Not going to mention their name, since I’m not sure they deserve the little free publicity I could provide… but here’s one to think about:

In their commercial, they feature a cop who’s identity had been stolen by a fellow cop. He mentions that he noticed something on a credit card bill that he didn’t recognize, or something to that effect. He goes on to say that it went on for EIGHT YEARS before he figured out there was a problem, and presumably signed up with the company to put an end to it.

So how piss-poor of a cop do you have to be for it to take EIGHT YEARS for you to realize you’re being stolen from, repeatedly, by someone rifling through your desk at work. I sure hope he wasn’t working on any urgent cases. Maybe a basement desk… cold case files…

Anyway, that particular endorsement is not going to sell the service to anyone who thinks for a moment about it. They should have stuck to showing the president of the company driving around with his social security number on the side of the truck.

Nancy kept the House in session late on a Saturday in order to twist enough arms to get her nearly 2000 page POS passed.
Harry is planning to do the same to the Senate this weekend.

Does anyone still believe this health care fiasco is above board, proper, legal, and necessary?

BOHICA, America.

This is the kind of shit your hopey-changey vote earned you. I hope you’re proud.

If you say it often enough, and with enough conviction, sooner or later people will believe it – even if they know it’s an outright lie.

“If you like your current insurance, you will be able to keep it”

Forget the fact that a government-sponsored plan, paid for out of tax dollars, will inevitably put the rest out of business.
Forget the fact that a government-sponsored plan, paid for out of tax dollars, will force companies to quit funding health insurance to remain competitive.
Forget the fact that a government-sponsored plan, paid for out of tax dollars, will destroy competition and any chance of recovery once the “experiment” has proven it’s foolhardiness to even the staunchest of supporters.

Hillary care, Obama care, socialized medicine… whatever it’s called, it’s based in lies and doomed to failure – but it’ll only fail after it’s caused the lives and livelihood of millions of Americans.

It really gets under my skin when Chris Dodd and his ilk spew their lies on national television.

Priceless.

Do they hire morons off the street to work at the IRS? Sure looks like it…

IRS bureaucrats duped into exposing passwords

According to a report released Friday (PDF) by the Treasury Department’s inspector general, 60 percent of a sampling of 102 Internal Revenue Service employees, when contacted by government auditors posing as help-desk employees, were perfectly willing to reveal their usernames and change their passwords to ones suggested by the callers.

The auditors said they were particularly alarmed by this year’s findings against the backdrop of a similar test in 2004, when only 35 percent fell for the trick. In 2001, 71 percent succumbed to the requests, which led the IRS to take “corrective actions” designed to raise awareness about social-engineering attempts and password protection requirements.

Saw it on SANS Newsbytes first.

I had an “anonymous” call registered on my phone today… the sort I normally ignore. I listened to the message before deleting it – it claimed to be from my credit-card issuing bank – and promptly forgot about it. When I got home, I had an email from the same bank. That one I read… and called the number.

I was asked about a couple of recent purchases (today and yesterday) from vendors I had never heard of. I told the nice fellow I had not made those purchases… and inquired about the last few I did make. He read me the list from the past 30 days, and we found three MORE false charges. Lovely.

The card was immediately canceled and a new one is being mailed to me. All of the false charges have been removed, and will be investigated. I also let them know about the only vendor I’ve dealt with recently that is “new” to me… I’ll hold off naming them until I hear more regarding the investigation. I will say it’s a company I only found because of a “too good to be true” deal on 120mm fans: free after rebate.

I have no idea if the company in question is at fault, either through a security leak, an unscrupulous employee, or outright criminal activity. I will say that in over ten years of dealing with credit cards online, I have never had a problem of this sort. Ever. I’m generally careful to the point of paranoia, with active virus scanning, spyware monitoring, root-kit checking, and both hardware and software firewalls. Everything is patched with all applicable security updates. Does that mean there’s nothing here? Well, nothing common… and I don’t hang out in places I’m likely to acquire anything “uncommon”.

So unless one of the major businesses I regularly deal with have been compromised (and that’s always a possibility), then the likely answer is this new, small company that was supposedly just trying to drum up some business is at fault – intentionally or otherwise. I’ll be contacting them immediately to let them know of my suspicions, and to expect a call from MC’s fraud detection / security department.

On the positive side: I have to commend the service that caught this activity. The charges were all to companies that seemed to be normal for my buying habits (computer related components, primarily). Granted they didn’t catch the first couple, but they did catch it within days, and took immediate action once they did. While I was a bit bothered by the bank representative’s poor command of the English language, it wasn’t so bad as to keep us from dealing with the issue, and he was very polite and helpful.

Will this change my mind regarding online shopping? Probably not – although it will make me wary of small, “new” online businesses, which is a shame. I am a definite proponent of small business, and anything that makes me not want to look to them for occasional purchases means I can’t or won’t support them as much as I’d like. That’s a shame.

I got this crap in the mail today from a bloodsucking bank to which I owe money. Like most people, I don’t generally read these things thoroughly, although every time I do, I realize I really should. This one announced a fairly insignificant “minimum finance charge”, but it’s not the charge that has me curious, it’s the way it’s being presented.

Allow me to quote from the letter:

If you do not wish to accept the above change, you must meet all of the following requirements:

1. Write to us at (name and address of bloodsucking vermin here). Clearly print or type your name and full credit card account number and state that you reject this change. You must give notice in writing; it is not sufficient to telephone us. Send this notice only to the address in this paragraph; do not send it with a payment or any other type of customer service request. This mailbox is ONLY for rejection of change of terms.

2. Write to us immediately. We must receive your letter at the above address by May 1, 2007 or your rejection will not be effective.

I’m not a lawyer, but this seems like a pretty screwy way to change the terms of service for any company. Do I read this as if they are asking permission to change, and silence is consent? Do I assume that if I deny this change, that my service will be canceled and the full amount due immediately? The change seems to be insignificant, but is it opening the door for future changes that won’t be put forth so “politely”?

Nothing like feeling you’re being backed into the corner by a bank.