Salem Police Department Fraud Tip of The Week: Stolen Business Computer - What Should I Do?

Joel: Nice contribution --proves up the value of friendly dialog. You have the makings of solid article for any magazine...working on so doing ?

A few more hints, at the consumer level: When asked for personal information, you should take it upon yourself to evaluate whether and what you should divulge – in whose interest is it that all the blanks be filled in on any particular form, or that they contain true information. Most paper forms request so much information only because the form designer didn’t want to leave blank space – how many people REALLY NEED your driver’s license number, your prior addresses, your whatever-else-they-ask-for? Please pardon some of the characterizations I’m about to use – this issue evokes strong feelings. Consider the clerk at the video store where they only need your home phone in order to rent a movie: insist on showing them a card with your phone number on it and insist that they NOT read it back to you – Your goal is to take a movie home for a couple of days, not to have every loser near the counter hear your phone number and then be able to observe what car you get into. When filling out their application form, DO NOT provide your Social Security Account Number – the video store isn’t figuring your payroll, paying you a benefit when you retire; they are not your bank or your employer, nor do they represent the Social Security Agency. They do not need your SSN – they need nine digits. Give them nine digits. Consider the “customer loyalty reward” card you use at your favorite merchants: Your goal is to get discounts and maybe coupons and their goal is to get your business. You DO NOT need any merchant compiling a list of what you buy at which store at what time of day for who-knows-who to data-mine later. When filling out the forms for these cards, check carefully to see what information is actually required and, if possible, lie. That’s right – lie. Not only does Safeway, for instance, NOT need your home phone and address; YOU don’t need for them to have it. Talk to the store manager if you have time and tell them you DO NOT want their clerks speaking your name out loud when they hand over your receipt – you DO NOT need your name called out to every other loser in line at the checkout for them to associate you with your purchases and then see what car you get into. Consider online forms that you fill out for access to “free” web-based services: What they are really after is enough demographic information to be able to market their site to advertisers – they’re “giving” you access to something in exchange for “delivering your eyeballs” to advertisers who will pay to put up their ads when you browse their site. Consider separate email accounts for separate purposes: One email address for regular email, another for signing up with chat services and another for signing up with web sites for access. And, when you sign up for a free web-based email account and have to give a valid pre-existing email address, log on to the new account as soon as possible and change your profile to reflect some other original address – once the so-called free service emails your initial access information to the pre-existing account that you specify, they don’t need it anymore. Consider using an anonymizing service to obscure or block your Internet Protocol address – the unique number that identifies your computer to every server it connects with on the internet. Such services are perfectly allowable as long as you aren’t concealing your actual location in order to commit a crime. And, be assured, most providers of such services will cave in a New York minute if presented with a legitimate subpoena requesting such data. Learn enough about the operating system and browser that your computer uses to be able to clear out the accumulated information that results from web browsing and email traffic. And then clear it out periodically. Consider using different browsers for different purposes – Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is NOT be be-all and end-all of internet browsing. The bottom line is: It’s your privacy and it’s your information – and it’s up to you to guard it. Privacy policies generally provide only a means of notifying you that, if your information is mishandled – it’s not their fault and, hey- you signed the acknowledgement form

Most persons do not understand that a solid state-level digital operation for learning media and school connections could use same basic technologies for this purpose and others...single system so set up can do wonders with only sub-systems required for more. What do we do when every child older than 5 has wrist-tie unit for WorldWideWeb and can run same better than Dad !!