Thursday, May 25, 2006
Catching up on local and state politics
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
This reader had quite a surprise, reading that ex-Senator Alphonse D’Amato has endorsed Eliot Spitzer for governor. Does this mean that the GOP is really on a rocky road?
One counter indication might be that two prominent Democrats, both 2005 candidates for Manhattan Borough President, have joined Mayor Bloomberg’s government, our former Councilwoman Margarita Lopez to sit on the Board of the Housing Authority, and gay/CB activist Brian Ellner to be the counselor for community affairs with the Board of Education. But let’s not be rash, it might be the Mayor’s way of building a broad base for whatever office he is aiming at in 2009 – he will be only a vigorous 67 then - as well as the generous pay, $162k and $165k a year, respectively.
The GOP is in an internal turmoil, with infighting for both the hopeless Governor and Senator candidacies. Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in 2006 has attracted two vigorous Republican candidates – presumably expecting that Hillary’s presidential candidacy in 2008 will position the Republican contender, either because she will have gone national, or will be vulnerable in 2012. John Spencer, ex-Yonkers mayor, banker and Vietnam veteran, has been challenged by the socially prominent Kathleen “KT” McFarland, 54, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Public Affairs under Reagan, a NSC staffer under Nixon and Ford, a Kissinger protégé. Having left government 25 years ago to raise a family of five, she is ready to come back and has hired two big-time managers, Ed Rollins the Gingrich man and Adam Goodman the Kathleen Harris campaign ace, and both Spencer and Clinton are getting whacked – the latter has been accused of flying spy helicopters past KT’s Hamptons’ bedroom windows. Wow, what fantasy life!
On the Governor level, exuberant ex-Gov of MA, Bill Weld, was originally warmly welcomed by both Pataki and Giuliani. Now both are withholding endorsement, pending party developments. Weld has somewhat weathered the charges about his Kentucky Decker College involvement, a charter school venture, but is now meeting competition from Assemblyman John Faso from Columbia County, the serious party loyalist and former Minority Leader, who in 2002, at the party’s call, ran for Comptroller, losing narrowly to Alan Hevesi. Faso, who is a fiscal expert (his committee saved the NYS $5B in 1994 and rescued the budget), and has to contend with low visibility, is favored by the Conservative Party, without whose endorsement winning the Governorship is deemed impossible. As for a daytime job, Faso is a partner in a national law firm (he went to Georgetown Law at night).
The Democratic Attorney General field is narrowing. Good Dad, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky has withdrawn; he is donating a kidney for his 16-year old immune system deficient daughter Willie, and will not be ready to campaign. Councilman Dan Garodnick and Assemblyman Jonathan Bing are favoring Andrew Cuomo for AG, and he is certain to have 25% of the vote in the state Democratic Party’s convention in Buffalo, in the last days of May, assuring him a spot on the primary ballot in September. But the field is still too large for any of the other candidates to gain a similar advantage, and some, notably Denise O’Donnell, the former federal attorney from Buffalo, and Charlie King, a former chair of the NYCounty Democratic Committee, are attempting to have Cuomo help remove the restriction, else they will have to go into the expensive and demanding procedure of collecting petition signatures throughout the state. But Cuomo will not give up an advantage, and the remaining field, Mark Green and Sean Patrick Maloney are resigned to it; the latter, formerly President Clinton’s link to the gay community, is positive about making it to the ballot.
Which leaves us with Eliot Spitzer, the “can’t lose” candidate for Governor, still being pursued by Tom Suozzi, Nassau County Executive, who wants to tell him in a public debate how his fellow citizens feel about gay marriage and abortion. Good luck, Charlie, er, Tom.
Speaking of contests, received a cheery Message From Assemblywoman Sylvia M. Friedman, who was elected on January 28, and the next day in Albany signed on to co-sponsor seven bills. She too is expected to have a Democratic contester, for the 74th AD, Brian Kavanagh, former chief of staff for Councilwoman Gale Brewer.
One of Sylvia’s bill addresses the proliferation of bars in our neighborhoods, and will help regulate those that are not good neighbors; another, Healthy Teens Act, would establish age-appropriate sex education programs. Recognition of marriage without gender barriers and discrimination based on gender identity are two other topics. She applauds the legislative budget with its $1.8B school construction and the $9.4B increase in city financing cap, $19.7M for libraries, restoring $320M for CUNY and SUNY, and co-sponsors senior care bills, such as increasing the income eligibility for medical and nursing care. There’s more. Sylvia’s district office is in the formerly Steve Sanders’ space, using the same phone number – 201 E. 16 Street, 212-979-9696. Some speed, some action!
This reader had quite a surprise, reading that ex-Senator Alphonse D’Amato has endorsed Eliot Spitzer for governor. Does this mean that the GOP is really on a rocky road?
One counter indication might be that two prominent Democrats, both 2005 candidates for Manhattan Borough President, have joined Mayor Bloomberg’s government, our former Councilwoman Margarita Lopez to sit on the Board of the Housing Authority, and gay/CB activist Brian Ellner to be the counselor for community affairs with the Board of Education. But let’s not be rash, it might be the Mayor’s way of building a broad base for whatever office he is aiming at in 2009 – he will be only a vigorous 67 then - as well as the generous pay, $162k and $165k a year, respectively.
The GOP is in an internal turmoil, with infighting for both the hopeless Governor and Senator candidacies. Hillary Clinton’s Senate seat in 2006 has attracted two vigorous Republican candidates – presumably expecting that Hillary’s presidential candidacy in 2008 will position the Republican contender, either because she will have gone national, or will be vulnerable in 2012. John Spencer, ex-Yonkers mayor, banker and Vietnam veteran, has been challenged by the socially prominent Kathleen “KT” McFarland, 54, Deputy Assistant Defense Secretary for Public Affairs under Reagan, a NSC staffer under Nixon and Ford, a Kissinger protégé. Having left government 25 years ago to raise a family of five, she is ready to come back and has hired two big-time managers, Ed Rollins the Gingrich man and Adam Goodman the Kathleen Harris campaign ace, and both Spencer and Clinton are getting whacked – the latter has been accused of flying spy helicopters past KT’s Hamptons’ bedroom windows. Wow, what fantasy life!
On the Governor level, exuberant ex-Gov of MA, Bill Weld, was originally warmly welcomed by both Pataki and Giuliani. Now both are withholding endorsement, pending party developments. Weld has somewhat weathered the charges about his Kentucky Decker College involvement, a charter school venture, but is now meeting competition from Assemblyman John Faso from Columbia County, the serious party loyalist and former Minority Leader, who in 2002, at the party’s call, ran for Comptroller, losing narrowly to Alan Hevesi. Faso, who is a fiscal expert (his committee saved the NYS $5B in 1994 and rescued the budget), and has to contend with low visibility, is favored by the Conservative Party, without whose endorsement winning the Governorship is deemed impossible. As for a daytime job, Faso is a partner in a national law firm (he went to Georgetown Law at night).
The Democratic Attorney General field is narrowing. Good Dad, Assemblyman Richard Brodsky has withdrawn; he is donating a kidney for his 16-year old immune system deficient daughter Willie, and will not be ready to campaign. Councilman Dan Garodnick and Assemblyman Jonathan Bing are favoring Andrew Cuomo for AG, and he is certain to have 25% of the vote in the state Democratic Party’s convention in Buffalo, in the last days of May, assuring him a spot on the primary ballot in September. But the field is still too large for any of the other candidates to gain a similar advantage, and some, notably Denise O’Donnell, the former federal attorney from Buffalo, and Charlie King, a former chair of the NYCounty Democratic Committee, are attempting to have Cuomo help remove the restriction, else they will have to go into the expensive and demanding procedure of collecting petition signatures throughout the state. But Cuomo will not give up an advantage, and the remaining field, Mark Green and Sean Patrick Maloney are resigned to it; the latter, formerly President Clinton’s link to the gay community, is positive about making it to the ballot.
Which leaves us with Eliot Spitzer, the “can’t lose” candidate for Governor, still being pursued by Tom Suozzi, Nassau County Executive, who wants to tell him in a public debate how his fellow citizens feel about gay marriage and abortion. Good luck, Charlie, er, Tom.
Speaking of contests, received a cheery Message From Assemblywoman Sylvia M. Friedman, who was elected on January 28, and the next day in Albany signed on to co-sponsor seven bills. She too is expected to have a Democratic contester, for the 74th AD, Brian Kavanagh, former chief of staff for Councilwoman Gale Brewer.
One of Sylvia’s bill addresses the proliferation of bars in our neighborhoods, and will help regulate those that are not good neighbors; another, Healthy Teens Act, would establish age-appropriate sex education programs. Recognition of marriage without gender barriers and discrimination based on gender identity are two other topics. She applauds the legislative budget with its $1.8B school construction and the $9.4B increase in city financing cap, $19.7M for libraries, restoring $320M for CUNY and SUNY, and co-sponsors senior care bills, such as increasing the income eligibility for medical and nursing care. There’s more. Sylvia’s district office is in the formerly Steve Sanders’ space, using the same phone number – 201 E. 16 Street, 212-979-9696. Some speed, some action!
Thursday, May 18, 2006
Keeping eyes and ears open – 16th Street, Subway, Raymond Jacobs’s book
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
It was 9:15 AM, and the second-period kids on corner of 3rd Avenue and 16th Street were doing their tribal greeting rites – knocking fists, pulling on the baggy pants and leaping – to the shrieks and street language comments from their mates, about as fierce as heard in the Threepenny Opera’s current production (new translation by Wallace Shawn) at the Roundabout. Washington Irving High School has some rules that keep their students off the school’s sidewalk at certain times, to the groans of the neighborhood. The street is crowded – with social service clients from the Human Resource building across Irving Place, with the 800 polite blue-gowned students from the Sanford-Brown Institute (est.1977), where you can learn to be a medical technician (dark blue) or ultra-sound person (light blue). To add to the color scheme, there are the red-uniformed Union Square partnership workers pushing carts and clearing sidewalks of refuse.
Walking by WIHS is always interesting, one sees school administration at work. One or two years ago there were cartons of discarded CRT screens, more than a hundred, and last Spring they were dumping dozens of copies of a modern poetry anthology by John Malcolm Brinin (d. 1998) late founder and coordinator of the 92nd St Y poetry sessions. 1970s work, excellent reading.
Along the route, I picked up two freebee papers, but the Lexington Avenue train was packed, people were unable to read, except for a young woman, holding up the Four Trials by John Edwards, the 2004 Presidential candidate, and a tall student, doomed to staring at the Letters to the Editor page of his folded-to-quarters NYTimes copy. NYPost and Daily News were also noted, unread.
I had positioned myself in the train with an exit strategy to leave at the rotating gate leading to Wall Street – the other alternative is through the turnstiles, leading to Exchange Place. The travelers’ strategy depends on weather; in winter, when the Wall Street slope might be icy, one goes to Exchange Place, with its steps. New Yorkers could teach Rumsfeld something about exit planning.
Walking down Exchange Place, the hazard is at crossing Broad Street, with the 15 Broad Building, 42-story former JPMorgan headquarters, on the NE corner. Bedecked in huge ribbons proclaiming Downtownbystarck (Philippe Starck, the architect of Ian Schrager’s hotels), this Al Leviev –Boymelgreen structure has been a neighborhood sore for three years, first because the Lathers Union put on huge demonstrations, with a 10-ft grey rat sculpture shipped in every morning, and people with flyers and loudspeakers accusing the builder pair of union-busting, profiteering, shameful landlord activities and worse. On some days the picket line, easily 20+ strong (eventually confined behind barricades) brought in shrill whistles.
The cacophony was unbearable, though not hazardous to one’s health, unlike the blue haze and building odors emanated during the long months of demolition. Exchange Place was never closed as hazardous, despite the notices, advising local people to call 311 who would connect the complainant to Environmental people, who took the complaints and never called back, I’m told. On many occasions, for months, we had to take a circuitous route via Beaver St to get to Hanover Square.
Today the haze was away – it still continues, sporadically, due to the Diesel fumes from delivery trucks. Both cops and private security people, when asked, express health concerns – but a job is a job, that’s the hazards we take.
Reaching Hanover Square, there was a leggy blonde in modest shorts walking a dog, probably from 45 Wall, the yuppie residence building amid the monstrous
towers. The pooch looked vaguely familiar, reminding me of the dog chronicled in T&V for the past several weeks, but I did not ask any questions. And so to work.
The New York of Raymond Jacobs. A note in the Paper of Record reminded me of a new book of photographs by the late Ray Jacobs, who brought to East 17th Street and the US a phenomenon called Earth Shoe. He was also a noted photographer, featured in Edward Steichen’s seminal MOMA exhibit, The Family of Man. His widow Eleanor has assembled an oversize book of photographs, Raymond Jacobs; My New York (Pointed Leaf, $75), with 95 black-and-white pictures stemming back to the Eisenhower years, scenes of the Lower East Side, Coney Island, Harlem, jazz, and the art world, a strong reminder, in their deceptive artlessness, of who we once were. Taken with simple equipment and blown up beyond the expectations of the camera and film, they have a Cartier –Bresson quality that transcends the mundane subjects. This is an inspired book.
Always an artist although supplementing his freelance income as a fur cutter, Raymond Jacobs turned shoe impresario when the family discovered Kalso Minus-Heel shoes in Denmark in 1969, and became their distributors in the US, expanding the 17th Street facility into 135 stores nation-wide, and leaving it in 1977, to devote full time to art.
Another cheerup suggestion – visit our parks. This week’s special – see the white lilacs in Madison Square Park.
It was 9:15 AM, and the second-period kids on corner of 3rd Avenue and 16th Street were doing their tribal greeting rites – knocking fists, pulling on the baggy pants and leaping – to the shrieks and street language comments from their mates, about as fierce as heard in the Threepenny Opera’s current production (new translation by Wallace Shawn) at the Roundabout. Washington Irving High School has some rules that keep their students off the school’s sidewalk at certain times, to the groans of the neighborhood. The street is crowded – with social service clients from the Human Resource building across Irving Place, with the 800 polite blue-gowned students from the Sanford-Brown Institute (est.1977), where you can learn to be a medical technician (dark blue) or ultra-sound person (light blue). To add to the color scheme, there are the red-uniformed Union Square partnership workers pushing carts and clearing sidewalks of refuse.
Walking by WIHS is always interesting, one sees school administration at work. One or two years ago there were cartons of discarded CRT screens, more than a hundred, and last Spring they were dumping dozens of copies of a modern poetry anthology by John Malcolm Brinin (d. 1998) late founder and coordinator of the 92nd St Y poetry sessions. 1970s work, excellent reading.
Along the route, I picked up two freebee papers, but the Lexington Avenue train was packed, people were unable to read, except for a young woman, holding up the Four Trials by John Edwards, the 2004 Presidential candidate, and a tall student, doomed to staring at the Letters to the Editor page of his folded-to-quarters NYTimes copy. NYPost and Daily News were also noted, unread.
I had positioned myself in the train with an exit strategy to leave at the rotating gate leading to Wall Street – the other alternative is through the turnstiles, leading to Exchange Place. The travelers’ strategy depends on weather; in winter, when the Wall Street slope might be icy, one goes to Exchange Place, with its steps. New Yorkers could teach Rumsfeld something about exit planning.
Walking down Exchange Place, the hazard is at crossing Broad Street, with the 15 Broad Building, 42-story former JPMorgan headquarters, on the NE corner. Bedecked in huge ribbons proclaiming Downtownbystarck (Philippe Starck, the architect of Ian Schrager’s hotels), this Al Leviev –Boymelgreen structure has been a neighborhood sore for three years, first because the Lathers Union put on huge demonstrations, with a 10-ft grey rat sculpture shipped in every morning, and people with flyers and loudspeakers accusing the builder pair of union-busting, profiteering, shameful landlord activities and worse. On some days the picket line, easily 20+ strong (eventually confined behind barricades) brought in shrill whistles.
The cacophony was unbearable, though not hazardous to one’s health, unlike the blue haze and building odors emanated during the long months of demolition. Exchange Place was never closed as hazardous, despite the notices, advising local people to call 311 who would connect the complainant to Environmental people, who took the complaints and never called back, I’m told. On many occasions, for months, we had to take a circuitous route via Beaver St to get to Hanover Square.
Today the haze was away – it still continues, sporadically, due to the Diesel fumes from delivery trucks. Both cops and private security people, when asked, express health concerns – but a job is a job, that’s the hazards we take.
Reaching Hanover Square, there was a leggy blonde in modest shorts walking a dog, probably from 45 Wall, the yuppie residence building amid the monstrous
towers. The pooch looked vaguely familiar, reminding me of the dog chronicled in T&V for the past several weeks, but I did not ask any questions. And so to work.
The New York of Raymond Jacobs. A note in the Paper of Record reminded me of a new book of photographs by the late Ray Jacobs, who brought to East 17th Street and the US a phenomenon called Earth Shoe. He was also a noted photographer, featured in Edward Steichen’s seminal MOMA exhibit, The Family of Man. His widow Eleanor has assembled an oversize book of photographs, Raymond Jacobs; My New York (Pointed Leaf, $75), with 95 black-and-white pictures stemming back to the Eisenhower years, scenes of the Lower East Side, Coney Island, Harlem, jazz, and the art world, a strong reminder, in their deceptive artlessness, of who we once were. Taken with simple equipment and blown up beyond the expectations of the camera and film, they have a Cartier –Bresson quality that transcends the mundane subjects. This is an inspired book.
Always an artist although supplementing his freelance income as a fur cutter, Raymond Jacobs turned shoe impresario when the family discovered Kalso Minus-Heel shoes in Denmark in 1969, and became their distributors in the US, expanding the 17th Street facility into 135 stores nation-wide, and leaving it in 1977, to devote full time to art.
Another cheerup suggestion – visit our parks. This week’s special – see the white lilacs in Madison Square Park.
Tuesday, May 09, 2006
Beware, old scams never die - the Six Degrees of Separation look-alike
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
We were walking along 57the Street towards the subway, when a passing man
caught my eye. He stopped, smiled and spoke: “ Hello again…C’mon, you know
who I am. You remember me. It will come to you, keep thinking.”
As he kept talking, indeed it came to me. It was nearly two decades ago,
and his hair had been red. “Yes, I knew your father,” I responded, and the
man’s smile turned into a frown, he waved his hand in front of his face as
if to dismiss me, half-turned and briskly strode away, disappearing in the
weekend crowd down the sidewalk.
It was the East Side “Six degrees of Separation” look-alike scammer, last
seen on Irving Place and adjacent side streets in the 1980s, who had some
local knowledge and talked passing strangers into lending him emergency
cabfare and other funds, by charming them into naming their best Black
friend, and pretending to be the man’s son. Articles were written about him
in local papers, too late for me, after I had lent him a fiver. The smile
and the act came back to mind instantly, even years later. I almost
regretted not letting him continue the con, to find out what his new scheme
is, but we were in a hurry.
“Six Degrees of Separation,” a 1990 play by John Guare, had a young man,
pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier, scam a professorial family of
Central Park by talking the gullible couple out of major sums. There had
been a major real-life prototype, David Hampton, who had inveigled West
Siders into putting money in his fake schemes, until caught and jailed. He
died in 2003, at 39. Old cons may pass away, but their art stays on.
I was reminded of this a few days ago, after receiving e-mail from
ostensibly an official of the Internal Private Banking Department of the
HSBC Bank, with a yahoo.co.uk address, who, after an elaborate explanation
of a dead heirless multi-million dollar account of which he had control,
offered to nominate me as the next-of-kin, and share the proceeds, before
the bank’s Total Quality of Management policy forces him to declare the
inactive account defunct. It was a modernized version, with proper terms of
economics, of the old Nigerian 411 “dead general” scam of the early 2000s,
which had a long run and still continues. The objective is to engage you in
correspondence, in the course of which the crooks will obtain your bank
account information, to deposit the “funds,” actually to clean out your
account.
More recently there has been a version of the scam that plays off the
misfortunes that have beset Michail Khodorkovsky of Russia’s Yukos Oil. The
Russian tycoon, worth $15B, was arrested in 2003 on a Siberian airfield
while trying to leave the country, and convicted of corrupt business
practices, although the facts indicate that this was Putin’s revenge for
organizing an opposition party.
The scammers, totally up to date, instantly concocted a spurious letter
from Khodorkovsky’s wife Leila (her real name is Irina), evoking sympathy
for the fallen billionaire and asking for financial advice in transferring
and investing funds in the US. Another letter, from a Larissa Sosnotchkaya,
Khodorkovsky’s “personal treasurer,” took the outright path of the original
Nigerian ploy.
The modern crooks to really worry come under the heading of “phishers,” and
work with e-mail requests for data needed to reconfirm your account
information. They come from pretend financial organizations with reputable
names, and nearly legitimate looking e-mail addresses. Notable are the
phony messages from WaMu , the giant Washington Mutual Bank and PayPal, the
payment clearing firm for Internet purchases, part of the eBay
organization. Their e-mail addresses contain the names of the real firms,
and accessing their websites you will find legitimate-looking logos and
home page information. If they obtain your Social Security number, bank
account or credit card number, the phishers will change the account’s
address and use it to open credit cards accounts in your name, and have
even succeeded in obtaining major mortgages.
All e-mail from unknown sources can be dangerous, and you should never open
the attachments, which may contain viruses or similar traps to the unary.
Delete the messages, and check the internet for the ones that look like
attempts at phishing, by searching the company name followed by the word
“scam.” The internet detectives are very efficient in routing out the
phonies and publicizing them. If you think that the thieves have already
managed to use your name, call the Federal Trade Commission’s hotline
1-877-IDTHEFT for helpful advice (there are also web sites). By being
cautious about your e-mail and staying away from suspicious and salacious
looking web sites the user can avoid a lot of the damages that befall the
unwary.
But if that guy with the charming smile stops you on the street and insists
that you know him, or his Dad, you are on your own. He will make sure that
no cops are around. Walking away is best, playing along may be costly, he
can really sell.
We were walking along 57the Street towards the subway, when a passing man
caught my eye. He stopped, smiled and spoke: “ Hello again…C’mon, you know
who I am. You remember me. It will come to you, keep thinking.”
As he kept talking, indeed it came to me. It was nearly two decades ago,
and his hair had been red. “Yes, I knew your father,” I responded, and the
man’s smile turned into a frown, he waved his hand in front of his face as
if to dismiss me, half-turned and briskly strode away, disappearing in the
weekend crowd down the sidewalk.
It was the East Side “Six degrees of Separation” look-alike scammer, last
seen on Irving Place and adjacent side streets in the 1980s, who had some
local knowledge and talked passing strangers into lending him emergency
cabfare and other funds, by charming them into naming their best Black
friend, and pretending to be the man’s son. Articles were written about him
in local papers, too late for me, after I had lent him a fiver. The smile
and the act came back to mind instantly, even years later. I almost
regretted not letting him continue the con, to find out what his new scheme
is, but we were in a hurry.
“Six Degrees of Separation,” a 1990 play by John Guare, had a young man,
pretending to be the son of Sidney Poitier, scam a professorial family of
Central Park by talking the gullible couple out of major sums. There had
been a major real-life prototype, David Hampton, who had inveigled West
Siders into putting money in his fake schemes, until caught and jailed. He
died in 2003, at 39. Old cons may pass away, but their art stays on.
I was reminded of this a few days ago, after receiving e-mail from
ostensibly an official of the Internal Private Banking Department of the
HSBC Bank, with a yahoo.co.uk address, who, after an elaborate explanation
of a dead heirless multi-million dollar account of which he had control,
offered to nominate me as the next-of-kin, and share the proceeds, before
the bank’s Total Quality of Management policy forces him to declare the
inactive account defunct. It was a modernized version, with proper terms of
economics, of the old Nigerian 411 “dead general” scam of the early 2000s,
which had a long run and still continues. The objective is to engage you in
correspondence, in the course of which the crooks will obtain your bank
account information, to deposit the “funds,” actually to clean out your
account.
More recently there has been a version of the scam that plays off the
misfortunes that have beset Michail Khodorkovsky of Russia’s Yukos Oil. The
Russian tycoon, worth $15B, was arrested in 2003 on a Siberian airfield
while trying to leave the country, and convicted of corrupt business
practices, although the facts indicate that this was Putin’s revenge for
organizing an opposition party.
The scammers, totally up to date, instantly concocted a spurious letter
from Khodorkovsky’s wife Leila (her real name is Irina), evoking sympathy
for the fallen billionaire and asking for financial advice in transferring
and investing funds in the US. Another letter, from a Larissa Sosnotchkaya,
Khodorkovsky’s “personal treasurer,” took the outright path of the original
Nigerian ploy.
The modern crooks to really worry come under the heading of “phishers,” and
work with e-mail requests for data needed to reconfirm your account
information. They come from pretend financial organizations with reputable
names, and nearly legitimate looking e-mail addresses. Notable are the
phony messages from WaMu , the giant Washington Mutual Bank and PayPal, the
payment clearing firm for Internet purchases, part of the eBay
organization. Their e-mail addresses contain the names of the real firms,
and accessing their websites you will find legitimate-looking logos and
home page information. If they obtain your Social Security number, bank
account or credit card number, the phishers will change the account’s
address and use it to open credit cards accounts in your name, and have
even succeeded in obtaining major mortgages.
All e-mail from unknown sources can be dangerous, and you should never open
the attachments, which may contain viruses or similar traps to the unary.
Delete the messages, and check the internet for the ones that look like
attempts at phishing, by searching the company name followed by the word
“scam.” The internet detectives are very efficient in routing out the
phonies and publicizing them. If you think that the thieves have already
managed to use your name, call the Federal Trade Commission’s hotline
1-877-IDTHEFT for helpful advice (there are also web sites). By being
cautious about your e-mail and staying away from suspicious and salacious
looking web sites the user can avoid a lot of the damages that befall the
unwary.
But if that guy with the charming smile stops you on the street and insists
that you know him, or his Dad, you are on your own. He will make sure that
no cops are around. Walking away is best, playing along may be costly, he
can really sell.
Monday, May 08, 2006
Dr. Paranoia celebrates Cinco de Mayo
Most people don't know that back in 1912, Hellmann's mayonnaise was manufactured in England. In fact, the Titanic was carrying 12,000 jars of the condiment scheduled for delivery in Vera Cruz, Mexico, which was to be the next port of call after its stop in New York. But the great ship hit an iceberg and sank, and the cargo was forever lost. The people of Mexico, who were crazy about mayonnaise, were disconsolate at the loss.
Their anguish was so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning, celebrated each year on May 5th and is known as Sinko de Mayo. A happy May to all, and cele brate the flowering of our parks.
Dr Paranoia
Their anguish was so great, that they declared a National Day of Mourning, celebrated each year on May 5th and is known as Sinko de Mayo. A happy May to all, and cele brate the flowering of our parks.
Dr Paranoia
