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.

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.

His name is Todd Davis.
His SSN is 457-55-5467.
And he's making millions!

(Image used under: Fair Use doctrine)

Lifelock is that company where the CEO posted his Social Security Number with a challenge to take his identity (which someone promptly did). If you've been considering getting the service, wait. First realize what you're paying for.

If you were to go to their site and read through what they actually do, you'll find that you're not getting much for your money.

NOTE! This is for the original version of Lifelock. Due to legal settlements, they've changed their service somewhat and details are below.

1. They place fraud alerts. The problem is, fraud alerts are practically worthlesss as far as protecting you from ID theft.

2. They renew the fraud alerts every 90 days. Note that this isn't actually a separate benefit, but they sure seemed to want to have six benefits to their service instead of just five.

3. They remove your name from pre-screened credit card offers. You can do it yourself, freely, and quickly at optoutprescreen.com. Also note that this is a one-time benefit and not something that you should be paying monthly for.

4. They order your credit reports once per year which is easy for them because they can use the free annual credit report you are due by law. The bad part here is that if you wanted to use the very clever advice of getting your report from one of the companies every four months so you can keep a semi-constant tab on your credit, you can't. Lifelock blew your free coupons all at once.

5. They'll keep a list of the companies you have credit cards and such with so you can quickly call them if your wallet is stolen. The FDIC has a great guide about how to do this yourself including the advice to carry a bare-minimum of cards and information and to make your own call-down list.

6. Lastly, insurance (which some people claim you can't collect on).

The BEST way to actually prevent ID theft is with a Credit Freeze

Worst of all, the "fraud alert" features (1 and 2) that they provide have been blocked as a result of a recent lawsuit by Experian who claimed that Lifelock was abusing the fraud alert system by placing them for EVERYONE instead of just people who feel in imminent danger of ID theft.

Lawsuit Changes

Because of the lawsuit, they had to pull the fraud alert "feature" from their list of services. Along with some other recent changes I didn't update on, here is the complete list of Lifelock "features" as of Sept '09:

1. LifeLock Identity Alert™ – In theory they somehow monitor whenever a credit application is entered and alert you. Isn't this what credit-monitoring services do?

2. eRecon™ – They claim to monitor known criminal websites for your personal information. If they find it, they alert you and help you remove it.

   My BS-meter is blinking for two reasons. First, what known criminal websites are out there that Lifelock can get to more than anyone else? If they're public websites, a google-alert would work just as well (and it's free). If they're NOT public websites, how did Lifelock get access to them? Do they have criminal connections?

   Second, if they're known criminal websites, why haven't they been taken down? What's lifelock going to do to "resolve the problem" that the police couldn't do?

3. TrueAddress™ – Monitors change of address databases and alerts you if someone tries to change yours. I don't know how well this works or even if it works as described, but if it does, this might be the first real service that Lifelock provides that isn't easy and free to do yourself.

4. WalletLock™ – Already described this

5. Credit card offer opt-out – Already described this

6. Request your annual free credit reports – Already described this

7. 24 Hour Phone Number – As it should be.

8. $1 Million Guarantee – Sort of. Read on…

In a different class action lawsuit, the lawyers argue that despite the "1 million dollar guarantee", it's actually almost impossible to collect. The guarantee only comes into action if you can show a "defect in their service", but…

the only way fraudulent activity could result from a defect on LifeLock's behalf was if the company failed to sign its customer up for a fraud alert or add its name to an opt-list. Even if that happened, Carey said, it would be difficult for a customer to prove it was LifeLock's fault.

Other lawsuits

Lifelock also had multiple lawsuits brought by the FTC for their deceptive advertising and other BS. They first settled for $11 million in 2010, and then $100 million in 2015 for violating the terms of the first settlement. Will they ever straighten out and behave? It's hard to say, but it's also hard to imagine.

If you're tired of the crap and lies and want solid information and risk management information that will tangibly improve your defense against ID Theft, check out my Goodbye Identity Theft online course!

There are many photoshopped and altered photos on the net. The easiest way to find them is to type "not photoshopped" into Google because people are big fat liars. One that constantly makes the rounds and is often listed as "amazing not photoshopped rabbit" is one of those times.

It's FAKE.

This is the real one

The photo on the right is very hard to find on the net because the ones showing him at odd angles increasing his apparent size are so much more fun, but the fact is that the rabbit is big, but not THAT big. Whether camera angle, photoshop or both, it's fake and obviously so. Can we please stop spreading the lies now?

Making money by preventing everyone else from buying a domain

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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.

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

A disgruntled former employee of GameStop calling himself "WhistleBlowerZero" has created a 9-part YouTube video series which explains quickly, but in exhaustive detail, the many reasons why you, Dear Consumer, should not shop at GameStop.

That pretty much sums it up. I listened to a few of them and the best part is that it's both amusing and packed with real world information and math that explains exactly why Gamestop is a huge rip-off.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Sometimes when you buy something online or at a major retailer, you'll get it home to find out that it's full of bricks or bathroom tiles instead of the product you expected. Sometimes this is due to shifty warehouse workers and sometimes because a customer buys a product, says it's defective and returns it even though they replaced it with bricks. If the customer service counter doesn't check the box before accepting it, it goes back on the shelf and you get stuck with it.

The store's response to this is generally not going to work in your favor, but there are ways you can make sure you don't end up with the brick.

Read the article for full details, but here are the two main tips they cover that I agree with:

1. Pay with credit card – This will give you many types of buyer protection automatically like the ability to do a chargeback.
2. Check the item before you leave the store – Make sure you know what's actually in that box before you walk out. It's much harder for them to make the claim that you put a brick in it inside the store.
3. Policies aren't laws – Just because a story says "it's policy" doesn't mean you should give up. They often have very bad policies and even some that might be considered illegal. You should fight for what's right regardless of what the store says is "policy".

(Image used under: Creative Commons 4.0 [SRC])

I've talked about this before, but there are some dirty tricks that people will pull to encourage you to vote their way or not vote at all. It bears repeating so here is a recent CNN article on the subject as a refresher.

Banks aren't supposed to steal from customers

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California, a historically consumer-friendly state, has recently won a settlement against Citibank for over 14 million dollars in theft from its customers. They apparently used a computer program to "sweep" up positive balances due to double paid bills or merchandise returns from customers' accounts into the Citibank's general fund.

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Companies that are desperate to force you to look at their ads have been disguising them as traffic tickets which you'll surely not ignore. Even if the ad were fantastic, I think I'd throw it away as a matter of principle.

Note, this post begins a new category on my page dedicated to the low and dirty cheats among the market. It will serve as evidence for my continuing position that the market needs heavy and strict regulation to play fair.