| Word Definitions |
| Some of us spend way too much time on the internet. However, this can work to our benefit by teaching us to be suspicious of what we see on the web or in the email we receive. For those that are ‘new’ to the internet tend to be a bit more naïve. One of the most important things to remember is that the Web is a wonderful, electronic place where Anyone may read, write or draw pictures; all from their own personal point of view or, in the case of business, it is a medium to sell. So, as with any medium of communication, it is wise to keep in mind that it is indeed, only a personal point of view and understanding, or that the ultimate goal is to convince you to purchase something and that it may only be 10 to 50% of the truth. I suppose one could say that the internet is the new ‘door-to-door’ salesman of the 21st century. These definitions are for your information in understanding ‘computer-ese’ so that you may enjoy your time on the internet and make informed choices on-line. Scam: A series of events someone forces on you to try to convince you to buy, espouse, or believe, something that is essentially a lie, thus, to cheat or swindle…(v.t.: to cheat or swindle, as in a confidence game.” Confidence Game: “a swindling operation in which the swindlers first gain the confidence of the victim.” Spam: Excessive or voluminous unsolicited email…the electronic equivalent of ‘junk mail’. Fraud: Something presented to you to convince you that something else is true when, in fact, it is NOT. To trick, deceive, swindle, cheat or convince against fact, truth, or the law, for you to give up something valuable. Said also of one who commits any of these. Hoax: A story, picture, movie, whatever, that is claimed or asserted to be true and it simply is NOT! It may sound plausible or factual and may have parts that are true, but over all, it is a lie! A trick or fraud, sometimes intended as a ‘practical joke’…From “Webster’s New 20th Century Dictionary, Unabridged, 2nd Ed”, 1979, ISBN 0-671-41819-X-n. “something done for deception or mockery; especially some thing meant as a practical joke.” And v.t. “to deceive with a hoax.”. Urban Legends: usually fall into the “Hoax” category. A story that is ‘hear say’ and has some facts that have been built upon, very similar to a rumor. Junk Email: Unsolicited Commercial email…mostly annoying…you can easily get email that has been passed along by dozens of people who innocently passed it along, (the CC: part of the email will have many, many names and addresses) either as a joke, a game, or because of some overt or implied threat in the text of the letter. Chain letters fall into this category. Identity Theft: Someone obtains (steals or finds) and uses your personal information to secure credit cards, and/or to buy stuff, and have it charged to you. Here are some suggestions and URLS (web site addresses) that may help you avoid annoying your friends with email forwards, whining chain letter, tear-jerking stories, and may help you not panic whey they do it to you. When they do, please refer them to this page. How do they get your email address? 1. You give it to them on purpose, perhaps under false premises. 2. You give it to them by mistake. 3. Someone sells/gives it to them. · They include your address in the cc: portion of their email to others · They send you mail from a third-party website, such as ‘e-cards’. · They give out your address for no good reason. 4. Your address appears in some “public” place. 5. You put it on your web page. (New Webmasters: here is a little ‘trick’ to ‘hiding’ your email address. Type in: me-mywebsite@myserver.com (net or org) This will appear like this: “mail to: me-mywebsite@myserver.com” Some things you can try to prevent some of the problems: Don’t give out your email address if you can help it. If a web page requires your email address and does NOT display a Privacy Policy statement, consider NOT giving them your address. Don’t link your email address on your web page. Use the ‘trick’ above or consider using spaces in your email address so a robot can’t read it, but a human can. Beware of email that greets you as though you are an old-friend, or implies the email is in response to an earlier correspondence that you know very well is not so! If anything about an attachment appears suspicious; even if it is sent by someone you know and trust. Take a few minutes to phone or email them and check up on it. If you received email from a “listserv”, don’t just open it…Warnings should pop into your head if you see that your full name, which no one but your mother and a math teacher has ever called you, is in the greeting. Example: “Hi, Felix Mendelssohn Jones!” or asks you to ‘enjoy’ the embedded links or it says, “Hi again!” If it’s a Word or Excel document (.DOC or .XLS files) and when opening it asks you to enable macros, do not enable macros. Don’t fill out forms just to get free stuff, especially “free email” accounts (they use or sell your address). Read their email address security policies and if they have none, don’t give them your address. Use one email account for friends only, another for the ‘rest of the world’. Use a fake email address or anonymizing service if you know how. Don’t bother to even look at a piece of email with an unfamiliar “From:” (re: curiosity killed the cat) Never reply to junk email, not even if they have a valid address, and offer you the moon, stars, unlimited wealth, etc. (They use, abuse or sell your address.) Never click on a link if you received it, unsolicited, unless it’s from someone you trust completely. Big companies do not do business via chain letter. Bill Gates is not giving you $1000 and Disney is not giving you a free vacation. There is no baby food company issuing class-action checks. Neiman-Marcus doesn’t really sell a $200 cookie recipe; and even if they do, we all have it, and if you don’t have it you can get a copy here, if the recipe is really that awesome, feel free to pass the recipe on. A sick little boy (Craig Shergold in England) is not dying from cancer or anything else at this time and would like everyone to stop sending him your business cards…and he is no longer a “little boy”. There is no kidney theft ring in New Orleans. No one is waking up in a bathtub full of ice even if a friend of a friend swears it happened to their cousin. Quote: “The National Kidney Foundation has repeatedly issued requests for actual victims of organ thieves to come forward and tell their stories. None have.” Key word: None…not even your friends cousin. The list goes on. There is no need to “pass it on” just in case it’s true. Furthermore, just because someone said in the message four generations back that ‘we checked it out and it’s legitimate’ does not make it true. Two old rules apply: You can’t get something for nothing if it sounds too good to be true, then it most probably isn’t! If you really wish to check any of these stories out to see for yourself, here are some wonderful places to visit: http://urbanlegends.tqn.com/library/weekly/aa062997.htm http://urbanlegends.tqn.com/ http://urbanlegends.minigco.com/library/blhoax.htm http://www.ulrc.com.au/ We all know all 500 ways to drive our roommates crazy, irritate coworkers, gross out bathroom stall neighbors, and creep out people on an elevator. We also know exactly how many engineers, college students, Usenet posters, and people from each and every world ethnicity it takes to change a light-bulb. Even if the latest NASA rocket disaster(s) did contain plutonium that became radioactive particles spread over the eastern seaboard, do you really think this information would reach the public via an AOL chain-letter? There is no “Good Times” virus. In fact you should NEVER, EVER forward any email containing any virus or hoax warning unless you first confirm it at an actual site of an actual company that actually deals with viruses. A couple for starters: http://www.norton.com http://www.syphos.com And even after you check it out, don’t forward it…who listens to you? If your CC: list is regularly longer than the actual content of your message change them into BCC: (blind carbon copies). If your using MicroSoft Outlook Express or Netscape to write email: Please turn off the “Html encoding.” Those on Unix shells or more simple emailers can’t read it and don’t care enough to save the attachment and then view it with a web browser, since you’re probably forwarding us a copy of the “Nieman Marcus Cookie Recipe’ anyway. *Grin* Phone scams and hoaxes come around on a regular basis. Just make it a policy not to call numbers where you don’t know how much will be charged. Example: don’t use any 809 or 900 numbers and only call reputable (?) companies. Once in a while you will receive a legitimate warning about some kind of scam, con or whatever. Don’t dismiss all warnings…check them out. However! Please don’t simply send them out to everyone in your address book without checking them out. It irritates a lot of people that have checked it out and it scares the rest of us! If you absolutely must forward that 10-generation message from a friend at least trim the eight miles of headers showing everyone else who has received it over the last 6 months. A good rule of thumb: If it has gone around that many times, chances are pretty good that we’ve already seen it. Identity Theft: What to Do: Steps to reduce your chances of becoming a victim. Pay attention to your billing cycles: Follow up with a call to your creditors if bills don’t arrive on time. If cancelled checks don’t show up with your bank statement within a reasonable period, check the person or agency to whom the check was written. Consider canceling it, but only with the knowledge that it could cost you to do that. Check with your bank to see how much it will cost YOU to stop payment on a check. Guard your mail from theft: Deposit outgoing mail in post office collection boxes or at the post office. Remove mail from mailboxes promptly after it arrives. For your inbound residential mail, use either a mail slot delivery system or a locked mailbox. If you cannot use the latter, consider securing a post office box. For social security checks, seriously consider having it direct deposited. This prevents theft of your check…Even if you are not home when the checks are due to arrive, it won’t make any difference, it will be in your bank waiting for you safe and sound. Never write the actual password on a credit, bank or phone card. When placing (usage) passwords (Personal Identification Number) on your credit cards, bank and phone accounts. Avoid using easily available information such as your mother’s maiden name, your birth date, the last four digits of your social security number or your phone number or a series of consecutive numbers or letters (such as ABC…123) Minimize the identification information and number of credit cards you carry to what you’ll actually need. Do not give out personal information on the phone, through the mail, or over the internet, unless you have initiated the contact and know who you are dealing with. Always get the full names of telephone operators. If they will not provide their names, don’t give them the information or ask for their supervisors. Keep items with personal information in a safe place: shred or tear up your charge receipts, copies of credit applications, insurance forms, and other personally identifying printed or written information. Shred or tear up any blank checks you receive from credit card companies that you do not use. Be cautious about where you leave your personal information in your home, especially if you have roommates, employ outside help, or ever have service work done in your home. (If a stranger wants to enter your home, even if you initiated the visit, ask for identification.) Find out who has access to your personal information at work and verify that the records are kept in a secure place and manner. Give your Social Security number only when absolutely necessary; ask to use other types of identifiers when possible. (No one can legally demand to see or be provided with your SSN, except agencies of the Federal Government, banks and prospective employers.) Don’t carry your Social Security card with you. Keep it in a safe place. Memorize the number and leave the card at home. Order a copy of your credit report from each of the three major credit reporting agencies every year. Make sure it is accurate, up to date, and includes only those activities you’ve authorized. Equifax 1-800-525-6285 P.O. Box 740241 Atlanta, GA 30374-0241 http://www.equifax.com Experian 1-888-397-3742 P.O. Box 949 Allen, TX 75013-0949 http://www.experian.com Trans-Union 1-800-680-7289 Fraud Victim Assistance Division P.O. Box 6790 Fullerton, CA 92634 http://www.tuc.com Keep a complete list of all your financial accounts in a safe place that you can access easily in case any of them are stolen or misused or erroneously reported. These include credit card account numbers with expiration dates, contact addresses and phone numbers, bank information with bank names, account numbers and contact information. Order social security earnings and benefit statements once a year, so that you can check to make sure the earnings are correctly recorded. Memorize all passwords and PIN. Keep them private. When ordering new checks, pick them up at the bank instead of having them delivered to your home. Where to Learn More: Using any internet search engine, look for “identity theft”. Ask for a copy of “ID Theft: When Bad Things Happen to Your Good Name": by writing the Federal Trade Commission Consumer Response Center, 600 Pennsylvania Ave N.W., Washington, DC 20580; calling 1-877-438-4338 or on the web at: http://www.consumer.gov/idtheft If You Are A Victim: 1. Contact the three credit reporting bureaus (see above) 2. Contact the creditors for any accounts that may have been tampered with or opened fraudulently. 3. File a report with your local police and the police in the community where the theft took place (the same report, using any forms the agencies may supply – make sure all jurisdictions have the same information.) How They Do It: “Dumpster Diving”: Potential thieves look in disposal containers for credit card copies or other personal data. Theft of wallets or purses Mail theft- direct and by filling in change of address forms. Thieves posing as landlords, employers or someone with a legitimate need for or legal right to personal information or identification Burglars Subversion of regular employees of businesses holding personal information to either get the information or allow the thief to get it. |