permaculture

[Keith Johnson <keithdj@mindspring.com>]

This is off-topic and I would be happy to continue the conversation 
off-list. There seems to be a good number of geekish permies on the list 
so, I'd appreciate your guidance.

A new Microsoft product called Phishing filter, apparently built into 
new versions of Internet Explorer,  has been reporting that our website 
is a potential Phishing site. This is alarming to me as we don't want to 
be scaring people away from us. (We seriously NEED every sale we can 
generate just to stay at the high end of the poverty scale where, we've 
learned, like most of you I suspect, to feel relatively comfortable. We 
just bought a house and life has gotten a bit more expensive.)

I went to     https://phishingfilter.microsoft.com/faq.aspx         
where I found the following:

Q. <javascript:toggleQuestion('title15', 'question15', 'answer15')> 	If 
I am a Web site owner, what can I do to help minimize the chance of my 
Web site being flagged by Phishing Filter? 
<javascript:toggleQuestion('title15', 'question15', 'answer15')>
A. 	There are several things you can do that can help minimize the 
chance of your site being flagged as suspicious. Think of these as best 
practices or optimal Web site design ethics.

   * Use secure sockets layer (SSL) certification with a current server
     certificate issued by a trusted certification authority if you ask
     users for personal information.
   * Make sure that your Web page doesn't expose any cross-site
     scripting (XSS) vulnerabilities. Protect your site by using
     anti-cross-site scripting attack tools
   * Use the fully-qualified domain name. All domains should reverse to
     actual domain names, not numeric IP addresses. This means a URL
     should look like "microsoft.com" and not "207.46.19.30."
   * Avoid using the @ symbol before the fully-qualified domain name in
     your URL. The @ symbol enables phishers to concoct deceptive URLs
     and is therefore immediately suspicious to Phishing Filter.
   * Don't encode or tunnel your URLs unnecessarily. If you don't know
     what this means, you probably aren't doing it.
   * If you post external or third-party hosted content, make sure that
     the content is secure and from a known and trusted source.


I don't know what most of this means. How do I get SSL certification? 
(I'll Google this, too, for more info.) Is this something you all have 
on your websites? Is this Microsoft-based extortion?

I recently added Google web search and Adsense to the site as well as 
some Clickbank links (trying to generate a little extra income). Would 
this increase the risk of being identified as a potential threat?

Thanks,
Keith

--
Keith Johnson
"Be fruitful and mulch apply."
Permaculture Activist Magazine
PO Box 5516, Bloomington, IN 47408
(812) 335-0383
http://www.permacultureactivist.net
also Patterns for Abundance Design & Consulting
also Association for Regenerative Culture
also APPLE-Bloomington (Alliance for a Post-Petroleum Local Economy) 
It's a small world after oil.
http://www.relocalize.net/groups/applebloomington
also Bloomington Permaculture Guild