It turns out that Comcast thinks they have the right to control how someone uses the Internet. Bittorrents, often, but not always used to distribute copyrighted content is one of the types of filesharing that big nasty companies like the RIAA target. Whether in the spirit of cooperation with the RIAA or just to save a little money by preventing heavy Internet users from actually using the Internet, Comcast is throttling Bittorrent shares and actually blocking seeders (people who provide the content originally). If this disgusts you, now is a good time to become a supporter of net neutrality. Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew, Scams - Ripoffs - Dirty Tricks

Refusing to cancel someone's account is a very bad thing (and probably illegal). However, cancelling your account can be a fight that you're not prepared to handle. In case you didn't know this already, companies are structured to put enormous pressure their representatives to keep you from cancelling at all costs. The real villains here are the companies who aren't gusty enough to tell their call center people to do things illegally and immorally, but structure their centers in such a way to make it as likely as possible. Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew

In case you haven’t been paying attention, kids are just as likely to be ID theft victims as adults, even more so. Because they don’t have any regular financial activity and no one would ever think to get a credit report for their kids (since they shouldn’t have one), the theft can go on for much longer without detection. Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew, Kids

For those who were wondering, there were almost 30,000 sex offenders on MySpace who were computer literate enough to use the service, but dumb enough to use their real names. How many are still there using fake names I wonder. Tags: Consequences, Families, If You Only Knew, Kids, Police

Here's a warning to you all: companies hide tracking information in your media and if you don't know about it and do something about it, you may get some pretty nasty results. Now, in this case, it's a good thing because there's no justification for leaking Harry Potter BEFORE it's public release. That just hurts the writer and others involved. But if this wasn't immoral activity but protected free speech, be warned that you could get nailed in very subtle and sophisticated ways if you don't pay attention to product tracking. For example: tracking dots in printers. Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew

This guy took personal offense to a virus writer who's stupid prank messed up the computer of one of his friends. So he decided to hunt the virus writer down using only information he was able to find on the Internet with Google. He goes through where he looked, what he found, and what it meant. Important lesson: This is how easy it is to profile you online. JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined Tags: Consequences, Families, If You Only Knew, Police

I just want to remind everyone about this so here’s a list of printers that print yellow “Tracking dots” on everything you print. The dots can be used to trace a print directly back to your printer in case of a crime or if something you printed is anywhere near a crime thus possibly involving you. Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew

Consumeraffairs has been watching the banking industry with increasing shame. Banks realize how easy it is to "encourage" customers to make banking mistakes that end up in costly fees: Note that these are concious, purposeful acts designed to bring more debt to the consumer. Let me explain one of the scenarios above: You make the following purchases during the day: Your account balance: $70 (It's almost payday, you're running low)

Sandwich: $5

Starbucks Coffee: $10

Socks, Flowers, and a DVD movie (you're at Walmart… One stop shopping): $35

Eggs and Milk: $5

Little do you realize, your wife has decided to go ahead an fill up the SUV for the weekend trip.

Gas: $65

Now, assuming that the bank takes care of all transactions at the end of the day, what's the most advantagous way for them to do this? Easy! Apply all debits in order of size. Watch what happens: And to add insult to injury, maybe you got paid that day and deposited the money, but the bank held the deposit until the next day for no reason that you can think of (also part of their bag of tricks). So in this case, the bank's artificial policy of applying drafts in size order has hurt you plenty. If you complain (if) then there's a chance they'll reverse one charge as a matter of customer service. That still leaves you with a $60 debt to the bank. Compare it with this scenario where it was done in the order the drafts occured: In this case you have one overdraft fee due to a simple mistake. Chances are the bank will credit it and you and your wife can make sure you don't make the same mistake twice when the balance is low. Life is happy and birds sing… Anyway, you see how banks, who know a whole lot more about money management than you, can make very little and innocent csounding policy changes that will screw you royally. Let's hope that the bill that Consumeraffairs mentions in the article passes to end this kind of crap. Lastly, a freebie for you. If you are the kind of person who frequently finds themselves paying overdraft fees, try this trick I learned in my more "cash desperate" days: Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew, Scams - Ripoffs - Dirty Tricks

Because of the End User License Agreement of Vista, Microsoft arguably has the legal right to collect a large amount of data on you and report it back to their home servers. Some will say that they're not hidden, but is being buried in a giant EULA that most people don't have the expertise to understand really the same as full disclosure? Not only that, but you have to know this a problem and then perform the immense amount of work required to identify all the various services and features that spy on you and disable them properly. By the time you're done, you won't really be using much of the software that came with Vista in the first place. JTAG ERROR: No slashdot_ht index defined Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew, Windows

I thought that retailers were done making sex objects out of children after that last fiasco, but apparently, I was wrong. Though the article states that the sizes are for 18 month olds and up, the actual size chart only goes down to roughly 3 year old size (according to a pediatric growth chart I found). That aside, there’s several problems with this. First: what kind of stupid sleazy retailer values money so much that they would make suggestive articles like bikinis for kids? Second: what parent in their right mind would buy this stuff? And you wonder why I’m a proponet of industry regulation… Tags: Consequences, If You Only Knew, Kids