(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

Some good news for today. Once known as the 8th largest spammer in the world, now facing prison and forfiture of all his earnings.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

Digg users are reporting that the "Church of $cientology" has posted a response website to the continued on and offline harrassment by the group calling themselves "Anonymous". However, the poster of this article points out that the "death threat" video on the Scientology server is actually better quality that the one on Youtube.

If this is true, it means that Scientology has the original copy of the video and they either:

1) Received the video through some other means and posted it to Youtube themselves to publicize it.

2) They created the video and are trying dirty tactics to discredit Anonymous

I can believe both theories. I wouldn't put it past Scientology to do something like that, but I also wouldn't be surprised if someone sent them a real death threat. First, others have done far fewer terrible things to get death threats and also the "group" called Anonymous isn't really a group. It's anyone and everyone who feels that the Co$ is bad and wishes to join the movement against them.

That means any crackpot could call themselves Anonymous. Even someone willing to make death threats (which would be the exact worst thing to do).

Watch out for thieves

(Image is used under the Pixabay license)

If just-bought items are stolen out of your car in the parking lot, don't give up hope. The couple in this story went back to the store the items were bought from and warned them that someone would probably try to return them for cash later. That "someone" did and that "someone" was caught and arrested. The couple got their items back too 🙂

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Ever tried to cancel a service only to be drawn and quartered by the employees who's job it is to prevent you from canceling? It doesn't seem fair really, all you want to do is cancel a service, but if you do so successfully, some shmuck on the other end gets a negative mark on his/her record. Well, that's not really your problem so use the advice in the Consumerists "9 Confessions of a Retentions Representative" to make your way through the process with minimal effort (including advice about getting out of an early termination fee).

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

Four people who had flown to DC to share their stories of credit woe with the congress members who are involved in the credit card bill of rights were deflected by a mandate by the committee that they must release their full financial history to the public (not just to the people involved in the committee, but the PUBLIC) before they could testify.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

The agencies that are supposed to protect us turned against us. It's depressing that more hasn't been done about this and sooner.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC])

Drug companies make so much money off their medicine, it's no leap to think that there's a vast amount of corruption in the industry.

"Often controversial, seldom liked. The FCC."

(Image is in the Public Domain)

It's quite common for the agencies that are supposed to protect us to fail miserably and repeatedly.

It's quite uncommon for Congress to actually do something about it. It's about time.

I've had a Yahoo! account practically as long as I've been on the Internet. I've practically abandoned the mail because of the amount of spam it receives every day, but I still use it from time to time and it has a lot of historical and nostalgic value due to the e-mails that are still in there.

I've also used my account for the Yahoo! Answers service to help spread information about credit freezes and avoiding scams like lifelock. I'm guessing that last one is why I got a generic letter like this:

Long story short, I asked them for an explanation, and their responses were all BS of one form or another. I used to have a lot longer and more detailed description of what happened next, but rather than get into all that, I'll leave it as simple advice: when something like this happens, complaining to the Better Business Bureau and consumer protection sites like the Consumerist for publicity are good, but won't probably help. Yahoo has the right to deal with whoever they want and, at best, you can argue that as a company that so aggressively entices people to use their services, they have at least some measure of obligation to treat people fairly, but that's a stretch.

In the end, the best possible thing you can do is avoid using Yahoo! services. There are plenty of alternatives out there and I, for one, have no interest in spending time and energy on an account that can be disabled at any time for no valid reason.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

GoDaddy, an Internet hosting provider that's no stranger to controversy of its own, has pulled hosting of RateMyCop.

RateMyCop founder Gino Sesto says he was given no notice of the suspension. When he called GoDaddy, the company told him that he'd been shut down for "suspicious activity."

When Sesto got a supervisor on the phone, the company changed its story and claimed the site had surpassed its 3 terabyte bandwidth limit, a claim that Sesto says is nonsense. "How can it be overloaded when it only had 80,00 page views today, and 400,000 yesterday?"

I wouldn't touch GoDaddy hosting with a ten foot pole. If you're hosted with them, find someone else. Now.