CU*Online Newsletter
May 2002 

CU*ONLINE is the Web Design & Maintenance division of Alonzi Technical Consulting.
All Rights Reserved.

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** Link Rot and Legal Responsibilities

Two professors at the University of Nebraska, John Markwell and David Brooks, recently developed graduate-level biochemistry courses for high school teachers.

Each month, the two spend about four hours checking the 515 hyperlinks to ensure that students have up-to-date materials. Being researchers, they also note any changes in the status of each hyperlink.

After 20 months, 18.8 percent of the total links had disappeared. Over 11 percent of dot-org links, 18.4 percent of dot-edu pages and 42.5 percent of dot-com addresses were lost since the study began. The study also found that a handful of links changed into porn links, which could be a real concern for high school or middle school teachers who direct their students to Internet resources.

If you have off-site links on your Web site then you need to be concerned about link rot, too.

One credit union set up a Homework Help page on their site, containing links to several Web sites featuring research or homework tips. I checked the page last month and realized that three of the eight hyperlinks were either dead or no longer being maintained.

Although none of the links on this site had been replaced by pornography, it is a valid concern. Profiteers regularly monitor domain name registrations and buy up expired domains. They post

porn on the newly purchased site in hopes that the previous owner, desperate to avoid bad publicity, will buy the site back at a dramatically inflated price. Kid sites are prime targets for this scheme. In a famous case last year, enraged parents informed Yahooligans that their Kids Links page contained a link to a porn site.

Use caution when putting hyperlinks on your Web site. It's great that so much information is free and available online, but you get what you pay for. If the hyperlink is free, then the site owner has no responsibility to continue maintaining the site. Unless you're willing to monitor your hyperlinks monthly, I'd recommend limiting your hyperlinks to a few reputable companies.

If you DO pay to link to a site (i.e., Googolplex and MEMBERS Financial Network), then the site owner has entered into a contract to supply you with a service, and this warning doesn't apply. Since you pay dues to belong to CUNA or MNCUN, they're duty-bound to maintain these sites, too.

Of course, every credit union should have a link to the NCUA Web site. Government sites, in general, are safe linking targets since most .edu and .gov domain names are not publicly traded.

Domain Renewal Scams

The porn hijacking scandals are inspiring other "entrepreneurs." You may have received a mailing recently warning that your domain name was expiring, and urging you to renew by sending a check in the enclosed envelope.

Most CU*ONLINE customers maintain their domain registrations through Register.com or Network Solutions. If that's not the name on the mailing, it's a scam. If you're a CU*ONLINE customer, then your domain expiration date is stored on file. In addition to the notice from your actual domain registrant, we'll also remind you when it's time to renew your domain.

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** To Catch a Cyber-Stalker

Your antivirus software is current and your employees are well-trained on email etiquette and attachments. Your email worries are over -- right?

Let's talk for a second about what to do when things go wrong. REALLY wrong.

Say an employee begins getting threatening emails at work. Or you're suddenly sorting through hundreds of bogus loan applications each day. You're suffering the effects of a new crime called "cyber-stalking."

Despite what stalkers believe, they are not invisible. You CAN stop them.

Tracing an email back to its source is relatively easy. All emails contain a header - a sequential list of each host (with its unique Internet Protocol (IP) address) that the message has passed through to get from sender to receiver. This information is usually hidden by default, but your computer expert can turn it on.

Each host identifies itself by an IP address. The date, time and origin of the email is also stored, as well as the email software and type of email address (Hotmail, AOL, etc.).

Once you know the source IP address, you can look up the owner of that address via register.com or netsol.com. These registries contain detailed contact information about the owner of each account.

Let's say you learn that your stalker's emails are coming from an AOL server. Your next step is to call AOL, and ask for their legal department.

Most internet service providers (ISPs) track the connections made to their servers. If you can give them the times and dates of the abusive emails, they can quickly find a name. Your cyber-stalker is anonymous no more.

Once you have a name, don't wait for the problem to escalate. This IS a criminal act, and you contact the police immediately. (Be sure to insist that they contact the ISP quickly. The Data Protection Act requires ISPs to destroy non-essential customer data after a short period of time.)

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** Putting a Web Page in Your Email

Let's say you need to make a change to your Web site, but your webmaster is running out of brain cells. You need to show her EXACTLY what to change, and where.

Step 1: Open Microsoft Outlook.

Step 2: On the menu bar across the top, select Actions/New Mail Message Using/HTML (no stationery). An empty email window should now appear.

Step 3: Open your web browser, and go to the page where you need to make the change.

Step 4: In your web browser's menu bar, select Edit/Select All. Then select Edit/Copy (or press Ctrl+C) to copy the page onto your ClipBoard.

Step 5: Switch back into your empty email window, and click somewhere in the body of the email.

Step 6: On the menu bar across the top, select Edit/Paste (or press Ctrl+V).

Voila! You've just copied the entire web page into an email. At this point you can edit the text as needed before sending it along to your webmaster. Although you can't create new formatted headers, you can copy the existing ones and then modify them as needed.

This is also a great way to save information from a Web page in electronic format. You can mail it to others, or even mail it back to yourself so the hyperlinks will work.

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** Retirees Flocking Online

If you're a retired Brit, your number one hobby is surfing the internet.

Retired people are spending more time online than any other hobby, according to a survey by BTopenworld. Eighty-three percent surf on a regular basis, and send an average of four emails per day.

The internet is particularly popular with older women. Nearly half of them go on the internet for the first time after stopping work. Silver surfers report that they enjoy the social aspects of the internet. Thirty-five percent believe the internet gives them a wider circle of friends.

The internet also appears to mellow older people. Almost two-thirds of silver surfers said they felt more open to new experiences and 42% felt they were more tolerant to the way the world was changing.

Forget about taking Granny to Bingo. Dude, she wants a Dell!

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