Brilliantly written though not just a little depressing. Tags: George Bush, POTUS

So I know that to buy a website that either the name of a famous person or business in the hopes of making them pay you bunches of money when they get smart enough to want that site is Cybersquatting and is illegal. Simple enough. I also know that buying a domain that similar to a major site in the hopes of getting traffic from people who make spelling mistakes is also illegal. For example, if I were to register Hotmial and I got lots of traffic from people who meant to go to Hotmail. Clearly bad.

But here's the important question: what about ad squatters? Ad squatters are those people who buy up every possible domain that consists of words or letter combinations that people would likely buy, park annoying ads on them and leave them there for all time. For you to actually get that site, you would have to pay a lot more money than if the site weren't registered assuming the ad squatter decides to sell at all.

I say ad squatting should also be illegal because if someone like me wants to register a domain name for a new business or website, I'm screwed because every possible good name has been taken. If some real company or individual somewhere legitimately used the site for their own blog or store, I wouldn't mind, but these jerks only have worthless ads and no content and do nothing to add to the Internet as a whole. In fact they make it worse because search engines often list them as relevant due to the domain name alone when in fact they have nothing useful on their pages at all.

I've read the stories about how these people make millions a year on these annoying ad pages. I don't begrudge someone from coming up with a brilliant idea and making a lot of money, but when you're choking the opportunities of everyone else to do it at the same time, that's not ok.

Tags: Advertising, Cybersquatting, Scams - Ripoffs - Dirty Tricks

The Thomas v. Captiol case was something we all watched with horror as some poor woman was slapped with a fine of $220,000 simply for having downloaded some music. However, that case has recently been overturned due to the fact that the RIAA's argument that merely having copyrighted music available for download is a crime.

Tags: Big Business, DRM, Jammie Thomas, Thomas v Capitol, Your Rights

It's hardly surprising that there has been a huge backlash against Spore due to the decision to include DRM. I'm a little surprised, but very happy, that someone had the tenacity to file a class action lawsuit against them for it.

In the end, no company has the right to control your game playing to this degree. It's a shame that a game from such a well-renowned company would be smeared and tarnished because their foolish decision to treat their customers like criminals.

Tags: DRM, Gaming, Spore, Your Rights

Most credit reporting companies have made it as difficult and cumbersome as possible to get a credit freeze because they desperately hope that by putting barriers in your way, they can discourage you from doing it (in my opinion). That said, Transunion has suddenly decided to offer FREE freezes to everyone, even people who live in a state that allow them to charge a fee. Not only that, but they are also allowing you to do it through an ONLINE system rather than a cumbersome certified mail system.

I'm so shocked I had to to confirm it and here it is. There's no telling how long this will be the case so make sure you get it done now while you can.

Tags: Good Stuff, Identity Theft, Transunion

Brilliant: That aside, the news is that Verizon has decided to no longer force contracts on people who already have a Verizon phone and will only use them when people want to buy a phone at the subsidized rate (in other words, those penny phones that actually cost several hundred dollars). It's hard to believe that a company like Verizon would do such a thing, but the Wall Street Journal confirms it. They say that there will be an activation fee, but no termination fee. Finally! Tags: Big Business, Good Stuff, Verizon

When this guy tried to sign up for Comcast cable without providing his Social Security Number, they harassed him saying that they were required to ask for it under the Patriot Act.

Deal with this by first finding out what they're going to do with it and how they're going to protect it. I would most likely use the '0' trick or just make sure your credit reports are frozen and they wouldn't be able to run credit on you even if they tried.

Tags: Big Business, Comcast, Data Abuse, Data Brokering, Fraud Waste and Abuse, SSN

Sarah Palin's Yahoo account has been broken into and e-mails found there posted to Wikileaks. I would say this was a pretty rotten thing to do, but the perpetrators claim they did it to prove that Palin has been using her private e-mail to circumvent recordkeeping laws about government business. If that's true, then perhaps this needed to happen.

Tags: Account Security, Congress, Hacking, Onstar, Sarah Palin

When will people ever learn?

How reassuring. So they won't be able to take my data from it, but they'll be able to clone it and frame me or just use the unique ID to track me remotely. But they're going to be passing out sleeves that prevent it from being read remotely without your authorization. So if you don't find it bulky and actually use it, you'll be partially protected until it's time to pull it out to be read or if someone gets a few seconds alone with your wallet to pull it out and clone it.

Tags: Driver's License, New York, RFID

It seems that online predators are getting tired of savvy kids that know better than to be lured (or they're just getting lazy/impatient). Either way, one police group is warning that predators are shifting to a strategy of blackmail instead.

As always, be aware of what your kids are doing online and know who their friends are. Make sure they know what to do when threatened by someone online.

Tags: Families, Internet, Kids, Police