Because fraud is so rampant on ebay, many ebay sellers are requiring their buyers to confirm their address so that they will be covered by ebay and Paypal’s Seller Protection Policy. But what does this mean? This is ebay and Paypal’s way of verifying your identity. The system they have built covers the seller in the event of fraud and they buyer gets some other benefits too.

So how as an ebay buyer do you do this? Generally, you add your bank account to Paypal, Paypal sends you two small deposits, and you then report back the deposits. It is not full proof but it must have good enough success for ebay to support it.

As an ebay Seller, I have had Paypal tell me that someone fraudulently stole one of my buyer’s account to buy something from me. When this happens, I am liable and Paypal will always reverse the transaction taking the money out of my account but since I shipped it to the address given in Paypal and they had a confirmed address, they covered it and did not take the funds from me.

Had I not followed ebay and Paypal’s rules and the buyer’s address was not confirmed, they would have taken the money from me end of story. Im pretty sure if you add your bank account to Paypal as a buyer, you get coverage in the even that the seller is fraudulent.

As a buyer or seller, you will run across someone who will try to rip you off. If you are going to sell or buy on ebay, please read ebay’s policies before buying or selling anything. Many people jump right in and get ripped off right away. Others who are more cautious, get through without ever getting ripped off because of ebay’s policy.

If you need at a minimum, weekly dose of tech news and commentary, please tune in to KFI am 640 talk radio on the weekends from 11 am to 2 pm for Leo Laporte The Tech Guy. If you cant tune in your radio, you get the stream from KFI at KFI640.com, or twit.tv/live which will soon be twitlive.tv.

Leo is amazing at helping people learn and solve everyday technical problems an average user might have. The show may sometimes get geeky, but is made for an audience that may or may not know anything about tech. Leo has been a source of inspiration for me and I hope for you too.

Leo also creates too many to count, podcasts that release just about every day. Check out twit.tv for getting any of his shows delivered to you via RSS or iTunes.

I don’t really get what the big deal is with social web sites like Facebook and Myspace but if it is where the people are, the rest will come. There is an epidemic of social network hacking that I want everyone to be aware of. This is pretty rampant because I have received this hack from many friends and have heard of many others. The simple way to not get hacked is pay attention.

There are two ways you will get hacked: an email is sent to you that is not connected to your account or a message from a friend is sent to you.

Here is how it works, a friend who has had their account hacked sends you a message about a comment they sent you. In the message it says, "click here to read the message" or something of that nature but what happens is Myspace says "you must be logged in to do that." Now if you think about it, you had to be logged in to read the email so you are really already logged in, the link to the message is actually a link to another web site that looks exactly like Myspace. This web site is called a phishing site and it is there to collect your username and password. Now the person who hacked your friends account has now hacked yours and then the same email is sent to all your friends and the cycle goes on.

You can also get hacked by a random spam email in your regular email inbox that says the same thing only it brings you to the same phishing web site.

So how do you stop this from happening! First, if you get an email and you think there is something in Myspace that needs your attention, actually type the web address for Myspace in your web browser. Never click links in email. If you are checking messages after you know you logged in and one of the links requires you to log in again, don’t do it! If this happens, forget about it and don’t try to find out what the message is. Just send a message from that friend asking if they sent a message and if not, they might have been hacked.

I think scams like this are fairly common with Youth because they don’t take the time to think about what they are doing. Just click, click, click, and get to wherever they need to be as quick as possible. It is becoming increasingly important to not trust email from our financial institutions. If you receive notice from your bank that there is a problem, don’t click any links in email, go directly to their web site via your web browser. If there is a problem with your account, they will tell you when you log in.

All over various blogs and YouTube there is mention about a game called Crayon Physics. Crayon Physics which can be found here, is a game where you draw shapes with crayons to solve puzzles. Currently, the game is free and only the first basic version of the game is available for download. Don’t get me wrong, this game may sound really basic but it is really fun and addicting. The author promises an updated version soon where you can draw any shape other than squares but I would try it out in the mean time. This game is Windows only. It is fun to see what you can do with Crayon Physics.

With Google threatening Microsoft’s Office with Google Docs and Spreadsheets, Microsoft is taking a step towards cloud computing. As mentioned before, cloud computing is the idea of using the applications on your computer from the web. In other words, you don’t install software on your computer, you edit your documents online via a web browser. So far, Microsoft is far from it. I am not really a big cloud computing advocator, but I am not sure what Microsoft is trying to do with Office Live.

Office Live online has a few same features as Google Docs & Spreadsheets. For starters, Office Live servers as a place where you can store files online and collaborate with few or as many people as you want. You and others you allow can edit online Office documents. Microsoft, as usual is late to the plate. I am not sure at this point, but I don’t think there is a way to embed a word doc or spreadsheet in a web page like Google Docs and you also need to have Office on your computer to use the service. Requiring Office on your computer is a huge disadvantage when compared to Google Docs because it is completely free where the Office suite is very expensive. I would not expect anything from Office to be free anytime soon since it is a huge money maker from Microsoft. To be honest, I don’t see many people using this service. I see business people using this service because documents are often revised many times before they are made public. At this time, I am not sure what versions of Office, Office Live is compatible with, anyone trying this service with an older version of Office or from Office on the Mac, let me know. Try it out at http://www.officelive.com/default.aspx

In case you have not heard, today Apple released the SDK for the iPhone and iPod Touch and there will be a 2.0 update for iPhones in June. SDK stands for software developer kit and it will allow mobile software developers create everything from games to useful applications for iPhones and iPod Touches without having to use the browser.

Here are some of the highlights you have to look forward to in the iPhone:

-iPhone gets Enterprise support. This is the single most important thing to me. The iPhone will now have Microsoft Exchange and Active Sync support. This means my exchange server can now auto sync my contacts and give me push email through my iPhone. This won’t happen until the next software update but I am so happy for this.

-There will be an App store for the iPhone and and iPod Touch via iTunes for purchasing and installing software. This will be the only way to get software for your iPhone if it is not hacked.

- The game Spore will be available for the iPhone. Cool, and even though I can’t wait to play this game, I think I will want to play it on my computer.

-AIM, which was reported to be the most requested App will be available.

-Testing starts today with the beta release of the SDK but everything goes official in late June. What is odd to me, in the presentation, it said shipping in June. What is shipping? Are we going to see a new iPhone with 3G speeds? That is what the rumor is. I really hope it is true.

-Sim Unlock software will not be allowed in the iPhone App store. This means if you want software that is available for a hacked iPhone that is not available in the App store, you will still have to hack your iPhone. After June, and other than wanting to you use your phone on another carrier, I don’t see the reason to hack your iPhone anymore.

Google Docs is the start of what is known as "Cloud Computing." The idea of cloud computing is to use all of your software on your computer online. Essentially, your computer is online and you create documents online. Not sure if cloud computing will take off but some may find uses for it.

Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets is a place online where you can for free, create documents, edit them, share them with people, and even allow people to edit your docs. Currently, there are not many uses for me for this service right now buy who knows what they might improve in the future that will draw me in.  Once use I find that is really useful with Google docs is the ability for people to edit the docs and other people to view them online. Lets say I create a web site and I need many people to add information to the site but they have no clue about FTP and I don’t want them to mess around with anything else in the site. I am able to actually create a Google Doc online, embed it in a web page, and allow whomever I want the ability to edit the document. They don’t have to know anything about web sites and they can log in and edit the document on their own. This is really convenient in any community based web site.

Well, good luck and happy document creating.

So you want a web site? What do you do next? How do you get it? How do you create it?

Deciding to have a web site is a big step, here are some tips to help.

First you need to decide what is going to be on your site, what you want to offer and who your audience is. You must offer something on a web site in order to get people there and you need to decide who your audience it to make it appropriate.

Once you have decided what you want to offer and who your audience is, you need to get your ideas together. You need to get the info you want on the site, pictures, and anything else you want on your site together. Going over all the content that will be on your site is a good idea because it will allow you to see if you have any conflicting information and serve as the first time you edit the content. You should also type all of your information orderly in a Word doc to help with spelling and grammar and because having it in a digital form will help you much later when you copy and paste it in your site.

Next, you need to decide what type of site you want. This blog posting is not aimed at web professionals so I will not speak of the many content management services. For simplicity, you need to decide if you want a traditional static web site where the pages are changed manually or if you need some sort of content management system. You would want a content management system if you are going to write about stuff often. For example, if you are a food critic, you will be writing about restaurants often. For this instance, you would want a blogging service. There are many out there like blogspot and wordpress. You can get a free account from most of these. I actually suggest WordPress at Wordpress.com or going to Wordpress.org and installing the free blog software with your own hosting which will give you more options and features.

Now you need to find out the name or web address which is really called a domain name and where to host your site, the place you site will be on the web. If you choose to put your site on wordpress.com, you will already have a domain name. There are free and paid ways to host a web site but if you want your own unique domain name, you need to pay. For example, you can get a free site from Yahoo’s geocities but your domain name will be *****.geocities.com. So if you wante bigpcgeek, it would be bigpcgeek.geocities.com. The other downside is that you will have adds on your web site which would be great if you mad the money but you don’t. If you want your own unique domain name like www.bigpcgeek.com, you will have to buy a domain name and web hosting from sites like GoDaddy or Domain.com. I suggest 1and1.com because they always seem to have the most to offer for the best price. When purchaseing hosting from 1and1.com, you can create a web site from scratch or use their own site builder. When you create you own site, there is no limit, when you use their site builder, there is a limit on pages and on content. If you have no idea how to do any of this, you might want to get some help from companies like BigPcGeek.com (yes, a shameless plug) who create web sites from scratch. If you decide to create your web site on your own from scratch, you will need software to create it like DreamWeaver or FrontPage.

After your site is created, you need to get your site on the net. Huh? Ok so your site is on the net when you type www.****.com in your web browser but what about when you search for it on Google. If it is not in Google, you don’t exist online.  Most hosting companies offer SEO (search engine optimization) help or paid SEO to help get you on search engines. First, do not pay for any SEO, it is all free. If your web host gives you a free service like 1and1 does, use it but if not, don’t waste your money on it when it is free. All you have to do is do a Google search for site submission on the search engine of your choice. For example, if you do a Google search for "submit site to Google," the first result will google.com/addurl where you can add your web site to Google. It can take a few months but you will eventually be one Google’s search results. You don’t want to stop there, you will want to talk to your web designer about meta tags to get better relevant results, get other web sites to link to you, and finally keep the most relevant information of your site at the top of the page. All will help to get the people you want to your site.

This is just a start, I hope it helps.

Microsoft is competing for more online email users for their free email service so they are adding some cool features to their "Live" services. One feature, called SkyDrive, allows you to store up to 5Gb of files that you can store privately, share with the world, or share with select friends. This is a great way to ensure you don’t forget a file you are working on at home when you go to work. Forget homework assignments, try storing copies of your homework on SkyDrive. Oh and the best part, SkyDrive is free! Once in beta, SkyDrive looks like it is official and here to stay. If you would like to try SkyDrive out for yourself, go to: http://skydrive.live.com/

Be safe, use this site to check and make sure the anti-spyware you use is not actually spyware itself. www.SpywareWarrior.com