Click here to view the embedded video.

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.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Money quote:  “I don’t like repeat offenders, I like DEAD offenders!”

My little sister sent this to me – Be nice to her, she owns more guns that I do.

There’s fighting in Gaza… and in case you forgot, Israel’s enemies are the same fanatical assholes that are our enemies.

They are liars and deceivers (if you believe people like this bitch, you’re just a moron):

They prey on their own women, children, and elderly:

But remember, they’re the victims here!

I think I may just coin the term “Obamafugue”. I hope it only lasts four years.

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 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.

Latin Leaders Set to Condemn U.S. Border Fence

A draft of a final declaration by the leaders of Spain, Portugal and Latin America gathering in Montevideo includes a special statement rejecting the fence plan.

“We express our deep concern over the decision adopted by the government of the United States,” it reads, adding regional leaders want to “make a firm call for the United States to reconsider” its decision.

Maybe it’s just something that came up during this meeting of Spanish-speaking countries, and Spain and Portugal seeing it as an opportunity to support their trading partners with a relatively meaningless signature on a relatively meaningless document.

Either way, it continues to amaze me; not that other countries seek to affect our internal security policies, but that people who consider themselves Americans listen to and agree with them.