new
product in January that uses a similar technology called "traffic shaping"
to slow connections from suspected spam computers.
Trapping spammers is sometimes called "teergrubing," from the German word
for "tar pit" -- as in, spammers get stuck. It is the equivalent of
answering a telemarketer's phone call, "saying 'Hi, how are you,' and
setting the phone down and seeing how long he'll talk before realizing
there's no one on the other end," says Tom Liston, a computer-security expert.
Teergrubes exploit some convenient features of the Internet, which was
designed to be a polite method of communication. Computers -- including
e-mail servers -- that chat back and forth in the Internet's electronic
protocol will courteously wait to see that their data has been received
before sending more. Typically, such acknowledgments come in a matter of
milliseconds. A computer set up to teergrube will languorously stretch its
responses out to minutes -- effectively tying up the spamming machine and
reducing its ability to pump out messages.
Many large companies, particularly those in the financial services
industry, are required by regulators to archive all incoming e-mail.
Cutting it off before it ever arrives means there's less junk that needs to
be stored.
Details at...
http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB111145446881685808,00.html
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