Yes. My credit with all three agencies is frozen (as is my wife's). The fraudulent card was issued before I had the freeze on. That happened back in my blissfully ignorant days when I thought my information was secure because I was careful about it. Now I know that your information is only as secure as the least secure company holding your data. And with breaches happening so often, it's best to just assume your data is out there and act accordingly.
One of the big problems is that big agencies like Equifax contribute to politicians and hire lobbyists.
Imagine your example, but when you steal 10 cookies, you give your mother a cookie. In exchange, she wags her finger at you for stealing cookies but nothing else. Meanwhile, your younger brother has no such arrangement and gets grounded for a week for eating a cookie crumb that wasn't his. After the most recent Cookie Stealing Incident, your mother moans about how horrible it is that people steal cookies and pledges to get to the bottom of it, but then ups the punishment on your younger brother while munching on a cookie you gave her.
I've had my credit frozen since way before the Equifax breach. Somehow (I've never found out how and likely never will), someone got my name, SSN, DOB, and address. They used this to open a credit card in my name. (RED FLAG #1: They got Mother's Maiden Name wrong. So much for security with that.) They then immediately changed the address to an address in another state (RED FLAG #2) but not before paying for rush delivery of the card. Thanks to the latter, the card was rushed out before the address change went through and it came to me instead of to them. Had this not happened, I would have known about it when the collection agency was busting down my doors to collect debt that "I" ran up. While the card was on its way, a woman representing "me" called asking for a $5,000 cash advance before the card was activated (RED FLAG #3). This was thankfully denied. Still, none of these red flags caused the credit card company (Capital One) to rethink whether this was fraud.
When I called Capital One to ask about this card, they first insisted that I had opened it. Then, they claimed that my wife opened it without my knowledge. (She was standing right there terrified about what this meant.) Finally, they admitted it was probably fraud, but refused to give me more information. As they put it "if we give you their address and you go and shoot them, we're liable." Yes, that's a direct quote. They were concerned I might perpetrate violence on the people who opened a credit card in my name and they'd be legally liable. They weren't concerned about legal liability for opening a line of credit in my name, though. No issue there for them to worry about.
The police looked into it but a) didn't know how to track where IP addresses came from much less track people across the Internet and b) weren't interested in pursuing a case that they would need to hand off to another department for the arrest. That and Capital One giving the police the runaround (told them to call a line that went to perpetually unanswered voice mail) meant that the people responsible for this were never arrested.
The most I was able to do was freeze my (and my wife's) credit file. This prevents this from happening in the future since my information is obviously "out there." However, it becomes a pain whenever I need a loan or anything else that needs my credit file thawed.
By propping Trump up and keeping him from giving in to his basest urges (e.g. ordering the assassination of Assad because he's upset at how Syria's turning out), they're stopping the immediate harm but allowing long-term harm to occur. They're essentially slapping a crude patch on a dam that's sprung a leak. Yes, it stops the immediate issue, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem and when you have to do this multiple times you're better off warning the town downstream that they're going to be flooded.
Unfortunately, the average company would probably structure it as follows:
You're giving a tiny desk with a highly uncomfortable chair in a tiny cubicle with hard fluorescent lighting. How do you want to spend your "raise"?
Slightly less uncomfortable chair Slightly larger cubicle Slightly bigger desk Slightly better lighting system
Each only gives you an incremental upgrade so you only get the extra comfy chair, big desk, private office, and natural lighting after 40 years of working for the company.
I've noticed that I've been getting headaches every day when I'm at work. When I'm at home (during the weekend or days off), I don't get these headaches. Now, it could be that I'm looking at monitors for 8 hours straight. (I try to rest my eyes and focus on other things, but in a cubicle environment there's not much "far away" to focus on.) It could also be the fluorescent lighting overhead. Either way, it's getting tiresome to feel my eyes begin to throb at noon and have a bad headache by 4pm.
Natural light - and a spot where I could focus my eyes on something farther away than the wall behind my monitor - would be a great perk.
Meanwhile, the ISPs are trying to claim that the FTC doesn't have jurisdiction. They pushed for the FCC to push it off to the FTC and now are trying to push the FTC off. They also want the FCC to rule that states can't make their own rules. If the ISPs succeed, then they'll be immune to any regulatory agency.
It wouldn't even need to be strong enough to hold indefinitely. If it could be designed to seal the leak and trigger a warning, it could be properly repaired later on while keeping valuable air from leaking out.
Either that, or to send a whole bunch of (more) money to defense contractors to get specific "Space Force" ships created, crew trained, etc. The actual "Space Force" needs within the Air Force are minimal - with the Russian and Chinese threats best handled through diplomatic channels at the moment - but making it its own separate "Force" will increase pressure to funnel more money to it and beef it up as much as possible even if there isn't a threat worthy of the Space Force.
Of course, the third option is a combination of the two. They could be making a Space Force that's essentially the TSA In Space. A lot of money being sent to companies to create complex systems, but in the end an ineffective operation that doesn't actually stop any threats.
I wonder if the development of GPS and other navigation technologies also further reduced any risk that area had simply by making shipping much safer. No longer would a large ship become lost at sea due to a storm. You could just check your GPS and head for the nearest port or use your radio to call for help. In a similar way that putting a high resolution camera in everyone's pockets hasn't led to a ton of high res photos/videos of Bigfoot and UFOs.
I'd argue that the problem is too little competition. Especially if you're relying on your cable company for Internet service. In most places, the local cable company is the only Internet access provider or one of two providers. And by "local", I mean "giant cable company who serves your area." Without meaningful competition, a company doesn't need to invest in customer service. After all, customer service costs money and customers have few, if any, other options. For example, Charter's Spectrum is the only wired Internet provider in my area. So even if I hate them (I'd definitely say I'm highly dissatisfied), I have no other options. I can reduce what I pay them by cutting the TV service cord and not having a home phone via them, but I'm still tethered to them by Internet service. They know this and can engage in whatever trickery they like knowing that I can't switch without significantly impacting my home Internet usage.
Now, if there were four or five different providers, then Spectrum would be forced to either give me good service or see their customers flee to Providers 2, 3, 4, or 5. The providers with good customer service would increase their customer base while the ones with bad customer service would either be forced to improve or go out of business.
This would also fix issues with TV service. Providers with good TV service would thrive while those stuck in the past would continually lose customers.
Unfortunately, too many people think "posted to the Internet" = "public domain." This includes people who think they can just grab any photo online and do with it what they want and companies who need a photo for an advertisement and just grab something they see online. Though this seems like a common sense ruling, it's nice to see it reiterated that "it was posted online" is not a license to do whatever you like with the photo (absent a clear license or other statement giving you that permission).
I definitely don't think Trump stands a realistic chance of becoming President For Life - not without tossing our Constitution out the window which would hopefully result in a huge march on D.C. However, the very fact that he jokes about it like that is concerning. Words matter, especially when you're President of the United States.
Unless Trump wasn't joking when he praised China's President as follows: "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."
Investors are willing to set legal aside if it'll be profitable after the lawsuits/fines. If you can make a service that brings in $10 million and might incur a $100,000 fine for breaking the law, investors will pile on because of profit.
Years ago, my wife and I were friends with someone - I'll call her C. After C's wedding and the birth of our first child, C and my wife had a falling out and didn't speak to each other again. We heard from some mutual friends that she moved out of the area, but that was it. Years passed and we get a call out of the blue from a collections agency asking us where C was because she owed them some money. We told them that we hadn't spoken to C in years, but they kept calling back. Eventually, they got the point and stopped calling us, but it took quite awhile for them to decide to quit. (We don't know if C ever paid her debt or whether she still owes it.)
Now combine this with giving collection agencies access to Facebook: "We see that you were once Friends with C on Facebook. She owes us money. Tell us where she is now!"
A lot of people are (rightfully) laughing at this "pledge", but let's assume they're serious for a moment. I still have reservations about them getting "separate express consent." What do you want to bet that this "consent" will be buried on page 5 of a legalese document that nobody reads? Then, when questioned on it, they'll point to the customers "consenting" even if they didn't know they had.
Except security testing from DEV to QA is an important step. To make the analogy accurate, you do your security test by printing out the code, placing it in front of an office hamster (Hammy the Security Testing Hamster) and see if he shrieks at it. If he doesn't, the code is safe. Hammy has never really caught a bug in your code, but management refuses to let you skip the Hammy Step because of the possibility of a security issue getting through after Hammy has been let go.
Charter can just shut down their systems and everybody that is using them would have to switch.
That assumes there's an option to switch to. Where I live, my only wired broadband option is Spectrum. FIOS wasn't expanded to my area so they're not an option. The closest other things to an alternative for me are DSL (much slower, older technology that the phone companies want to shut down, and costs just as much as Spectrum) or going fully mobile (slower, low caps or throttling for "unlimited" plans, much more expensive, wouldn't be cost-effective for my household downloading 500GB a month). If Spectrum shut down tomorrow, I'd be left with no Internet.
Of course, I don't think it'll come to that. At worst, Spectrum would spin off a "Time Warner Cable NY" company that's technically different but essentially the same as Spectrum. Then, after some time passed and they greased the right palms, they'd reacquire TWC-NY.
That's partly because the media companies were threatened by Netflix's size. They saw how the music companies gave Apple their content and then Apple grew large enough to dictate the terms. The media companies want to prevent that and are actively working to knock Netflix down. Part of this process is to starve Netflix of content either by not renewing licenses or by raising the price of licences so that Netflix won't renew. They don't really care that this might drive people to piracy, in fact they're convinced that it'll make people flock to theaters and buy DVD/Blu-Ray discs. (It won't.)
When I was a kid, my local librarians knew me by name. I would come into the library, take out a stack of books, come back a week later, return them, and take out another stack. Now that I'm a father, my boys love going to the library. Yes, there are still books there and they enjoy that, but there are also movies, music, audio books, museum passes, 3D printers, computers, and so much more.
I'll admit that I like Amazon. Their Prime service is very nice and I like being able to fit thousands of books on my Kindle. Still, they are no library replacement. Not even close. Replacing libraries with Amazon.com would be a travesty.
I'd definitely echo that. Back when I was a kid, libraries had books and, if you were really lucky, microfiche copies of papers/magazines. They were an invaluable resource then, but if that's all they were today I could see why people would think they were outdated. If I pictured the library only as a place where a kid could look up information in a physical encyclopedia or on microfiche, I'd call it outdated also. Step into virtually any decently funded library, though, and you'll see they haven't kept themselves stuck in the past. There are movies and music alongside the books. They have computers with Internet access. (Handy for people who don't have Internet access at home or even don't have homes!) Some have 3D printers and other "new technology" items. They are used as meeting spaces for community groups. My library even has an app that I can use to request books and renew them.
Best of all, all of this is virtually free. Yes, their funding comes out of your property taxes, but it's well worth it. I'd eagerly double the "library tax" I pay if the library used it to improve even more. Let's see Amazon do this at the same cost as your average local library and then we'll talk about replacing libraries with Amazon. (I'll still be against it, of course, but I'd like to see Amazon try mostly because I think they'd fail.)
My library has a 3D printer that's free to use. My kids love going there, finding a pattern on Thingiverse, and printing out something. (One day I might even try designing my own pattern.) We use the DVD rentals at our library also as well as audiobooks, events, and so much more. I know people love complaining about taxes, but I'd willingly double the amount of taxes that I pay for my local library. The more resources they have, the more awesome they are, and the more kids will be exposed to the awesome public libraries.
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Yes. My credit with all three agencies is frozen (as is my wife's). The fraudulent card was issued before I had the freeze on. That happened back in my blissfully ignorant days when I thought my information was secure because I was careful about it. Now I know that your information is only as secure as the least secure company holding your data. And with breaches happening so often, it's best to just assume your data is out there and act accordingly.
One of the big problems is that big agencies like Equifax contribute to politicians and hire lobbyists.
Imagine your example, but when you steal 10 cookies, you give your mother a cookie. In exchange, she wags her finger at you for stealing cookies but nothing else. Meanwhile, your younger brother has no such arrangement and gets grounded for a week for eating a cookie crumb that wasn't his. After the most recent Cookie Stealing Incident, your mother moans about how horrible it is that people steal cookies and pledges to get to the bottom of it, but then ups the punishment on your younger brother while munching on a cookie you gave her.
I've had my credit frozen since way before the Equifax breach. Somehow (I've never found out how and likely never will), someone got my name, SSN, DOB, and address. They used this to open a credit card in my name. (RED FLAG #1: They got Mother's Maiden Name wrong. So much for security with that.) They then immediately changed the address to an address in another state (RED FLAG #2) but not before paying for rush delivery of the card. Thanks to the latter, the card was rushed out before the address change went through and it came to me instead of to them. Had this not happened, I would have known about it when the collection agency was busting down my doors to collect debt that "I" ran up. While the card was on its way, a woman representing "me" called asking for a $5,000 cash advance before the card was activated (RED FLAG #3). This was thankfully denied. Still, none of these red flags caused the credit card company (Capital One) to rethink whether this was fraud.
When I called Capital One to ask about this card, they first insisted that I had opened it. Then, they claimed that my wife opened it without my knowledge. (She was standing right there terrified about what this meant.) Finally, they admitted it was probably fraud, but refused to give me more information. As they put it "if we give you their address and you go and shoot them, we're liable." Yes, that's a direct quote. They were concerned I might perpetrate violence on the people who opened a credit card in my name and they'd be legally liable. They weren't concerned about legal liability for opening a line of credit in my name, though. No issue there for them to worry about.
The police looked into it but a) didn't know how to track where IP addresses came from much less track people across the Internet and b) weren't interested in pursuing a case that they would need to hand off to another department for the arrest. That and Capital One giving the police the runaround (told them to call a line that went to perpetually unanswered voice mail) meant that the people responsible for this were never arrested.
The most I was able to do was freeze my (and my wife's) credit file. This prevents this from happening in the future since my information is obviously "out there." However, it becomes a pain whenever I need a loan or anything else that needs my credit file thawed.
By propping Trump up and keeping him from giving in to his basest urges (e.g. ordering the assassination of Assad because he's upset at how Syria's turning out), they're stopping the immediate harm but allowing long-term harm to occur. They're essentially slapping a crude patch on a dam that's sprung a leak. Yes, it stops the immediate issue, but it doesn't fix the underlying problem and when you have to do this multiple times you're better off warning the town downstream that they're going to be flooded.
Unfortunately, the average company would probably structure it as follows:
You're giving a tiny desk with a highly uncomfortable chair in a tiny cubicle with hard fluorescent lighting. How do you want to spend your "raise"?
Slightly less uncomfortable chair
Slightly larger cubicle
Slightly bigger desk
Slightly better lighting system
Each only gives you an incremental upgrade so you only get the extra comfy chair, big desk, private office, and natural lighting after 40 years of working for the company.
I've noticed that I've been getting headaches every day when I'm at work. When I'm at home (during the weekend or days off), I don't get these headaches. Now, it could be that I'm looking at monitors for 8 hours straight. (I try to rest my eyes and focus on other things, but in a cubicle environment there's not much "far away" to focus on.) It could also be the fluorescent lighting overhead. Either way, it's getting tiresome to feel my eyes begin to throb at noon and have a bad headache by 4pm.
Natural light - and a spot where I could focus my eyes on something farther away than the wall behind my monitor - would be a great perk.
Meanwhile, the ISPs are trying to claim that the FTC doesn't have jurisdiction. They pushed for the FCC to push it off to the FTC and now are trying to push the FTC off. They also want the FCC to rule that states can't make their own rules. If the ISPs succeed, then they'll be immune to any regulatory agency.
It wouldn't even need to be strong enough to hold indefinitely. If it could be designed to seal the leak and trigger a warning, it could be properly repaired later on while keeping valuable air from leaking out.
Either that, or to send a whole bunch of (more) money to defense contractors to get specific "Space Force" ships created, crew trained, etc. The actual "Space Force" needs within the Air Force are minimal - with the Russian and Chinese threats best handled through diplomatic channels at the moment - but making it its own separate "Force" will increase pressure to funnel more money to it and beef it up as much as possible even if there isn't a threat worthy of the Space Force.
Of course, the third option is a combination of the two. They could be making a Space Force that's essentially the TSA In Space. A lot of money being sent to companies to create complex systems, but in the end an ineffective operation that doesn't actually stop any threats.
I used Lotus Notes about two decades ago. I still shudder at the thought of it.
I wonder if the development of GPS and other navigation technologies also further reduced any risk that area had simply by making shipping much safer. No longer would a large ship become lost at sea due to a storm. You could just check your GPS and head for the nearest port or use your radio to call for help. In a similar way that putting a high resolution camera in everyone's pockets hasn't led to a ton of high res photos/videos of Bigfoot and UFOs.
I'd argue that the problem is too little competition. Especially if you're relying on your cable company for Internet service. In most places, the local cable company is the only Internet access provider or one of two providers. And by "local", I mean "giant cable company who serves your area." Without meaningful competition, a company doesn't need to invest in customer service. After all, customer service costs money and customers have few, if any, other options. For example, Charter's Spectrum is the only wired Internet provider in my area. So even if I hate them (I'd definitely say I'm highly dissatisfied), I have no other options. I can reduce what I pay them by cutting the TV service cord and not having a home phone via them, but I'm still tethered to them by Internet service. They know this and can engage in whatever trickery they like knowing that I can't switch without significantly impacting my home Internet usage.
Now, if there were four or five different providers, then Spectrum would be forced to either give me good service or see their customers flee to Providers 2, 3, 4, or 5. The providers with good customer service would increase their customer base while the ones with bad customer service would either be forced to improve or go out of business.
This would also fix issues with TV service. Providers with good TV service would thrive while those stuck in the past would continually lose customers.
Unfortunately, too many people think "posted to the Internet" = "public domain." This includes people who think they can just grab any photo online and do with it what they want and companies who need a photo for an advertisement and just grab something they see online. Though this seems like a common sense ruling, it's nice to see it reiterated that "it was posted online" is not a license to do whatever you like with the photo (absent a clear license or other statement giving you that permission).
I definitely don't think Trump stands a realistic chance of becoming President For Life - not without tossing our Constitution out the window which would hopefully result in a huge march on D.C. However, the very fact that he jokes about it like that is concerning. Words matter, especially when you're President of the United States.
Unless Trump wasn't joking when he praised China's President as follows: "He's now president for life. President for life. No, he's great. And look, he was able to do that. I think it's great. Maybe we'll have to give that a shot some day."
Investors are willing to set legal aside if it'll be profitable after the lawsuits/fines. If you can make a service that brings in $10 million and might incur a $100,000 fine for breaking the law, investors will pile on because of profit.
Years ago, my wife and I were friends with someone - I'll call her C. After C's wedding and the birth of our first child, C and my wife had a falling out and didn't speak to each other again. We heard from some mutual friends that she moved out of the area, but that was it. Years passed and we get a call out of the blue from a collections agency asking us where C was because she owed them some money. We told them that we hadn't spoken to C in years, but they kept calling back. Eventually, they got the point and stopped calling us, but it took quite awhile for them to decide to quit. (We don't know if C ever paid her debt or whether she still owes it.)
Now combine this with giving collection agencies access to Facebook: "We see that you were once Friends with C on Facebook. She owes us money. Tell us where she is now!"
A lot of people are (rightfully) laughing at this "pledge", but let's assume they're serious for a moment. I still have reservations about them getting "separate express consent." What do you want to bet that this "consent" will be buried on page 5 of a legalese document that nobody reads? Then, when questioned on it, they'll point to the customers "consenting" even if they didn't know they had.
Except security testing from DEV to QA is an important step. To make the analogy accurate, you do your security test by printing out the code, placing it in front of an office hamster (Hammy the Security Testing Hamster) and see if he shrieks at it. If he doesn't, the code is safe. Hammy has never really caught a bug in your code, but management refuses to let you skip the Hammy Step because of the possibility of a security issue getting through after Hammy has been let go.
That assumes there's an option to switch to. Where I live, my only wired broadband option is Spectrum. FIOS wasn't expanded to my area so they're not an option. The closest other things to an alternative for me are DSL (much slower, older technology that the phone companies want to shut down, and costs just as much as Spectrum) or going fully mobile (slower, low caps or throttling for "unlimited" plans, much more expensive, wouldn't be cost-effective for my household downloading 500GB a month). If Spectrum shut down tomorrow, I'd be left with no Internet.
Of course, I don't think it'll come to that. At worst, Spectrum would spin off a "Time Warner Cable NY" company that's technically different but essentially the same as Spectrum. Then, after some time passed and they greased the right palms, they'd reacquire TWC-NY.
Thanks. I do have a Windows 10 computer so I'll have to try this out.
That's partly because the media companies were threatened by Netflix's size. They saw how the music companies gave Apple their content and then Apple grew large enough to dictate the terms. The media companies want to prevent that and are actively working to knock Netflix down. Part of this process is to starve Netflix of content either by not renewing licenses or by raising the price of licences so that Netflix won't renew. They don't really care that this might drive people to piracy, in fact they're convinced that it'll make people flock to theaters and buy DVD/Blu-Ray discs. (It won't.)
When I was a kid, my local librarians knew me by name. I would come into the library, take out a stack of books, come back a week later, return them, and take out another stack. Now that I'm a father, my boys love going to the library. Yes, there are still books there and they enjoy that, but there are also movies, music, audio books, museum passes, 3D printers, computers, and so much more.
I'll admit that I like Amazon. Their Prime service is very nice and I like being able to fit thousands of books on my Kindle. Still, they are no library replacement. Not even close. Replacing libraries with Amazon.com would be a travesty.
I'd definitely echo that. Back when I was a kid, libraries had books and, if you were really lucky, microfiche copies of papers/magazines. They were an invaluable resource then, but if that's all they were today I could see why people would think they were outdated. If I pictured the library only as a place where a kid could look up information in a physical encyclopedia or on microfiche, I'd call it outdated also. Step into virtually any decently funded library, though, and you'll see they haven't kept themselves stuck in the past. There are movies and music alongside the books. They have computers with Internet access. (Handy for people who don't have Internet access at home or even don't have homes!) Some have 3D printers and other "new technology" items. They are used as meeting spaces for community groups. My library even has an app that I can use to request books and renew them.
Best of all, all of this is virtually free. Yes, their funding comes out of your property taxes, but it's well worth it. I'd eagerly double the "library tax" I pay if the library used it to improve even more. Let's see Amazon do this at the same cost as your average local library and then we'll talk about replacing libraries with Amazon. (I'll still be against it, of course, but I'd like to see Amazon try mostly because I think they'd fail.)
My library has a 3D printer that's free to use. My kids love going there, finding a pattern on Thingiverse, and printing out something. (One day I might even try designing my own pattern.) We use the DVD rentals at our library also as well as audiobooks, events, and so much more. I know people love complaining about taxes, but I'd willingly double the amount of taxes that I pay for my local library. The more resources they have, the more awesome they are, and the more kids will be exposed to the awesome public libraries.