------------------------------------------------------------ copyright (c) Pavel Lenshin ------------------------------------------------------------

Hype is everywhere. There are no ebooks on internet marketing, there are ebooks that change your life, bring you wealth and happiness. Guess what happens when these ebooks don't change their owners' lives? Right, buyers lose their belief!

Today's sales letters copy writing provokes inevitable harm to customers and create a fertile ground for scams.

Marketing hype continues to grow decreasing truthful part accordingly. The line dividing true business marketing and marketing hype is difficult to catch due to increasing number of tricks and techniques used by online marketers.

We ruin people's belief, we decrease credibility of internet as a business place, we support online scams and spammers with our own hands, sometimes even without noticing it.

I've spent months exploring so-called "Free" traffic or promotion opportunities and after all discovered that all they want is to put my money into their pocket only for my right to advertise and promote their offers. I bet you have been caught with this "Free" trick also.

Programming language in 3 hours? Web-design skills in 2 hours? What next? Millionaire in 1 hour? You can buy product with web-sites provided, which you could set-up and start running within 2 hours, but you will never be able to understand methods and techniques of writing your own ebook or creating personal web-site during that blatantly advertised period of time.

Guess what happens with a true "inventor", who, say, developed his own system of completely learning Perl language in a month. We all know that it is a true system, but due to well-advertised marketing hype, no one will pay any attention to him, unless he states something similar to "Become a programming guru in two hours!". But he couldn't do that simply because his system designed to learn languages in a month, not in an hour or two.

So ask yourself who wins under such conditions at end? The answer is obvious - scams, who advertise marketing hype and play on people's laziness! Who will lose? The developers of true fundamental systems that can truly teach people a new knowledge, considering people's learning abilities, spare time etc.

A: Be thankful that your paranoia kicked in, Brenda, because you were about to fall victim to scam of week, this one aimed at 35 million merchants and individuals who use Paypal.com as their online payment processor.

The email you received was not from PayPal, but from an Internet bad guy behind a forged email address using PayPal.com domain. You should understand that no reputable online company will ever ask you to provide your account information. Think about it. They already have this information. Why would they ask you to provide it.

Since I use PayPal for several of my online ventures, I, too, received email in question. The email first seeks to instill fear in you by saying that your PayPal account will be closed if you do not provide personal information. You are then directed to open an attached executable file and enter your PayPal account information and other personal information that PayPal doesn't even require, including your social security number, checking and savings account information, driver's license number, and other personal information that can be used to clean out your PayPal account and perhaps even steal your identity.

If you're not familiar with PayPal, it is a hugely successful, web-based company (purchased by eBay in 2002) that many online retailers and eBay sellers use to accept electronic payments for everything from newsletter subscriptions to consulting services to just about any product for sale on eBay.

The allure of PayPal is that it does not require seller to have a bank merchant account through which to process credit cards. Anyone with a verifiable email address and bank account can use PayPal and service can be implemented almost immediately after registering. When someone places an order on a website that uses PayPal for online payments, that customer is directed to PayPal.com to complete payment process using a credit card or electronic check. The merchant can transfer money collected in his PayPal account to his checking account any time he likes. Since many larger merchants make this transfer just once a week or so, their PayPal accounts are ripe for picking from those who have cunning and lack of ethics required to gain access.

The shear number of PayPal customers is one reason it has become a popular target of scam artists trying to steal personal information from individuals and businesses alike. Identify theft is on rise. Thanks to Internet stealing someone's identity has never been easier. At any given moment, there are any number of Internet thieves using all manner of high tech wizardry to steal personal and business information from unsuspecting souls, and many times they can gain access to this information simply by asking person to provide it through fraudulent means.