Did you put your telephone number on the national Do-Not-Call Registry (DNC), but still get sales calls from companies you’ve never heard of? Quite likely many unwanted sales calls you get today are not made by a live person. Instead many companies use auto-dialers, programmed to start a recorded message the minute you answer the phone.
Contributed by J. J. Dippel
If you really want to go “underground” and avoid junk mailers, living in an RV can help you achieve almost invisible status. To do this, you need to sell your house, give your furniture and other furnishings to charity (and take a tax write off!), put any treasured belongings that you can’t bear to part with (but have no room in your RV), into storage, and take off!
The Social Security Administration has issued an important fraud alert involving a bogus e-mail message that is apparently circulating widely. The SSA's press release is reproduced below.
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PUBLIC WARNED ABOUT E-MAIL SCAM
http://www.ssa.gov/pressoffice/pr/colaPhishingScam-pr.htm
Tuesday, November 7, 2006
SOCIAL SECURITY News Release
It may not seem like common sense to clean your trash before you throw it away, but with technology that is exactly what you should do.
Before you sell, donate or trash your cell phone, make sure that your personal information has been permanently deleted. For most phones, this means more than resetting the phone. Although resetting the phone may appear to delete your information, recent reports suggest that software programs can retrieve the information if it was not properly deleted.
Comments Submitted by:
Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
Joined by:
Consumer Action
National Consumer Law Center
PrivacyActivism
US Public Interest Research Group (US PIRG)
World Privacy Forum
September 18 , 2006
Federal Trade Commission
Office of the Secretary, Room H-135 (Annex M)
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580
Filed electronically: https://secure.commentworks.com/ftc-redflags
Internet users were shocked to learn that the search queries of over 600,000 individuals were exposed online by AOL recently. Although the personal names of AOL users had been replaced with numbers, apparently for a research project, reporters and others were able to determine the identities of several people. Search terms revealed medical conditions, illegal activities, illicit interests, financial information, even Social Security numbers.
Submitted by Privacy Rights Clearinghouse
July 24, 2006
Charles Havekost
Deputy Assistant Secretary for Information Technology
Department of Health and Human Services, Room 434E
200 Independence Avenue, SW
Washington, DC 20201
Attention: IMDA RFI Response Submitted electronically:
Disaster_Storage_RFI@hhs.gov
Procedures to Enhance the Accuracy and Integrity of Information Furnished to Consumer Reporting Agencies Project No. R611017
Submitted: May 22, 2006
Federal Trade Commission
Office of the Secretary, Room 159-H (Annex C)
600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20580
Filed Electronically: http://www.regulations.gov
UPDATE (6/29/06): The stolen laptop computer and the external hard drive were recovered. www.usa.gov/veteransinfo.shtml
UPDATE (7/14/06): FBI and VA Inspector General conducted a forensic examination on the laptop and reported that no data had been removed. But experts say there are ways to thwart detection.
Deadline for comments is May 11, 2006