Beware of Holiday Scams

Don't fall prey to these 7 hoaxes

Sid Kirchheimer : Nov 20, 2013, AARP

‘Tis the season for shopping, salutations and various seasonal scams as perennial as poinsettias. Among the most common:

1. Shopping setups

During the holidays, scammers, working like type A elves, try to steal money and personal information from unsuspecting shoppers. One popular scheme: rogue websites that appear on your search engine results when you type in the names of hot-selling gifts or even terms such as "discount toys." Promising deals, the sites instead steal credit card information, passwords and other sensitive data when you click on links infected with malware. (The same can apply to holiday-themed videos that fraudsters post on Facebook.)

Also, beware of what's known as cybersquatting, in which crooks steal or slightly alter the website address of a well-known company to launch a copycat site that may be a spot-on replica of the real thing. While these sites may have malware, they primarily function to collect your credit card information for the purchase of inferior counterfeit goods — assuming you actually receive them.

So when shopping online, carefully read website addresses before clicking, to ensure you're headed to a recognized and legitimate vendor. Once on the site, look for phone numbers and street addresses (versus just email addresses and P.O. box numbers) as signs of legitimate vendors. You can check who owns the website's address at Whois.net. 

‘Tis the season for shopping, salutations and various seasonal scams as perennial as poinsettias. Among the most common:

2. Gift card gotchas

Taking gift cards from display racks, thieves peel and copy or use a portable scanner to get the code underneath the scratch-off strip. Then they put the cards back on the rack and wait for them to be bought and activated. By dialing the cards' toll-free numbers, they can find out exactly how much value is on the card. All's clear now for them to make online purchases or generate cloned copies for in-store use, leaving your intended recipients with worthless cards.

Your best bet: Purchase gift cards from a store's customer service counter or website, rather than from untended display racks. If you do buy from a display rack, make sure the cashier scans and activates the card in your presence — you don't want the cashier just pocketing the money. And make sure you get a receipt to give to the gift recipient in case there's a problem.

3. Courier cons

An email claiming that FedEx, UPS, DHL or the U.S. Postal Service is trying to deliver a package. Unless you provided your email address — unlikely, since many shipping forms don't ask — you can assume the email is scammer-sent. You'll likely install malware by clicking on the attached link promising details of the supposed delivery holdup.

Also beware of mailed postcards about "undeliverable" packages. They could be a trick to get you to make an expensive overseas phone call and/or to reveal personal and financial information. Area codes 809, 876 and 284 take you to the Caribbean, a hotbed of scams, where the idea is to make you pay phony fees or simply run up a high long-distance charge that will partially go to the scammers.

When in doubt, look up the courier service's callback number and dial it. Don't use the number on the postcard.

4. Greeting card cheating

When e-cards come from an unnamed "friend" or "admirer" — or an unrecognized name — that's your cue for a quick delete. It's another tease to click on a malware-likely link. Even e-cards bearing the names of people you know should be suspect; they may be the result of a botnet virus that captured your email address. Legitimate e-card notifications should include a confirmation code to use to safely open the card at the issuing website.

5. The grift that keeps on taking

Mobile apps are an easy way for scammers to gather personal information via malware, so download wisely — and only from reputable vendors. The same applies to "free" holiday-themed screen savers. If you buy or receive computers, smartphones or gaming devices as gifts, learn how to protect them from future malware.

6. Travel scams

Phony offers of accommodations with too-good-to-be-true prices proliferate during the holiday vacation season. Get wise to these lies.

7. Charity cons

Once again, unless you provided your email address to an organization, assume that all email solicitations bearing that charity's name are scams. Don't provide credit card information to phone solicitors. Keep a close ear for soundalike names, such as the National Heart Association instead of the legit American Heart Association. Be especially suspicious of heartstring-pulling solicitations to supposedly benefit disabled veterans, police and firefighters, or sick or needy children (those conning causes most often target older donors). When in doubt, check a charity's legitimacy.

Sid Kirchheimer is the author of Scam-Proof Your Life, published by AARP Books/Sterling.

Learn more about scams expert Sid Kirchheimer and read recent articles.

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Nobel Laureates 2013

The Nobel Prize ceremonies by the numbers 
Stockholm (AP) Associated Press, Dec 10, 2013 

The winners of the Nobel Prizes collected their awards on Tuesday. Here are some of the numbers that tell the story behind the honors and the ceremonies 2: the number of ceremonies held — one for the peace prize in Oslo and one for the five other prize categories in Stockholm. Prize founder Alfred Nobel wanted it that way, for reasons that he kept to himself. 12: the laureates who will personally collect their awards on Tuesday. The 13th, 82-year-old literature winner Alice Munro, declined the invitation to Stockholm for health reasons and is represented by her daughter. 84: the age of physics winner Peter Higgs. He is the oldest of this year's laureates. The youngest is 57-year-old medicine winner Thomas Sudhof. The oldest winner in Nobel history was Leonid Hurwicz who accepted the economics award at age 90. The youngest was Lawrence Bragg, who was just 25 when he collected the physics award in 1915. 15: the number of people who can accompany each laureate to the Nobel week in Stockholm. Higgs' entourage includes his son, daughter-in-law, two grandchildren and a number of scientific colleagues, according to the Nobel Foundation. 8 million: the prize in Swedish kronor for each award category. That's about $1.2 million. The laureates also receive a gold medal and a diploma. 94: the number of Nobel Peace Prizes handed out since 1901. No award was given on 19 occasions, including during the first and second world wars. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons is the 25th organization to receive the award. 17,000: the number of flowers that will decorate the Concert Hall where the Stockholm prize ceremony takes place. They include roses, carnations, chrysanthemums, and tulips as well as apples and evergreen plants. Many of the flowers have been shipped from the Italian city of San Remo, where Alfred Nobel died on Dec. 10, 1896. 43: the number of chefs needed for the 1,250 guests invited to the lavish Nobel banquet in Stockholm after the award ceremony. There will be 260 service staff. 50: the years that Nobel committees keep their deliberations secret. So we'll have to wait until 2063 to find out who, beside the winners, was nominated for the 2013 awards. www.nobelprize.org for highlights from the Nobel Week - the official web site of the Nobel Prize

Justia.com

Justia.com Based in the heart of Silicon Valley, Justia's mission is to advance the availability of legal resources for the benefit of society. We are especially focused on making primary legal materials and community resources free and easy to find on the Internet. The company provides Internet users with free case law, codes, regulations, legal articles and legal blog and twitterer databases, as well as additional community resources. Justia works with educational, public interest and other socially focused organizations to bring legal and consumer information to the online community. (site)

Justia.com is more user-friendly then FindLaw - both are authoritative and easy to use, "crammed with legal information and resources; however, FindLaw seems to lean slightly more toward professionals than general users. Geared toward nonspecialists, Justia.com is easy to navigate and loads quickly. Information is available through subject lists on the home page, or via a search box. Keyword searches may be broad in nature, or limited to Lawyers, Legal Web, Law Blogs, or Legal Podcasts. http://www.justia.com/ users may sign up for Daily Opinion Summaries covering particular legal subject areas, or breaking court opinions. Podcasts from law schools, news agencies, legal firms, and others sources are available. This very useful resource will appeal to audiences ranging from nonspecialists to college/university students" (Choice) Reviewed in ALA's December issue of Choice.

FracFocus: the national hydraulic fracturing chemical registry.

FracFocus is managed by the Ground Water Protection Council and Interstate Oil and Gas Compact Commission, two organizations whose missions both revolve around conservation and environmental protection.

The site was created to provide the public access to reported chemicals used for hydraulic fracturing within their area. To help users put this information into perspective, the site also provides objective information on hydraulic fracturing, the chemicals used, the purposes they serve and the means by which groundwater is protected.
The primary purpose of this site is to provide factual information concerning hydraulic fracturing and groundwater protection.  It is not intended to argue either for or against the use of hydraulic fracturing as a technology.  It is also not intended to provide a scientific analysis of risk associated with hydraulic fracturing.

While FracFocus is not intended to replace or supplant any state governmental information systems it is being used by a number of states as a means of official state chemical disclosure.  Currently, ten states: Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Texas, North Dakota, Montana, Mississippi, Utah, Ohio and Pennsylvania use Fracfocus in this manner.  Finally, this site does not deal with issues unrelated to chemical use in hydraulic fracturing such as Naturally Occurring Radioactive Material (NORM).  This topic is beyond the current scope of this site.

FracFocus is a dynamic website that will evolve and expand over time.  We welcome your comments and suggestions regarding the site.  You can submit a comment or suggestion regarding this website from the Ask a Question page.  The chemical data presented on this site has been submitted on a voluntary or regulatory basis by the participating oil and gas companies listed on the Links page who have agreed to disclose the information in the public interest. We hope you will find this site useful and informative.(site)

reviewed in ALA's Choice, December 2013

Teaching Channel

 Teaching Channel Tch is a video showcase—on the Internet and TV—of inspiring and effective teaching practices in America's schools. We have a rapidly growing community of registered members who trade ideas and share inspiration from each other.

With the help of the Tch community, our mission is to revolutionize how teachers learn, connect, and inspire each other to improve the outcomes for all K-12 students across America.

In order to accomplish this mission, we have three simple goals, all of them reliant on input from teachers:

• Build professional learning resources that teachers want
• Deepen and improve opportunities for teacher learning
• Elevate and celebrate teachers in our society

Our videos are produced by a unique team of professionals—a collaborative effort between video production experts, education advisors, and the classroom teachers themselves. We should point out that Teaching Channel does not determine or influence the content taught in our videos.

Our video library offers educators a wide range of subjects for grades K-12. The videos also include information on alignment with Common Core State Standards and ancillary material for teachers to use in their own classrooms.

Teaching Channel Presents, a weekly one-hour program featuring Tch videos, airs on PBS stations in nearly 75 million homes across the United States.

Teaching Channel is a free resource for all teachers. (FAQ)

A non-profit organization, Teaching Channel launched publicly in June 2011.

Reviewed on ALA's Choice, December 2013

The Center for Fiction

The Center for Fiction is the only nonprofit literary organization in the U.S. solely dedicated to celebrating fiction, and we work every day to connect readers and writers. Time Out calls The Center one of the top three reasons to stay in Manhattan for literary events, citing the innovative panels, lectures and conversations that take place in our beautiful building on East 47th Street. We also feature workspace, grants, and classes to support emerging writers, reading groups on classic and contemporary authors, and programs to help get kids reading.  We recognize the best in the world of fiction through our annual awards, and we operate one of the few independent fiction book shops in the country.  We are also an important piece of New York City history, continuing to build our renowned circulating library collection, begun in 1820 by New York City merchants before the advent of the public library system. (site)

"The website also offers considerable content for visitors outside Manhattan, such as essays by writers discussing their work and methods; access to its e-journal The Literarian, which publishes articles, interviews, and short fiction; details on two sponsored awards; and videos of past events, such as speeches by Margaret Atwood and a panel on international noir. Readers' advisers and collection librarians can make use of the annotated book lists, such as novelist Thomas Mallon's five essential books about politics. The home page sports a vibrant design, with a large carousel of images promoting current happenings. Two menus organize the site by subject, with categories including For Readers, For Writers, Audio and Video, Magazine, and Library. Membership details are included as well (the center is a nonprofit organization). The search engine leads users to relevant subpages, but literature students and faculty may find browsing just as useful, since this can lead to serendipitous finds. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general readers". Reviewed in ACRL's Choice, Dec 2013.