This is a great idea!

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With tweetMyMoney, you can monitor your account balance, deposits, withdrawals, holds and cleared checks with simple commands. And, you can even transfer funds within your account. It’s all available on Twitter, 24/7! And, the best part is, our tweetMyMoney service is free!

(Emphasis mine)

Hello Twitter banking, goodbye money.

Why anyone thought this was a good idea, I don't know. Granted, you can't transfer money to OTHER accounts, only "within you account", but someone who breaks into your twitter account can still get a lot of information about you and move your money around causing you serious overdraft fees.

The issue at heart here is that getting information about your account and moving money around only requires the security of your Twitter account (which isn't to say much). How many people put strong passwords on their Twitter like they do the bank? How much effort does Twitter put into their security?

I think the idea of alerts to your phone is kind of cool, but maybe the bank should have set up its own Twitter-like messaging service instead of using a public one that's a big fat target of bad guys already.

Ben Stein is tired of losing his money so he's going to take yours.

I can't really state this often enough. There's only one place to get free credit reports and that's AnnualCreditReport.com. Everywhere else is going to take your money and give you grief.

Freescore is that company that's been advertising with Ben Stein on TV and they've been at the same dirty tricks as all these bogus free credit score places. However, because of a blogger who posted that they're a "predatory bait-and-switch" and also pointed out that the parent company of Freescore is VERTRUE, INC who has a Better Business Bureau score of F for charging people unexpectedly and then hassling them to get their money back (quoted loosely from here).

Freescore decided to file a libel lawsuit that looks surprisingly bogus to Felix Salmon, a blogger at Reuters. Not only did they never accuse the blogger of posting anything false, but the only part of the post that could be considered libelous was a direct quote from Felix's blog in the first place!

Well, this nonsense is no surprise to anyone that's watched these companies taking people's money and providing nothing in return.

Remember, there is only one place to get free credit reports and that's AnnualCreditReport.com. Anyone else that offers you free credit reports is lying or has a gimmick.

Bad Sears, BAD!

The sick thing about this story is that the spyware wasn't a hack against these companies, but was planned and sanctioned by the companies.

Between April 2007 and January 2008, visitors to the Kmart and Sears web sites were invited to join an "online community" for which they would be paid $10 with the idea they would be helping the company learn more about their customers. It turned out they learned a lot more than participants realized or that the feds thought was reasonable. To join the "My SHC Community," users downloaded software that ended up grabbing some members' prescription information, emails, bank account data and purchases on other sites. Sears called the group that participated "small" and said the data captured by the program was at all times secure and was then destroyed.

Remember that there are no laws currently to protect against the abusive data collection and sharing practices that many companies employ. Be careful with your data and don't trust even the most reputable-seeming companies to choose your privacy over the almighty dollar.

counting calories with your iPhone only requires a barcode scan

A long time ago, I learned how easy it is to manage your health and nutrition (not to mention weight) with a simple calorie and nutrition scanning program. The problem was always how lazy I was about actually entering the data. I imagined that if I could create a little hand-held calorie counter, it would be perfect. Which of course I would get right on after I finished my other 900 projects I know I'll never get to.

Fortunately, someone else has done the work for me. There's an iPhone application that uses the camera to scan the barcode and match the product with it's list of over 200,000 common foods (sure to grow over time). It keeps a running tally of your calories for the day as well as nutritional information. This is exactly what I planned to do, only better 🙂

And of course it allows you to manually enter the data for items it doesn't have or items that don't have a barcode.

Beware of traps

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

Sadly, traditional phone call scams still work particularly against those of the previous generation that never had to distrust any callers. This one is targeting military veterans:

"America’s Veterans have become targets in an inexcusable scam that dishonors their service and misrepresents the Department built for them," said Dr. Gerald Cross, VA’s Under Secretary for Health. "VA simply does not call Veterans and ask them to disclose personal financial information over the phone."

Remember that people who call you could be bad guys. Before giving away any sensitive data, find out how to reach them through ONLY public phone numbers available on the official website or in a phone book NOT using any numbers they give you.

Microsoft's Courier PC

Today I found this article and short video talking about Microsoft's upcoming Courier Tablet PC. The device is a computer, but uses your fingers and a special pen for its navigation and input. This shows a lot of promise in making computing more intuitive.

Track your kids in real-time online with GPS

Here's a tool for you ultra-paranoid: a GPS watch you can make your kids wear.

Parents can see the location of their child on Google maps by clicking 'where r you' on a secure website or texting 'wru' to a special number. Safe zones can also be programmed with parents being alerted if their child strays outside this zone.

The watch, which is designed in bright colours to appeal to children, can be tightly fastened to a child's wrist and sends an alert if forcibly removed.

Two things to keep in mind before doing this:

1. If you tag kids with monitoring devices, we will be raising a generation of people who don't see a problem with being tagged and tracked. This sets a very dangerous precedent for the future if we are to retain our personal liberties.
2. The company that supplies the information also gets to see where your kid is which creates a new set of questions. What does the company do with all that data? Would they possibly share or sell it? Could they lose it in a data breach?

The police probably shouldn't have their keys hanging visible to the world.

I found this today online (thanks Bruce!). This story is about a guy who managed to duplicate the key used by Dutch police for their handcuffs.

The first main point to learn from this is that you have to be really careful when you walk around in public with identity badges or keys visible. They can be photographed at great distance and be duplicated at leisure (as in the example a while back where a researcher photographed a key on the ground from over 200 feet away and was able to make a working duplicate of it).

Second, he used a 3D printer to create the key from plastic instead of metal which was cheaper, easier and something most anyone can do (if they have or can get access to a 3D printer). It's worse because the key is plastic and won't trip a metal detector. But the issue that no one has talked about yet is the danger of the photo used to show off the key.

Here is the key, but something else important as well.

The person holding it (which I assume was the creator of the key) has fully visible fingers with ridge detail clear enough to possibly create a false fingerprint (just like he did with the key). In other words, by posting a photo showing his fingerprints, he may have just made the same mistake that the police did when they left their keys in the open to be photographed and copied.

Remember to always be careful when posting photos online.

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

I have no idea how I missed this, but it's great news regardless!

If you signed up with Lifelock and are unhappy with their service or guarantee or just want further info on the class action you can contact David Paris at Marks & Klein, (732)-747-7100.

I almost wish I had signed up for Lifelock so I could get involved.