How to correctly post a payment proof

I must admit that I've been very deeply involved into GPT sites lately, trying them, studying them, exploring them and, of course gaining some money from them. And I saw a lot of payment proofs posted of dedicated forums and personal blogs.

Posting payment proofs is very normal considering the fact that many people, before they sign up, want and need to be sure what they get into, and if they loose their time for nothing or they do get something from those PTC or GPT sites.

But while publishing a screenshot from your Paypal account can be a good way convince your close friends or strangers from the large public to join that GPT site and thus become your refs, this can be also a risky thing if you post too much information. A bad guy could use the sensible information to do you harm.

This were my thoughts while I was exploring those sites. My gut and the logic were telling me that there should be a way to prevent any security problem without altering the message.

So I did some digging and I have found out that, for security reasons, any payment proof should not show the following data:

- Transaction ID
- Your Paypal email (or the email you use with you payment processor)
- Any other specific code (is not Paypal's case, but it can be related to other payment processors)

As an example, I give bellow a screenshot with my first payment received from DonkeyMails.com. It is a screenshot from my Paypal account.

When posting a payment proof, make sure that you hide the transaction ID and your email address

In order to obtain a payment proof, just log into your Paypal account, use a printscreen tool (or press PrtSc key) and then edit it with an image editor. In Zorin OS, I use Screenshot app and Gimp.

Additionally, for a plus of credibility, you can add a screenshot from your email account (the one you use it in connection with Paypal, to receive your money). Again, you have to make sure you erase all the sensible data.

When posting a capture from your Paypal email, erase your transaction ID

In short, I think the rule would sound like this: when you are not sure if strange eyes should see that information, it's better to be cautious and erase it.

"Connection refused" on Yahoo Romania

Yahoo Romania: Connection refused

Tuesday, 4 February 2014, in the evening, while I was trying to see my emails, I got some unexpected and inexplicable errors and, after a page refresh, all I could see were only two words on a white page: "Connection refused".

As showed in my screenshot, this problem has happened with the Romanian Yahoo portal. But also it affected Yahoo Mail and Yahoo News.

I have noticed that it did not affect Yahoo Answers. I can't say if the Messenger was affected as I was not connected at that time. But I guess it did not worked either.

I have tried to open www.yahoo.com using several different browsers: Firefox, Chrome, Chromium and Midori, but with the same result. All the other websites were looking OK, all the other pages were loading fine, so I think it is not a local connection problem but it is something odd happening with Yahoo.

The problem lasted for about one hour and when, finally Yahoo portal was back, all I could see was the American version. Usually, when I type www.yahoo.com in the address bar I am redirected to ro.yahoo.com which is the address of Yahoo Romania. This time, still, all I could see was the English version which I guess it means that Yahoo Romania "recovered" much later.

I can't tell when Yahoo Romania was back online as I did not had the patience to wait and see, but I guess it did took a while. And I also guess this was quite a serious problem.

I did a search on the internet about all this. Apparently Yahoo has an entire history of such issues. I'm not sure if I should feel relieved thinking that this also happened to others before, or I should be worried because such a giant as Yahoo seems to be unreliable.

Anyhow, bellow is a short list of OLD articles about the problem I experienced recently.

06 July 2007 - Yahoo down
08 April 2009 - Connection refused by Yahoo Mail
14 Octombrie 2010 - Yahoo Down (article on Techcrunch.com)
14 Octombrie 2010 - Yahoo Down (article on Huffingtonpost.com)

Doing business without having an email address?!

Image source: webhostinserviceindia.blogspot.com

Four days ago I was phoned by someone who made me a job offer. He needed my services to promote his national and international(!) projects and to find him new partners and sponsors.

I have spent some of the most puzzling 25 minutes of my life and our conversation had the most surprising end for me. The guy was aiming high, as I have said: two local projects, later to be extended nationwide and a third one international (!) who needs to be promoted.

To be frank, I had the impression that I was talking with a dreamer. Not that I have something against dreamers, but I prefer those who keep their feet on the ground. Still, I said that I should give it a try and do some research before I give any judgement. So, after about 25 minutes of blah-blah, I insisted on the idea that, in order to promote something I have to know what I'm promoting and what message to give to the people, what tools to use, etc, so I asked for some data (.pdfs, links, documents) to study. And, logically, I have asked him to give me his email address. In the next second, the most surprising answer hit my ears:

  - I don't have an email address. I'm not into things like Internet and stuff. I'll keep contact with you and the collaborators on the phone. And if you need any information, just give me a call and take notes on a piece of paper. 

I say to myself: Jesus! A man without an email address! And I thought this species was extinct. More than that, a business man running three large projects but not having a humble email address! That's really, really odd to say the least. My grandmother doesn't have an email address but she is not pretending to have an inventor patent to sell and she is not planning to contact other big companies!

When I ended the conversation, my feeling that I'm dealing with an unrealistic person was increased. And the feeling of wonder about it stayed with me long after the conversation was over.

One thing is sure: Nowadays, no one can do real business without having an email address. And not having an email address brings, among others, a great loss of credibility.