HayBob SquarePants?

iTunes and PayPal account hacking (or amybe password phishing) is on the rise so I've been checking my credit card acct a little more often than I used to. Well, today that paid off because some fake company named "Bordeaux Shopping Center" (or something like that) had a pending charge of $1.43 on my card dated today. My Spidey Senses went off I called it in to the CC fraud dept and show 'nuff, they said the charge looked "weird" or something like that (probably showed it coming from China or some shit). Now I have to be issued a new card and get that info to all the places I have automatic billing setup with, but that shouldn't take too long.

Anyways, keep an eye on your accounts!

Buddha's Anti-Fraud Pro Tips:

- If you have a PayPal account and never use it, cancel it. Same goes for any other financial institution.

- If you see a low dollar charge on your CC from out of the blue, this could be a "test charge" to see if the criminal guessed/auto-generated your account info correctly. Your CC info could have been siphoned off from somewhere too. Call the CC fraud dept and they can check the location of the charge and help you determine if the card info has been compromised. If a test charge goes through and you don't catch it, the criminals will then unload on your and rack up mega charges. Someone bought $20k worth of satellite equipment in Korea on my card about 6 years ago using this scheme.

- Turn off all overdraft protection for all your checking/saving/debit card accounts. This just lets the criminals siphon off even more money than you currently have in the account. Pull your head out of your ass and manage your money correctly so you don't need overdraft protection. Overdraft protection is NOT your friend...it's a criminal's accomplice.

- Create a separate checking account that's tied to your cash/money/debit card. Turn off all connections it has to any other account (like overdrafting from savings). Only keep $XXX dollars in there so that's all the criminals can take. I personally kept $1000 in there because my rent was around $700 and I wrote the rent check from that acct and every time I get cash from a money machine, I take out $300 at a whack to minimize the fees adding up. By keeping that amount in there, I know that's all the criminals take so I'm not going to lose any sleep at all if my cash card gets stolen again. BTW: if you happen to use the card on a machine compromised by a card skimmer, you'll limit your losses in that case too. They can't steal what they don't have access to.

- Uninstall Adobe PDF Viewer and use something else like Sumatra PDF viewer, Nitro PDF Reader, or Foxit Reader instead. (All are free & Sumatra is Open Source).

Portable versions:
http://portableapps.com/apps/office/...eader_portable
http://portableapps.com/apps/office/...a_pdf_portable

- Do all your online banking from a read-only bootable Linux live CD. This makes it so the most common "drive-by web attacks" aren't saved on your machine. You can't use a virtual machine running Linux because if the host machine is compromised, they will capture your keystrokes with a keylogger and you using Linux in a VM is worthless at that point. This is very time consuming to just check your account, so I haven't implemented this tip yet myself. Since the "crimeware" kits sold on the internet target Windows, Adobe, etc way more often than Macs, I'm doing my online banking on a Mac right now and I do no other web surfing on it.

Further reading about Live CD banking: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/sec...e_bank_on.html

Learn more about crimeware (exploit packs): http://krebsonsecurity.com/2010/08/c...-hard-lessons/

This is the best fan catch since the dad caught the foul ball and his daughter threw it back. Both incidents were in Philly BTW.

Not one calorie spilled too!

So a while back, my buddy sent me a link to this video about this dude trying to film a product video for Winnebago RV's. Classic to say the least. Turns out that someone has actually made a documentary on this guy. Anyway, if you haven't seen it yet, or even if you have, enjoy your Jack Rebney dosing: