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Identity Theft: It Could Happen To You! Protect Yourself

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Identity theft is a serious and growing crime that inflicts serious damage on over 9 million people a year in the US alone. Identity theft can be placed on a par with break-in and robbery of an individual’s home in terms of psychological effects. The financial ramifications can be far more serious than the common burglary.

What is Identity Theft?

Identity theft involves the illegal use of a real person’s identity and financial standing to benefit an unscrupulous criminal. The Federal Trade Commission in the US says that over 40% of all complaints it receives relate the stolen personal and financial information.

Identity thieves use another person’s identity, to obtain credit in the form of credit cards, mortgages, store cards and every other conceivable line of credit. The average victim loses out to the June of over $6,000; some victims suffer much larger losses.

Identity Theft vs. Identity Borrowing

Financial identity theft is the act of stealing another person’s financial information such as bank records. This information is then used to obtain lines of credit and loans. They can also aid the criminal in obtaining forged checks, enabling them to raid the victims checking and savings accounts.

Identity cloning is slightly different in that it involves the duplication of the owner’s personal identity. The thief will then use the victim’s id to open bank accounts and lines of credit cards and mortgages. They may keep the assumed identity for long periods of time.

The thieves find their information through a multitude of ways including computer fraud. This can involve impersonating a large company or bank and asking the victim to sign in using their password to resolve some perceived problem with their account.

Less high-tech means of gaining information include rifling through trash to find credit card statements and other basic information gained from financial and non-financial correspondence.

How do you protect yourself?

To protect itself from these unscrupulous individuals and criminal gangs members of the public need to be constantly vigilant while online, avoiding giving away even minor personal information.

Shopping online, with companies that are not well known, is one particularly well exploited avenue for of obtaining all the information and ID thief needs.

Antivirus and firewall protection, combined with what is known as anti-phishing software and essential tools on all home computers.

To avoid ‘dumpster diving’ credit cards and other financial statements should be shredded before disposal. Credit cards and bank statements should be carefully checked for strange purchasers and other inconsistencies.

Any credit offer coming to the house in the form of junk mail should also be shredded as they often contain vital financial information. Within the home, personal and financial information should be hidden and safeguarded as if it were cash, and not just left out on the kitchen table.

Mail should be retrieved from the box as soon as possible to avoid theft of useful information. Unless you are very familiar with the company no credit card information, should have been given out over the phone.

Consulting and Advising – Combining Blogging and your Career

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Teaching: It isn’t all about grammar and vocabulary!

I’ve been a teacher of ESL (if you’re American) or EFL (if you’re not) for more than years now than I have fingers and toes, and in that capacity, I’ve been privileged to teach people in Taipei City and Taipei County from all walks of life: business men and women, clerks, company workers, pc engineers, sales staff, students of all ages, bankers, doctors, nurses, etc. Despite teaching English, I often find myself advising and consulting with my clients on learning English rather than just simply teaching vocabulary and grammar (or other prescriptions of language learning).

New Vistas: New Paths

It was still a surprise when I found myself in the role of consultant for someone I’d never met, and in a field that I was less familiar with: blogging. Recently, I’ve been involved with setting up, administering and writing for a blog as a supplement to a static website. Naturally, this is a market that is going to grow leaps and bounds in the coming few years, until Web3.0 takes over. Since I’ve been involved in computers for many years, and been working in blogging on and off since 2004 pretty much as my passion, I found that I’ve come to learn and know a little in a wider range of areas: blogging, marketing online, online tools, wordpress software, writing, etc.

Consulting: Opportunities in All Areas

I’ll be revealing more about the project as I work away on it, and as it’s going to be a challenge coming up with refreshing and interesting posts. Something I’m looking forward to doing. For those of you looking into creating online income, consulting is an option that is open to many bloggers though it may not be easy to go head to head with the big guys out there. If you have experience in a professional or business field that is much more specific, you could still find many opportunities to put your blogging skills to good use online and offline in the field of consulting, but particular to your specialty whatever that may be.

Did this happen to you, too?

But it isn’t the first time I’ve found that people are interested in what I have to say about a range of subjects; nor is it the first time someone has suggested directly or indirectly that consulting may be a career choice for me? In fact, one of the reasons I started InvestorBlogger dot com was because I found that many people were struggling with the same financial problems I was. While I hadn’t found the ANSWERS per se, I had found some ways that worked for some situations, and I was eager to share those successes.

Blogging: Opening New Paths?

It was only when I started blogging that I began to discover the core of my interests, and for me, blogging became not a didactic process (me telling you WHAT to do) but a dynamic and very personal process that helped me to further my interests in a number of areas, as well as help my readers. Too often when I read other blogs in the field of money & finance I hear the voice of the blogger shouting: “Do this” or “Don’t do that!” … as if it were the 10 Commandments… and I am repelled because I KNOW it isn’t like that.

There are more ways to peel a potato or cook an egg than one. It’s only by accepting and understanding that that we can begin to see alternatives: new ways to write, new ways to learn, new ways to share, and new ways to make money. It’s not a cookbook or a book of instructions, rather it’s a pantry with ingredients, some raw, some part-cooked, some chilled… We’re the chef whose job it is to combine, create and re-create what is there.

(ed. Post backdated to fill space in yesterday’s calendar!)

Buzz RadioTime – a little lunchtime listening treat

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It’s rare these days that ‘big media’ does much right, but this website is one such effort… I hope it stays around… What is it? Well, in these days of online radio, it’s not difficult to start an online radio station effort, and there are literally THOUSANDS. Indeed, tradtional radio has largely joined the crowd of online stations, but until RadioTime, there were few places to easily access all the traditional radio stations…

radiotime

Simply, it’s a website that brings traditional radio to the web. You can tune in and listen to any of the stations, and when you tune in, one of several integrated media players opens in a small popup window. I was quite excited about this, because while online radio stations really do complement traditional radio, there are an awful lot of places where there are no equivalents: the music selection is narrower on RadioTime, but there’s a lot more variety of news, sports and more ‘traditional’ fare than on online stations. You can also select stations by geography, say New York City or London. Try it… so if you want to hear what Dublin sounds like in the morning or Taipei sounds like late at night!

About RadioTime

RadioTime is a privately-held Dallas-based company focused on making traditional over-the-air radio as available as possible online, through your PC and in other devices since 2002. It supports a free, personalized website, a comprehensive guide to radio, membership account services, and desktop software and hardware packages to allow consumers to listen where and when they want.