Free Posse

Do you know that there are time thieves everywhere and are trying to steal away of your time? It is sad to know that not many people take any action on these time thieves and some even not aware of it. As Thomas Edison said “Time is really the only capital that any human being has, and the only thing he can’t afford to lose”. Time is non-renewable resource. There is no point of keep saving time but at the same time someone are stealing away your time. Therefore, your effectiveness in identifying the time thieves and overcome them is critical in order for you to achieve higher productivity and better time management goal.

Below are some of the hidden time thieves that we must know and minimize them

1. Handling Other People’s Problems

A lot of people tend to take advantage other people time by requesting for help. Probably the most dangerous word is “just”. Example, “Can you just ….?”. If you are inability to say “No”, then you will end up solving their problem at the expense of your own time. Some of them even ask for help without trying to solve it by themselves. Helping others is noble but not causing your own problem remains unresolved.

2. Telephone and Unscheduled Visitors Interruptions

It is very distracting to answer phone calls or visitors while you are busy working on something. These interrupters are not limited from your colleagues but could be from your friends, relatives, or even from your loved one. Once you have completed the conversation, you have to recall where you have stopped and motivate yourself to resume your work. One way you can do is set a specific time period for incoming call and get your secretary or receptionist to inform all the callers to call back during that time period.

3. Meetings

A lot of meetings are unnecessary as sometime the person who called for the meeting would like you just to show your face in the meeting or want to get a faster answer from you in case of any question arises. Even worse, some managers or bosses often call for unscheduled meetings. Sometime you may attend meetings without knowing the agenda of the meetings. There are cases where the bosses expect you to recall what have been discussed during the last meeting. Always check with the chairman of the meeting for objectives of a meeting. If you find your present is not required or some other people is more qualified to attend it, suggest it and excuse yourself from the meeting.

4. Procrastination

Edward Young called procrastination as thief of time. Often people procrastinate when they are indecisive on the next cause of action. They fear of making mistake by taking the wrong steps. Some of them could be due to laziness or not motivated to work on a task. You need to find out the root cause of this problem or could it be any of the above mentioned causes. Try to overcome this problem by reading some self-help books, listen to tapes, attend motivation seminar or even self-hypnosis.

5. Socializers

Someone may ask you “Got a minute?” These are people who want to spend time with you on non-job related subjects. Again, they could be incoming calls, drop-in visitors and colleagues. Socializing is important as part of rapport building with customers, colleagues or team but you need to be careful, not to let socializing affects your job productivity. Therefore, you need to evaluate whether the time invested is justifiable with the return and the priority of your current task. If it is worthwhile and your current task is low priority, then just accept it. Otherwise, you can either postpone it or decline it for this round.

You can discover more time thieves by logging down your daily activities in a time log and review it at the end of the day. You may discover some expected or unexpected activities or tasks that have chewed up your time. Only consistent review and proactive action can ensure a better time manager.

How is this for full disclosure?

I am a writer and businessman, not a law enforcement professional.  

I know, you’re shocked.  You probably thought that only the head of the FBI’s Identity Theft division would have enough knowledge to write such informative articles on the subject.

Law enforcement personnel who specialize in identity theft are busy.  They are too busy to write articles. Tracking down ID theft and fighting beating back the tide of a crime that will claim ten million new victims this year alone consumes a lot of time.  Law enforcement folks do not have time to write articles about it.  

Plus, they are not writers.  I am.  They do their part, and I do mine.  

They chase down the dirtballs who rip lives apart at the seams.  I inform people about the threat so that they can be smart about it and protect themselves.  I’m not sure whose job is tougher, the cops’ or mine.  

Few people heed the wisdom that “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.”  There are people out there who have read my articles and not taken simple measures to protect themselves.  Many of those people will find out the hard way about the reality of identity theft.  Not my fault that they were complacent about it.  They had the information.  I did my little part to help them protect themselves.

Anyway, someone recently asked me, “How do you know so much about identity theft?”  Here is a bluntly honest answer:

It started as a business.  I found a great product that people need, and I decided to promote it.  The truth is that I did not know identity theft from a hole in my head just a couple of months before I wrote my first article on the topic.

To do this business properly and provide value, I had to get the word out about the facts.  I researched like mad, reading everything I could get my hands on.  I also talked to a lot of people, including law enforcement agents.  

A funny thing happened.  As I learned more, I became passionate. It is no longer about the product that I promote but about the fact that I am doing some good in promoting it.  This is a crime wave that wrecks too many lives.  I feel good about doing my little part.

The good guys (that’s you and me) need to do everything we can to stop identity theft.  Every little bit helps.  I’m doing my part.  Are you?

Link:
Woman Steals Dead Sister’s ID

2007 Live at O-East, Tokyo Shibuya, Japan THE SLITS : TOKYO #8 “Shoplifting” THE SLITS: LIVE in Tokyo #1 is the first installment of a number of video clips from the gig the all girl band performed at O-East music venue, Tokyo, Japan. As you can hear in the video documents, the sound engineer ran into difficulty with a new system they may have been testing with this gig, hence you my experience either a certain amount of reverb or bass overload. For best results you could turn the volume down on your set. The Slits Band members include: Hollie Cook Ari Up Tessa Pollitt Anna Schulte NO AnnA (guest) Adrian Sherwood Please note that this video is being presented as a document of the live performance and not a music video and there is little consideration for video/sound quality and/or and visual aesthetics. Nevertheless, I hope the audio and single fixed camera angle on this video does some justice to the performance and doesn’t disturb your viewing pleasure too much. Experimental Art Syndicate Toky© + Experiments in Arts, Science & Technology © 2008 Filmed by Gregory Stennatt for EAST Post-punk, Dancehall, Roots, Rock, Reggae All-girl-band

nma.tv Air Force Major General Wu Bing-chiu has been accused of defrauding his former in-laws out of NT$ 17.76 million. Wu cheated on his wife as she was dying from leukemia. His girlfriend gave birth to a baby just a month after his wife died. Read more http

It’s a violent world.

Identity felt is where a criminal obtains your personal information such as Social Security number, credit card numbers, bank information, address, phone number, and birthday. While the methods used to obtain this information are numerous and varied, certain protective steps can be taken to reduce the chances of this crime happening. In order to protect yourself from identity theft, it is important to understand how a criminal get your information, why it is often difficult to detect your stolen information, and how someone can minimize the possibility of becoming an identity theft victim. It is the goal of this article to explore how an identity theft thief gains access to personal identification and what someone can do to prevent it.

The methods a criminal may use to obtain your personal identification are as varied as the victims themselves and while there is never a guarantee of not becoming a victim, there are certain steps one can take to greatly reduce the danger. While identity theft criminals have developed many ways of gaining access to your personal information and are continuing to come up with new ideas all of the time, the most widely methods used are still the easiest ones to block which can make prevention easier. Below is a list of the most widely used methods an identity theft criminal will use to gain access to your personal information.

1. Dumpster Diving: This the process where a criminal digs through trash, hoping to find discarded items such as credit card bills, bank account statements, and other mail which may include sensitive personal information.

2. Skimming: This is a process where a criminal sets up a special storage device that captures your credit card information when making a purchase.

3. Phishing: This is a newer technique that became available with the advent of the Internet and email. A criminal will pretend to be a representative of a financial institution and will send emails stating that your account appears to have been compromised and lead you to a website where you can straighten things out. This is a scam and you will be asked to verify certain personal information that the thief should not have.

4. Pretexting: Once a criminal already has some of your information, they will contact your bank or creditors and using a bogus excuse will persuade the institution to supply additional information to them.

5. Physical stealing: This is the oldest method around and is just as it sounds. A criminal will simply steal somebodies wallet or purse to see if any sensitive information can be obtained.

Once a criminal has access to the above information, they can, and often do, take steps to guarantee that you wont be aware of any activity until it is too late. Crimes such as this include opening a bank account using your name and Social Security number but with an alternate address so you are not aware of the new account or stealing your credit card number then submitting a change of address so you dont get any bills showing suspicious transactions. Some people may catch on fairly quickly with the credit card scheme because they are no longer getting expected billing statements but often times the new bank account scheme doesnt get caught for quite some time. Either way, the victim may not realize what is going on until they start getting notices from bill collectors for debts that they did not incur and by then it may be too late for a simple solution. Once you know how a criminal can steal your information and hide the fact from you, you need to understand what steps you can take to minimize your risk.

While it is virtually impossible to guarantee complete safety from becoming a victim of identify theft, there are some simple steps that a person can take to eliminate, or at least minimize the risk. First and most important is to always dispose of mail with your personal information in a safe way such as shredding or burning and never putting it in your trash where a criminal can find it. Next is to keep a vigilant eye on your credit history. New laws that have been written during the past few years require the major credit reporting companies to provide free credit reports to Americans four times a year and it is a great idea to take advantage of this. Reviewing your credit history on a quarterly basis gives you a great opportunity to look for discrepancies in your file and if you can manage to catch this type of problem early on, it is much easier to fix. You can and should also pay close attention to your monthly bank statements and credit card billing statements for suspicious activity and if you fail to receive billing that you normally receive, take action immediately and contact your financial institutions to find out why. And if you experience outright theft of personal property such as a wallet or purse, make it a point to cancel all debit and credit cards immediately.

After reading this article, it should now be obvious that anybody, including you, can be affected by the identity theft crime and while law enforcement agencies exist to protect us from crime, they are ill equipped in handling this type of crime. While they may be able to help you after becoming a victim, you will still have a long road ahead in repairing your credit. It is a far easier for an individual to take pro-active steps to avoid becoming a victim rather then trying to repair the damage afterwards. Whether you decide to take such steps on your own or employ an anti identity theft program is up to you but for the sake of you and your family, please take steps today.

The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, and Her Lover Trailer 2 Dir: Peter Greenaway 1989

Identity theft can be simply identified as a crime throughout the world. Identity theft and fraud are basically the terms used to refer these crimes wherein a person wrongfully gains access and uses personal data of someone else in some way which involves deception or fraud, usually for financial gain. Therefore with the increasing risks of identity theft it is important you take certain precautions to stay away from identity theft and fraud.

How risky is identity theft and fraud

It is much different form your fingerprints which are unique to every individual and cannot be robbed by anyone for their use, but in case of your personal data specially your credit card and bank account number, social security number, your telephone calling card numbers or any other valuable identification data can be easily robbed and used when they fall in the hands of thieves to personally make profits on your expense.

In the United States and several other places, people have filed reports that an unauthorized person has taken funds form tier bank or financial accounts but in some worst cases it has been taken from their own identity. When done in your own identity it can go much further to creating vast debts and also commit crimes in the name of the victim. In most cases the losses faced by a victim might not just include out of pocket funds but some substantial additional financial costs linked to the effort in restoring their personal reputation in the local community and also correcting all the information that was used for criminal activities.

Common ways to commit identity theft and fraud

Most people don’t realize how easy it is for criminals to gain access to their personal data without even breaking into their homes. The criminals for instance might engage in shoulder surfing by just watching you from nearby when you type your credit card number or telephone calling card number. Additionally the areas around your office or home might also not be safe, as most criminals usually engage in dumpster diving which means going through your communal dumpster, garbage cans or trans bin.

This is just to check if there are any checks, bank or credit card statements or any other record bearing your name, number and address. These bits of information make it easier for them to get control over your accounts and in your name through your identity.

What should you do?

Identity theft and fraud has become a growing crime and there are certain steps you should take to prevent being an id theft victim. Firstly you should be careful about your personal sensitive data by making sure you don’t carry your social security number in your wallet.

Make sure you also clear your trash bin frequently by either burning or shredding the thrown away documents including your used credit cards. You should also request your credit report to find out if there are any changes done to your account. In case you find any changes make sure you instantly inform the FTC or the credit reporting agencies about the case.