I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
He absolutely could do all these things, and none of them would be criminal.
You could have to go write legal demand letters, and possibly to court to take civil action for getting an order to compel the employer to release your property to you.
In reality he will probably come back in a few hours with police officers who will order your security folks to let them in, to allow him to confiscate his own property, and direct you to take it up as a civil matter if you object to him retrieving his iPod from the desk.
Sorry, but that's retarded. It's like saying you don't have to return a company laptop when you're fired if they forget to take it from your office before they throw you out of the building.
Well, you can't keep the laptop, but that's because it is actually a possession that belongs to the person who purchased it, and it's not part of your body like your brain and facts in your brain are.
You won't be legally required to come to their office, and scan your thumb with the laptop to unlock it, or allow your finger to be removed for their use, if you had a biometric lock on the laptop.
If the laptop was passworded and protected with TrueCrypt, you don't have to go through the extra effort of informing the former employer of all the passwords and providing all decryption keys when you return it, unless you signed an agreement that you would do so.
You don't have an obligation to take the laptop and transport it back to your employer's office, if they had authorized you to leave it at home when you were employed; you can call and tell them to come and pick it up, and you can turn it over to law enforcement as abandoned property if they fail to come pick up their property after notification.
If the laptop was broken, even if you accidentally broke it or mistreated it when you were employed, repair will be their responsibility, unless there is an agreement to the contrary
Unless they've signed a contract to that effect,
nothing forces them to use those resources to sell internet access, instead of using their circuits to sell something else (such as phone service), for example.
Telcos leave comms cables dark so often, there's a special name for it... "dark fiber"
And when telcos install FiOS-like services that utilize fiber in the process, they usually intentionally remove or destroy the now unused copper, to ensure other providers won't be able to use it for selling services in the future.
If you think they don't have any exclusion rights, you might want to re-read the rules.
Or look at their actual actions more closely.
Even if you think it's a legally gray area, or the public has a right to object or prevent their exclusion, what happens in practice is a lot more important.
They definitely have at the very least a de-facto right to exclude others from using their infrastructure, or even from sharing in the use of the easements on public property, or that were created by local authorities forcing local property owners to allow for-profit enterprises to bury cable in their lawn, etc.
They retain the right to exclude... they don't have to use their circuits or equipment for internet connectivity.
They don't have to sell any service at all to any customer, let-alone internet services.
The internet is not the property of an isP.
There is no "right to exclude" individual internet services and still call it internet.
It is more of a "truth in advertising thing"
If you advertise an internet connection, then provide full internet connectivity and don't tamper with disable or break specific internet services, otherwise you are lying.
This is like saying the FCC rules that regulate phone companies, and prevent them from participating in discriminatory practices such as blocking calls to competitors deprive telcos of their property rights.
Or that the regulations requiring telcos to let you plug in a Carter Fone, computer modem, or other equipment not provided by the telco, deprive them of their 5th amendment rights.
So why are you buying that shiny new car in the first place? That sounds like your problem, not the lack of ability to get "credit" for the thing.
You are making some sort of value judgement here. Obviously you don't value shiny cars, even if the buyer can easily afford the loan with gobs and gobs of cash to spare, you think they should buy some junker that does not appeal to sensibilities, instead.
And there may be an opportunity cost there in taking cash out of investments such as bonds or other instruments in a tax-deferred format earning higher interest rates than the costs of loans at the time available to people of good credit standing.
Other people will have a different value opinion -- even if not shiny cars, the availability of inexpensive credit has benefits.
Odds are very likely that if you have "good" credit, you are more likely to get in over your head as well.
This is like saying if you have a more powerful table saw, you are more likely to cut yourself badly. Therefore young adults should stay away even from hand saws.
Don't get caught up into this game. Good credit scores are much easier to obtain than repairing a bad credit score and recovering from a mountain of debt for purchases that aren't asset building in the first place.
Which is why judicious use is strongly recommended. However, a younger person has fewer purchases to make and less money to spend, also.
They are less likely to get themselves into trouble than someone who starts first getting access to credit and starting to deal with it and establish 'bill payment habits' only later.
Generally an automobile loan is not a good move, unless you are a salesman trying to con somebody in the first place.
People will buy automobiles on loan or (god forbid), leases, regardless. It's less costly for them, at least, if they can get a lesser interest rate.
Preferably by sidestepping dealers and taking out a direct loan with the bank they can negotiate the best rate with.
There's a difference between one day having $65,000 in fraudulent charges showing up on a credit card statement, and one day seeing your bank account balance has dropped $65,000 and is now in the negative with $50,000 in overdraft charges added.
I assure you, the latter is more distressing, as it effects even your ability to write a check or pay other bills until the whole thing gets worked out, with your bank returning items for all those bills you paid that month...
The FCRA prohibits the credit reporting agencies from disclosing information about credit report pulls that were not requested to approve a consumer transaction (application for a credit or insurance transaction)
Only hard inquiries hurt. Hard inquiries pertain only to a credit or insurance transaction initiated by the consumer, and can stay on the report for up to 2 years. Your score can be effected, and hard inquiries are visible on your report.
Inquiries you perform yourself (account review) are completely invisible and don't effect your score.
Soft/promotional inquiries don't effect your score or ability to get credit.
Third parties cannot see soft inquiries.
If you have lots of companies pulling soft inquiries to send you pre-screened offers for credit, this is beneficial, as they will generally cause the hard inquiries to 'fall off' of the report sooner than otherwise.
Or the rest of the world seems bizarre to the US. The US being a leader.
Just because it's in the minority, doesn't mean its practice is not superior and the economic best choice.
I suppose in other countries more consumers are more responsible, do what they promise they will do, manage their finances intelligently, and live up to their obligations.
In the US, we have some people receiving government assistance who buy buy buy, people mortgaged to the hilt, and other participants in rampant consumerism who feel entitled and don't bat a second thought at ignoring all their obligations and filing bankruptcy.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that debtors' prisons were abolished in the US many years before they were in other countries.
Or maybe the banks are just plain greedy and throwing out some of the babies with the bathwater is just the cost of doing business to them.
Mobile phone companies do not report anything to CRAs, unless you default on your obligation to pay according to your contract.
The only other thing that might show up on your credit report due to a cell phone, would be a soft pull inquiry from when you signed up (Cell phone company will check your credit report, but not add any information to it about your cell phone accounts, if they are in good standing).
There are still people living in the exclusion zone.
So (to some extent) it must be habitable, although one certainly can't say it's healthy, and some places may be more dangerous than others (in terms of containing larger amounts of radioactive soil, contaminated water, vegetation, etc).
Bullshit. I bought a house without a credit history, without a cosigner, with lower interest rate than anyone else I know. I merely had to prove my identity, my steady income, my steady bill-paying history, and have a 20% down payment documented in a bank account.
In other words, you had to jump through hoops, and you managed to get a much better deal than other people you knew who were buying at that time. However, this is all anecdotal, and the 20% downpayment alone, makes you relatively unique. I believe the average downpayment is 10%
It's also possible the amount of money you were borrowing for the purchase lead the house to be better security for the debt than other peoples' you knew.
Try something more mundane like a new car purchase without credit history, where most lenders aren't willing to go the extra mile, and the asset securing the debt will depreciate in value rapidly.
In other words it's part of the ISP-Owned CPE. This is typical of customers purchasing leased line services.
And the OP naively assumed that the equipment being in their house automatically transferred legal ownership of it?
The ISP usually owns the router, and everything after the Telco demarcation up to the customer's cable, which is referred to as "CPE" (Customer-Premises Equipment)
This is useful to the ISP for various reasons, it can assist with troubleshooting.
It can enable the ISP to implement end-to-end QoS,
and implement traffic engineering / access restrictions (such as spoof prevention or anti-malware port 25 blocking), before the packet even goes to the ISP's distribution/aggregation router.
You left your router using the default password they assigned to it.
It was a default password, so of course they know it, other people know it too (who you should trust less than your ISP), and of course they can connect to it, if you can.
In fact, they can require you provide them management access to the router, or opt to disconnect your service instead.
Basically, Verizon is doing you a big favor and you're being persnickety. Verizon's actions are intelligent, your actions are negligent, and your response is absolutely atrocious.
As an ISP, they should of course know the publicly reachable IP addresses of your router, and they should take reasonable steps to secure their network without excessively intruding upon their users.
You are responsible for your router, but so is your ISP. There is a shared responsibility here.
They assigned the password, so they know it, and can change it, until you change it.
I believe it is your responsibility to change it,
and if you fail, they have justification in taking steps.
Changing your password for you is the least disruptive thing they can do.. serial number is not that secure, anyways... they could have instead opted to disconnect you, and wait for you to call in from a cell phone and receive instructions to change your router password and call back to be reconnected to FiOS.
Paypal is worldwide, but as far as I know, when this particular service operated, the option to use this particular service, virtual debit card was only shown on PayPal's US website to US customers...
Is there a way you can get a virtual account number with multiple physical cards issued against the same CC account?
Of course, optimally would be a physical card that changes its own magstripe, based on you typing a code and a mnemonic identifying the vendor.
Online shopping may be risky... However, offline shopping can involve the same risks.
Old fashioned physical theft by employees is a real possibility, especially in restaurants where your physical CC leaves your sight.
While the cashier is behind the counter, you have no idea they are running your card through a hidden skimmer.
Also, big companies store CC information in their computer systems nowadays, just like online stores do.
Virtual account numbers are nice, and solve one problem, but they aren't comprehensive.
Especially if you use the physical CC associated with the same account you have virtual numbers against.
If your physical CC gets lost, the thief can make unlimited charges against your entire account, and when you get it cancelled,
suddenly you can't use your virtual accounts based on that card anymore either......
The advise to youngsters against taking credit cards is flawwed. Because of how the current financial industry and credit reporting works.
If you never get a credit card or loan of any type, you will not have a credit history.
This will be very bad later, when you need to apply for credit or a loan, you will be denied, or require a cosigner, and pay a much higher interest rate..
Unless the youngster is going to be independently wealthy, and never need to borrow money for the rest of their lives (Going to buy your house outright with cash, going to buy all your cars outright with cash, no mortgages, no loans), the sooner you start a credit history, and the higher quality the history you establish, the better (more financially beneficial) terms you will be able to negotiate in the future, when you need a loan.
I would suggest any youngster get at least one credit card, but be very careful and judicious in the management of it.
Even if that means you get a debit card, and leave the credit card locked away in a safe, and only use it once a month.
For the most part, it's beneficial for just about anyone to have at least one CC.
It's not a problem. A jury trial is only required to prosecute you of a crime you actually have committed.
Holding you imprisoned based on a crime you thought about committing, doesn't require you to be guilty.
Also, your inability to gain access to a lawyer, see visitors, or have anyone be informed of where you are (or that you are held), due to restrictions imposed on people thinking about terrorism, will prevent you from challenging the authorities' decision to hold you.
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose my boss could invite me out for lunch, fire me, and then keep my car, which is parked on company property and accessible via a locked gate with a keycard. My keycard would no longer work, and he'd be under no obligation to do anything for me, a non-employee. Heck, my iPod in my desk drawer. Gone.
He absolutely could do all these things, and none of them would be criminal.
You could have to go write legal demand letters, and possibly to court to take civil action for getting an order to compel the employer to release your property to you.
In reality he will probably come back in a few hours with police officers who will order your security folks to let them in, to allow him to confiscate his own property, and direct you to take it up as a civil matter if you object to him retrieving his iPod from the desk.
Sorry, but that's retarded. It's like saying you don't have to return a company laptop when you're fired if they forget to take it from your office before they throw you out of the building.
Well, you can't keep the laptop, but that's because it is actually a possession that belongs to the person who purchased it, and it's not part of your body like your brain and facts in your brain are.
You won't be legally required to come to their office, and scan your thumb with the laptop to unlock it, or allow your finger to be removed for their use, if you had a biometric lock on the laptop.
If the laptop was passworded and protected with TrueCrypt, you don't have to go through the extra effort of informing the former employer of all the passwords and providing all decryption keys when you return it, unless you signed an agreement that you would do so.
You don't have an obligation to take the laptop and transport it back to your employer's office, if they had authorized you to leave it at home when you were employed; you can call and tell them to come and pick it up, and you can turn it over to law enforcement as abandoned property if they fail to come pick up their property after notification.
If the laptop was broken, even if you accidentally broke it or mistreated it when you were employed, repair will be their responsibility, unless there is an agreement to the contrary
The passwords MIGHT be company property.
But someone who doesn't work for you has no obligation to do recovery work for you to get you back into possession of property, on your behalf.
I suppose you would think if he used biometric access controls, that his fingerprints and possibly his fingers became company property.
When you're fired, your job is OVER. Your right to exercise control over the City's stuff is DONE.
And so is your obligation to do any work.
Writing down or telling people lists of passwords is work.
Unless they've signed a contract to that effect, nothing forces them to use those resources to sell internet access, instead of using their circuits to sell something else (such as phone service), for example.
Telcos leave comms cables dark so often, there's a special name for it... "dark fiber"
And when telcos install FiOS-like services that utilize fiber in the process, they usually intentionally remove or destroy the now unused copper, to ensure other providers won't be able to use it for selling services in the future.
If you think they don't have any exclusion rights, you might want to re-read the rules. Or look at their actual actions more closely.
Even if you think it's a legally gray area, or the public has a right to object or prevent their exclusion, what happens in practice is a lot more important.
They definitely have at the very least a de-facto right to exclude others from using their infrastructure, or even from sharing in the use of the easements on public property, or that were created by local authorities forcing local property owners to allow for-profit enterprises to bury cable in their lawn, etc.
They retain the right to exclude... they don't have to use their circuits or equipment for internet connectivity. They don't have to sell any service at all to any customer, let-alone internet services.
The internet is not the property of an isP. There is no "right to exclude" individual internet services and still call it internet.
It is more of a "truth in advertising thing" If you advertise an internet connection, then provide full internet connectivity and don't tamper with disable or break specific internet services, otherwise you are lying.
This is like saying the FCC rules that regulate phone companies, and prevent them from participating in discriminatory practices such as blocking calls to competitors deprive telcos of their property rights.
Or that the regulations requiring telcos to let you plug in a Carter Fone, computer modem, or other equipment not provided by the telco, deprive them of their 5th amendment rights.
In other words, your video card has a hardware/software defect, that is exposed by the application's use of it.
The manufacturer should take your card, and send you a replacement that does not have the defect, if they will actually honor the warranty, that is.
So why are you buying that shiny new car in the first place? That sounds like your problem, not the lack of ability to get "credit" for the thing.
You are making some sort of value judgement here. Obviously you don't value shiny cars, even if the buyer can easily afford the loan with gobs and gobs of cash to spare, you think they should buy some junker that does not appeal to sensibilities, instead.
And there may be an opportunity cost there in taking cash out of investments such as bonds or other instruments in a tax-deferred format earning higher interest rates than the costs of loans at the time available to people of good credit standing.
Other people will have a different value opinion -- even if not shiny cars, the availability of inexpensive credit has benefits.
Odds are very likely that if you have "good" credit, you are more likely to get in over your head as well.
This is like saying if you have a more powerful table saw, you are more likely to cut yourself badly. Therefore young adults should stay away even from hand saws.
Don't get caught up into this game. Good credit scores are much easier to obtain than repairing a bad credit score and recovering from a mountain of debt for purchases that aren't asset building in the first place.
Which is why judicious use is strongly recommended. However, a younger person has fewer purchases to make and less money to spend, also. They are less likely to get themselves into trouble than someone who starts first getting access to credit and starting to deal with it and establish 'bill payment habits' only later.
Generally an automobile loan is not a good move, unless you are a salesman trying to con somebody in the first place.
People will buy automobiles on loan or (god forbid), leases, regardless. It's less costly for them, at least, if they can get a lesser interest rate.
Preferably by sidestepping dealers and taking out a direct loan with the bank they can negotiate the best rate with.
There's a difference between one day having $65,000 in fraudulent charges showing up on a credit card statement, and one day seeing your bank account balance has dropped $65,000 and is now in the negative with $50,000 in overdraft charges added.
I assure you, the latter is more distressing, as it effects even your ability to write a check or pay other bills until the whole thing gets worked out, with your bank returning items for all those bills you paid that month...
Payment in exchange for goods and services are not payment of debts. Your bus fare is paid in advance, not after the debt is incurred.
Refusing to accept coins is different from trying to refuse to accept any form of cash, by the way.
The trouble with cash is you have to carry a lot of it with you, if you plan to do that, and you have to deal with things like change.
Cash is also easily stolen. Otherwise we wouldn't be wanting physical CCs in the first place.
The FCRA prohibits the credit reporting agencies from disclosing information about credit report pulls that were not requested to approve a consumer transaction (application for a credit or insurance transaction)
Only hard inquiries hurt. Hard inquiries pertain only to a credit or insurance transaction initiated by the consumer, and can stay on the report for up to 2 years. Your score can be effected, and hard inquiries are visible on your report.
Inquiries you perform yourself (account review) are completely invisible and don't effect your score.
Soft/promotional inquiries don't effect your score or ability to get credit. Third parties cannot see soft inquiries.
If you have lots of companies pulling soft inquiries to send you pre-screened offers for credit, this is beneficial, as they will generally cause the hard inquiries to 'fall off' of the report sooner than otherwise.
Or the rest of the world seems bizarre to the US. The US being a leader. Just because it's in the minority, doesn't mean its practice is not superior and the economic best choice.
I suppose in other countries more consumers are more responsible, do what they promise they will do, manage their finances intelligently, and live up to their obligations.
In the US, we have some people receiving government assistance who buy buy buy, people mortgaged to the hilt, and other participants in rampant consumerism who feel entitled and don't bat a second thought at ignoring all their obligations and filing bankruptcy.
Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that debtors' prisons were abolished in the US many years before they were in other countries.
Or maybe the banks are just plain greedy and throwing out some of the babies with the bathwater is just the cost of doing business to them.
Mobile phone companies do not report anything to CRAs, unless you default on your obligation to pay according to your contract.
The only other thing that might show up on your credit report due to a cell phone, would be a soft pull inquiry from when you signed up (Cell phone company will check your credit report, but not add any information to it about your cell phone accounts, if they are in good standing).
There are still people living in the exclusion zone.
So (to some extent) it must be habitable, although one certainly can't say it's healthy, and some places may be more dangerous than others (in terms of containing larger amounts of radioactive soil, contaminated water, vegetation, etc).
Bullshit. I bought a house without a credit history, without a cosigner, with lower interest rate than anyone else I know. I merely had to prove my identity, my steady income, my steady bill-paying history, and have a 20% down payment documented in a bank account.
In other words, you had to jump through hoops, and you managed to get a much better deal than other people you knew who were buying at that time. However, this is all anecdotal, and the 20% downpayment alone, makes you relatively unique. I believe the average downpayment is 10%
It's also possible the amount of money you were borrowing for the purchase lead the house to be better security for the debt than other peoples' you knew.
Try something more mundane like a new car purchase without credit history, where most lenders aren't willing to go the extra mile, and the asset securing the debt will depreciate in value rapidly.
In other words it's part of the ISP-Owned CPE. This is typical of customers purchasing leased line services.
And the OP naively assumed that the equipment being in their house automatically transferred legal ownership of it?
The ISP usually owns the router, and everything after the Telco demarcation up to the customer's cable, which is referred to as "CPE" (Customer-Premises Equipment)
This is useful to the ISP for various reasons, it can assist with troubleshooting. It can enable the ISP to implement end-to-end QoS, and implement traffic engineering / access restrictions (such as spoof prevention or anti-malware port 25 blocking), before the packet even goes to the ISP's distribution/aggregation router.
You left your router using the default password they assigned to it.
It was a default password, so of course they know it, other people know it too (who you should trust less than your ISP), and of course they can connect to it, if you can. In fact, they can require you provide them management access to the router, or opt to disconnect your service instead.
Basically, Verizon is doing you a big favor and you're being persnickety. Verizon's actions are intelligent, your actions are negligent, and your response is absolutely atrocious.
As an ISP, they should of course know the publicly reachable IP addresses of your router, and they should take reasonable steps to secure their network without excessively intruding upon their users.
You are responsible for your router, but so is your ISP. There is a shared responsibility here.
They assigned the password, so they know it, and can change it, until you change it.
I believe it is your responsibility to change it, and if you fail, they have justification in taking steps.
Changing your password for you is the least disruptive thing they can do.. serial number is not that secure, anyways... they could have instead opted to disconnect you, and wait for you to call in from a cell phone and receive instructions to change your router password and call back to be reconnected to FiOS.
That's neat. I've not actually used ShopSafe.
Citibank's VANs by default expire in 1 month, can only be used by one merchant; dollar amount is unlimited by default.
And you can also use the webui to "close" any of the active VANs whenever you are ready to do so.
When generating a number you can pick 'advanced options' at the last step before generating, to select number of months (up to 12) and a dollar limit.
If you used advance options, you can also increase time/dollar limits later.
Paypal is worldwide, but as far as I know, when this particular service operated, the option to use this particular service, virtual debit card was only shown on PayPal's US website to US customers...
Is there a way you can get a virtual account number with multiple physical cards issued against the same CC account?
Of course, optimally would be a physical card that changes its own magstripe, based on you typing a code and a mnemonic identifying the vendor.
Online shopping may be risky... However, offline shopping can involve the same risks.
Old fashioned physical theft by employees is a real possibility, especially in restaurants where your physical CC leaves your sight. While the cashier is behind the counter, you have no idea they are running your card through a hidden skimmer.
Also, big companies store CC information in their computer systems nowadays, just like online stores do.
Virtual account numbers are nice, and solve one problem, but they aren't comprehensive.
Especially if you use the physical CC associated with the same account you have virtual numbers against. If your physical CC gets lost, the thief can make unlimited charges against your entire account, and when you get it cancelled, suddenly you can't use your virtual accounts based on that card anymore either......
So are there more comprehensive solutions? :)
The advise to youngsters against taking credit cards is flawwed. Because of how the current financial industry and credit reporting works.
If you never get a credit card or loan of any type, you will not have a credit history. This will be very bad later, when you need to apply for credit or a loan, you will be denied, or require a cosigner, and pay a much higher interest rate..
Unless the youngster is going to be independently wealthy, and never need to borrow money for the rest of their lives (Going to buy your house outright with cash, going to buy all your cars outright with cash, no mortgages, no loans), the sooner you start a credit history, and the higher quality the history you establish, the better (more financially beneficial) terms you will be able to negotiate in the future, when you need a loan.
I would suggest any youngster get at least one credit card, but be very careful and judicious in the management of it.
Even if that means you get a debit card, and leave the credit card locked away in a safe, and only use it once a month.
For the most part, it's beneficial for just about anyone to have at least one CC.
Interesting... recurring charges longer than a year break?
I never had a problem opening up an 'active virtual account number', and extending the expiration date to 12 more months....
Citibank, Citicard virtual account numbers.
Bank of America ShopSafe
It's not a problem. A jury trial is only required to prosecute you of a crime you actually have committed.
Holding you imprisoned based on a crime you thought about committing, doesn't require you to be guilty.
Also, your inability to gain access to a lawyer, see visitors, or have anyone be informed of where you are (or that you are held), due to restrictions imposed on people thinking about terrorism, will prevent you from challenging the authorities' decision to hold you.