Sleazy Sales

Here's a sheet they use for upselling people on what many consider to be worthless insurance.

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It looks like the ball is starting to roll.

New Hampshire, North Carolina, and Arkansas have joined the list of states evaluating proposals to ban implementation of the controversial Real ID act.

Federal Trade Commission - Forgot their job apparently

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On May 10th, 2006, President Bush signed an executive order to create an Identity Theft Task force in order to identify concrete steps to reducing the identity theft problem.

On Dec 26th, 2006, the task force put out a public call for comments to "improve the effectiveness and efficiency of federal government efforts to reduce identity theft".

Of course, I submitted details about implementing Credit Freezes and halting data abuse

There were off to a good start when the interim results of the task force included language about Credit Freezes:

For residents of states in which state law authorizes a credit freeze, consider placing a credit freeze on their credit file. This option is most useful when the breach includes information that can be used to open a new account, such as SSNs. A credit freeze cuts off third party access to a consumer’s credit report, thereby effectively preventing the issuance of new credit in the consumer’s name.

But problems started when the press release mysteriously omitted the information. They'd already failed to include it in their consumer education initiative though they're happy to recommend Fraud alerts or Credit monitoring for FREE! Well, whee! That's just great. Thanks for paying for my worthless monitoring service which will tell me in horrific real time that I'm being ripped off rather than actually do anything to stop it.

Failing to include credit freeze information was nothing short of incompetence.

Sadly, on release of the final recommendations some time later, freezes were only barely mentioned and even then, discouraged. This is hardly the first time I've seen government incompetence up close, but considering the importance of the issue, it was still discouraging. Bottom line, the FTC and in particular Ms. Bourne Farrell and Alberto Gonzales failed the President and the citizens they are supposed to serve.

George W. Bush

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Showing his usually disregard for Congress, the American people, and rules, Bush named an ambassador in a way that circumvented Congressional oversight.

The appointment, made while lawmakers were out of town on spring break, prompted angry rebukes from Democrats, who said Bush's action may even be illegal.

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How very interesting. This project was designed to strip the DRM from iTunes music so you can play them on any player or in any program you wish (as you are entitled to under fair use laws).

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This is cool. Some people took an offhand comment from the world's leading RFID privacy expert, Katherine Albrecht, and is trying to make it a reality. Some Dutch researchers are working on a portable RFID shield. I wonder about their ability to actually block the RFID transmission of a target chip rather than just interfere with the transmission.

UPDATE:

I contacted the author of the RFID Guardian research to ask the following question:

Just one question. Does this actually prevent a tag from reporting to a reader or just give the reader fake data so that the reader can't tell which one actually came from the tag?

And her response:

The RFID Guardian actually jams tag responses from reaching the RFID reader.

Neato.

They dropped their "don't be evil" motto for a reason

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I love Google and almost all they do, but they've got to stop with the data brokering. Of course, of all data brokering companies, I trust them more since they keep they will actually fight to protect your privacy unlike some other companies.

George W. Bush

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The "War on Terror" is political spin initiated by President Bush to justify using "wartime" powers indefinitely. Just like the "War on Drugs", the war on terror will never end.

Nobody disagrees to giving a little leeway to our commander in chief during a clear and present need, but that's the point: a war on terror that lasts an indefinite amount of time is neither clear, nor present.

It's about danged time that someone in a high position finally dropped this marketing ploy where it belongs.

Hey buddy... wanna rebate?

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In a trend that we hope continues, Best Buy Canada has killed mail in rebates. Companies have been ripping off customers for years with rebates so it's nice to see the trend finally reversing.

Suck it all down

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Data Brokering (what I refer to as data brokering) is the practice of buying and assembling personal information and then reselling it. As opposed to credit reporting companies, these people collect everything they can about you. Companies like Facebook and Choicepoint for example.

James Derrell White, 41, who happens to live in Alpharetta, Ga., where ChoicePoint is based, was denied a job with Home Depot this year because data provided by ChoicePoint incorrectly identified him as a felon. "We thought we were in a bad dream," says Julie White, James' wife.

Data brokers have very little regulation which is what leads to problems like these.

"No matter how good any company's attitudes toward privacy, there are too many players in the (data-collecting) industry — too many intricate parts when it comes to privacy issues — to expect self-regulation to effectively deal with the problems," Solove says.

Hear, hear! We need laws and we need laws now.