Aye Yi Yi
-
Well I agree the snail spam is as bad as the espam. And I realize that recycling paper is a good thing.
BUT IDENTITY THEFT IS A PROBLEM.
And dumpster diving is a key method to get you basic info. If it a Credit Card app or something like that make sure you shread, burn or ?? those parts with your name / addr.
I've done this for years, the even just had something on the local tv Monday(?) night.
PS, I tend to return the CC apps, well everything except the part with my name on it. I even try to mix and match, put the bank one app (w/o my name) in the citi envelope and off it goes.
KlK -
What's the real likelihood of that happening? I mean, if it were to happen to a fella, it would be devastating. But on the other hand, is it really happening that much? Or is it one of these hot stories on the news, (and great for selling paper shredders) but the actual risk is tiny? I wonder about all these horrible problems we have to face these days and are most of them actually real?
Maybe I just live in a bubble...
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
-
ACH! du lieber!
Ach, du lieber Himmel or Ach, du meine Güte or something like that.
Hey, I appreciate it when someone tries my mother tongue
--
Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
I visited northern Massachussets where it takes 15 minutes to walk off your own property and I would guess that identity theft would not be a problem there.
I live in the UK and it a big enough problem to completely change the way credit card verification is done and also to justify a peak time TV advertising campaign
-
Ach, du lieber!
I had a long response typed in and clicked the post reply button and lost it! I'll keep it shorter this time, and copy it to the clipboard!
Farrell, I was the victim of identity theft a few years ago. My bank account was completely drained! Long story short, it caused me considerable hardship, but I eventually did get all my money back.
Frank, My mother is German (U.S. born). Both her parents' families came to the U.S. from Russia around 1900. They had migrated from Germany to Russia before that. Growing up, I would hear German spoken occasionally at family gatherings, but usually it was English with VERY strong German accents! Any time something happened that would warrant an "Aye yi yi!", my grandmother would exclaim "Ach, du lieber!"
Steve
-
Thanks, hoo-t. I hope I did not sound dis-respectful or un-compassionate; that had to be a terrible circumstance. We just get so inunndated with crisis and horror. I mean, these cases of children killing other children in schools is petrifying; but the actual risk is very low. Yet, all of our schools are now being filled with police, metal detectors, and children are getting charged with felonies for making crayon drawings of being mean. (In Florida, USA two 10 years may well be charged with a felony, for a crayon drawing of stabbing another child - no actions, just a drawing...)
That is why I was wondering if the dumpster diver stuff really constituted an actual risk. The Wachovia Bank out of North Carolina USA mailed a fella 28 statements on other people. The guy said he had their SSN's, account numbers, everything he needed to get thier money and identities and it took him like 18 months to straighten it out with the bank! That is a major screw up, but not dumpster diving.
It would seem to me that electronic theft would be much more prevelant. That would make sense to me as to why companies and nations would change the credit card applications.
I cannot understand why the Federal Reserve is changing all our (USA) paper and coin money(s). Oil well, enough of a rant on a completely different subject. Sometimes I cannot help myself.
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
-
It doesn't have to be dumpster diving either. Last year we were flying out of the country and I gave my credit card info over the phone to an well known shuttle company to reserve a ride to the airport. Lo and behold, when I return from vacation and see my statement someone has purchased about $7,000 USD against my account. It's a perfect scam...they have your address, your numbers and they know you're going to be out of town so you won't get the calls from the credit card comany questioning the activity.
I have to say that my bank was excellent and worked with me and after I reported it and cooperated with their investigation. They wound up writing it all off. But I'm still getting catalogs in the mail from all the companies these crooks ordered stuff from (more hard copy spam...yuck!). It's kind of funny when you're only a little over 5 feet tall and you keep geting all these catalogs from the 'Big and Tall' Mens Shops.
But yeah, living here in South Florida you trust no one excepting (maybe) your relatives. And we have a shredder for the dozen or so credit card applications that I recieve each week.
And next time I'll pay $20 more and take a taxi to the airport, thank you very much.
Words to the wise. My hovercraft is full of eels.
-
Farrel, The thought of taking offense never even occurred to me! No problem! I just figured "hearing" first hand is better than... "My friend at work said that his brother-in-law's ex-wife's father's neighbor's best friend's cousin had that happen to him"! It was terribly frustrating, difficult to pay bills for a month or two, a hassle to have to straighten things out with those who actually deserved payment from ME.... The funny thing is, I really don't know how the "crook" got hold of my information. Very possibly via an internet transaction.
It definitely happens! Unlike the guy who woke up in a bathtub full of ice, missing his kidney!
Steve
-
Interestingly enough - just heard a report on the local news this morning stating that identity theft is the fastest growing form of crime right now.
Even though I live out in the farm lands I think I will keep the shreader handy - the firewall updated and commit myself to being paranoid about people I don't know!!
What a shame that this is how society has to deal with day to day life!!
-
But that is (potentially) the kind of reporting I am talking about. Say 2 identity thefts happen last year and 10 happend this year. That is a 500% increase; but it is still only 10 thefts. [Obviously, from these responses by ssword and hoo-t, this is really taking place.] But many, many other things are portrayed just this way in the Press and we become concerned about things that will probably never affect us... I find many "scientific" studies are used just this way. Especially when 'risk' is in the mix - risk does not equate to actual happenings... But some "new finding" will be made out as though science has proven it will happen to you or your children or your best friend..... This stuff just bugs me.....
I wasn't born stupid - I had to study.
-
I agree with your concerns - it's kind of like the scientific studies from the 60s and 70s
- no wonder those rats had problems!!!! 
-
Fair enough, Farrell. I too am quite skeptical everytime I hear that 'the xyz worm caused a bazillion dollars worth of damage to the industry' or whenever I hear whatever the media 'caution du jor' happens to be. I mean, I'm supposed to use plastic and duct tape to protect my house in the event of a terrorist threat? Please. But the media reported that and you couldn't find a roll of duct tape in any store for about a month.
That said, I can tell you that identity theft is a significant and growing concern at least here the South Florida area. In my case, I was stupid and readily admit it for giving out my credit card info over the phone. But how many other people do this all the time and don't even think about it? My parents who also live in the area recently received a call from the local police agency. Seems they were raiding a house looking for a suspect and came across several of my mother's cancelled checks along with some more from other unsuspecting people. The police had uncovered a check washing operation and while my parents didn't get hit, it was probably hours away from happening (and yes, now they have a shredder too
). I have other friends here who have been victims of identity theft or even mortgage fraud and it was no fun for them at all. In some cases it took months to straighten everything out.I love kknudson's idea about returning the CC apps in envelops from other banks.
Got to remember that one.Membership may have its priveleges but it also has its caveats.
My hovercraft is full of eels.
-
Can you imagine, that I am not allowed to install any spam filter here? I use Outlook 2000 and asked for this spambayes tool. Our network admins said my company already has a policy here regarding this. They also do have a software, but getting in touch with it is ranked somewhere at priority 100 (where priority 1 is important
) --
Frank Kalis
Microsoft SQL Server MVP
Webmaster: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs
My blog: http://www.insidesql.org/blogs/frankkalis/[/url] -
Sorry for plugging my own product but I have developed what I believe to be the first 100% succesful spam solution...
Basically what we do is first of all check the sender of the message to see if they are
black listed as a known spammer (Only well known spammers are black-listed)...
Next we scan through the message content to find out where it is linking to, after all a spam message is no good if it doesn't sell anything! We have a seperate black list of these spam websites, so this stage picks up many e-mails the first passed through.
If the message passes through the first two stages, our next stage is to give the sender of the message a trust rating. We use the Sender Policy Framework to achieve this rating (SPF), this is a new scheme currently in development by many e-mail service providors and ISPs.
Once we have the trust rating we apply the sender to the users own white-list of allowed senders, if the sender is not on the white list we ask the user if they wish to receive e-mails from this sender (Whilst informing the user of the trust rating).
If the sender is on the white list the message is delivered as normal.
The new sender permission requests come through in a single e-mail created on the fly when the user checks their mail.
The whole system runs on our bank of servers - meaning you do not need to install any software on your machine at all. The service also works with any platform (Mac, Windows, Linux, Etc).
One of my main e-mail accounts has been in use for about 10 years and used to receive 500-600 e-mails a day. I now don't receive any spam with not a single false positive.
Im currently in final testing but hoping to launch the full service very soon, and as I have been a subscribe to SQL Server Central for some time now I will be looking to offer a discount for other subscribers of the list.
Again, sorry for the plug, but I really do believe it is an excellent solution to the problem of unwanted e-mail.
If anyone is interested in receiving a freel trial please e-mail their details to info@clearmymail.com.
Thanks,
Dan
-
Over the past 3.5 years we have tried 4 different anti-spam solutions.
The first two were traditional locally installed software products. One from our AV vendor (Trend) – seemed to be a natural extension of the anti-virus function, but alas their initial attempt was not very good.
#2 was IHSSE by Sunbelt – better, but it had to be installed on the Exchange server and used traditional filtering and while it did ok at reducing the spam getting to the user and allowed the individual users greater control, the performance hit on the server itself and some other issues led us to try
#3, an anti-spam device (Barracuda). This device worked well. The only drawback with this one was that all of the spam was still coming in to us. Consuming our bandwidth, filling up space and due to regulatory issues it still had to be retained and archived.
#4 and current solution is Postini. Not only does it work better than all of the other solutions (by far) – with an extremely low (sub .001%) miss rate on spam and very few false positives – but they are easily managed by the users – they get a daily (or greater freq) email with the header of the quarantined spam. It is almost unheard of for spam to make it to our server. As a result, our mail volume has been cut by over 65% - that’s 65% fewer emails we have to retain, archive and backup. While Postini is one of the more expensive solutions available – the savings we have seen in time, management and volume reduction has more than paid for the annual cost.
Viewing 15 posts - 16 through 30 (of 42 total)
You must be logged in to reply to this topic. Login to reply