The Porter Method

Wow, I got busy and somehow a whole year has gone by since I last checked on my credit reports. I don’t recommend that. Check yours every 4 months. Hopefully I can get back into the routine. Soon I will be writing about something new and exciting from the credit reporting agencies that should eliminate almost all identity theft if done correctly. It is called Credit Freezes. It isn’t free but it will be well worth it. I’ll keep you informed once I get some free time.

So for those that don’t know, you are entitled by law to a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus once per year. It is a good idea to spread these out and request one report every 4 months. This lets you keep an eye on your credit report throughout the year and makes it more likely that you will quickly notice any inaccuracies or problems with the report.

I just retrieved my credit report from Experian and as I would expect, all is well. Another 4 months (January 2009) and I’ll check with Equifax.

To request your free credit report go to: AnnualCreditReport.com

The credit report is free, but the credit bureaus try and convince you to pay for additional services (credit score, credit monitoring, etc). So be sure to say No to any of these items if you want a truly free credit report.

Now go ahead and pull yours and make sure everything looks ok. Especially with the crazy market conditions we are in, you are going to need some pristine credit going forward, so time to get any incorrect information fixed if you see it.

Here is a link to the Federal Trade Commission’s site regarding your free annual credit report: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/freereports/psa.html

Oh, and remember, even though those commercials on TV with the guys in the band singing songs about how they are in dire situations due to poor credit (singing in a fish restaurant, a basement apartment, etc) are awesomely funny, the site they are representing is not for the free credit report. It is for a pay service. Don’t go to their site. Go to AnnualCreditReport.com. This is the only free site.

Once again I’m late on getting my last credit report for the year writeup but here we go. As many of you may know, you are entitled by law to a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus once per year. It is a good idea to spread these out and request one report every 4 months. This lets you keep an eye on your credit report throughout the year and makes it more likely that you will quickly notice any inaccuracies or problems with the report.

I just retrieved my credit report from TransUnion and all is well. Another 4 months (January 2008) and I’ll check with Experian.

To request your free credit report go to: AnnualCreditReport.com

The credit report is free, but the credit bureaus try and convince you to pay for additional services (credit score, credit monitoring, etc). So be sure to say No to any of these items if you want a truly free credit report. Silly TransUnion has you create a login and then wants you to use it a year later when you come back. Good luck with that. I had to re-authenticate since I had forgotten my username and password.

Now go ahead and pull yours and make sure everything looks ok. It is a sad fact of life that your credit history is extremely important and can open or close many doors based on what information it contains.

And as I always say, if you really want to spice up your love live with your significant other, how about exchanging credit reports with that special someone. Honesty in a long-term relationship is extremely important, and if you can’t be open about your financial standing then you really aren’t sharing everything. Plus, nobody wants to find out a week after the honeymoon that your partner is $100,000 in credit card debt

Also here is a link to the Federal Trade Commission’s site regarding your free annual credit report: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/freereports/psa.html

Belated writeup but here we go. As many of you may know, you are entitled by law to a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus once per year. It is a good idea to spread these out and request one report every 4 months. This lets you keep an eye on your credit report throughout the year and makes it more likely that you will quickly notice any inaccuracies or problems with the report.

I just retrieved my credit report from Equifax and all is well. Another 4 months and I’ll check with TransUnion.

To request your free credit report go to: AnnualCreditReport.com

The credit report is free, but the credit bureaus try and convince you to pay for additional services (credit score, credit monitoring, etc). So be sure to say No to any of these items if you want a truly free credit report.

Now go ahead and pull yours and make sure everything looks ok. It is a sad fact of life that your credit history is extremely important and can open or close many doors based on what information it contains.

And if you really want to spice up your love live with your significant other, how about exchanging credit reports with that special someone. Honesty in a long-term relationship is very important, and if you can’t be open about your financial standing then you really aren’t sharing everything. Plus, nobody wants to find out a week after the honeymoon that your partner is $50,000 in credit card debt

Also here is a link to the Federal Trade Commission’s site regarding your free annual credit report: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/freereports/psa.html

So in the same way as my previous two unofficial RSS feeds, I have created a new one. This one takes the writings of House Representative Ron Paul (R-TX) from his House.gov website and puts them together into an RSS feed (since that is really the only way I consume the news these days aside from Reddit.com).

The feed is available here:
http://www.theportermethod.com/ronpaul/index.rss

For those of you that have not heard of Ron Paul, he is a Republican member of the House of Representatives representing Texas that is running for President in 2008. Though he is running for the Republican party nomination he doesn’t really fit the Republican party of today. He tends to be more of a Libertarian in his views or possibly a Thomas Jefferson style Democrat from the days of old. I recommend you check out what he has to say. His message fits with what most of my friends and I think is important for our country going forward. Check out his Wikipedia page for some more information.

If I had to sum up his platform, I would say Common Sense, Personal Freedom and Responsibility, Limited Government, Fiscal Restraint, and State’s Rights. He always looks to the Constitution for guidance in his voting and is not afraid of standing up for his beliefs. And get this, he actually reads the full text of all of the bills he votes on (related see the Read The Bills Act). Contrast this with the majority of Congressman that have no idea what is contained in the bills they vote on (the Patriot Act comes to mind, also the Campaign Finance Reform bill that the Congress voted on and then had to bring in special trainers to teach them how to follow it).

Also, this is one candidate I actually contributed money to (first and probably only time ever) since he really needs help getting his message out. You can help out too by donating here or buying some swag from his cafepress store. He may not win the nomination (probably won’t due to lack of funds), but if he can just get his message out on a national level I think it will get people thinking about what is important long term in this country.

Also, if you want to check out the Ruby script I am using to put this feed together, you can download it here: ronpaulfeed.rb

As with the other feeds, if anyone associated with Ron Paul’s organization would like me to send this feed to them nightly for their use just let me know.

As many of you may know, you are entitled by law to a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus once per year. It is a good idea to spread these out and request one report every 4 months. This lets you keep an eye on your credit report throughout the year and makes it more likely that you will quickly notice any inaccuracies or problems with the report.

I just retrieved my credit report from Experian and all is well. Another 4 months and I’ll check with Equifax.

To request your free credit report go to: AnnualCreditReport.com

The credit report is free, but the credit bureaus try and convince you to pay for additional services (credit score, credit monitoring, etc). So be sure to say No to any of these items if you want a truly free credit report.

Now go ahead and pull yours and make sure everything looks ok. It is a sad fact of life that your credit history is extremely important and can open or close many doors based on what information it contains.

And if you really want to spice up your love live with your significant other, how about exchanging credit reports with that special someone. Honesty in a long-term relationship is very important, and if you can’t be open about your financial standing then you really aren’t sharing everything. Plus, nobody wants to find out a week after the honeymoon that your partner is $50,000 in credit card debt

Update: Here is a link to the Federal Trade Commission’s site regarding your free annual credit report: http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/edcams/freereports/psa.html

As many of you may know, you are entitled by law to a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus once per year. It is a good idea to spread these out and request one report every 4 months. This lets you keep an eye on your credit report throughout the year and makes it more likely that you will quickly notice any inaccuracies or problems with the report.

I just retrieved my credit report from TransUnion and all is well. Another 4 months and I’ll check with Experian and then this cycle will be complete and ready to begin anew next year.

To request your free credit report go to: AnnualCreditReport.com

The credit report is free, but the credit bureaus try and convince you to pay for additional services (credit score, credit monitoring, etc). So be sure to say No to any of these items if you want a truely free credit report.

Now go ahead and pull yours and make sure everyting looks ok. It is a sad fact of life that your credit history is extremely important and can open or close many doors based on what information it contains.

As many of you may know, you are entitled by law to a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus once per year. It is a good idea to spread these out and request one report every 4 months. This lets you keep an eye on your credit report throughout the year and makes it more likely that you will quickly notice any inaccuracies or problems with the report.

I just retrieved my credit report from Equifax and all is well. Another 4 months and I’ll check with TransUnion.

To request your free credit report go to: AnnualCreditReport.com

The credit report is free, but the credit bureaus try and convince you to pay for additional services (credit score, credit monitoring, etc). So be sure to say No to any of these items if you want a truely free credit report.

Now go ahead and pull yours and make sure everyting looks ok. It is a sad fact of life that your credit history is extremely important and can open or close many doors based on what information it contains.

I know this will come as a grand shock considering the whole domestic spying incident of late (sarcasm implied), but the Executive branch doesn’t have to obey laws. They are clearly optional.

While the domestic spying angers me greatly, this one is even more overt and really makes me want to scream.

From Bruce Schneier’s blog and full story here:

Perspective: E-tracking through your cell phone

The gist is that your cellphone’s location is fair game to law enforcement at all times without any probable cause even though when lobbying for the passage of the bill in 1994, FBI Director Louis Freeh ensured the Senate that the bill would not be used for these purposes.

I must admit that of late I have become so disillusioned with our political system. The best we can hope for is gridlock in the Legislative branch. Regardless of which team in our Two-Party system has the majority, all they do is serve special interests, buy votes, get richer themselves, and pretty well screw things up. I hope everyone realizes that not one person that is in public office and has been re-elected at least once has not made deals which compromise their integrity. The only honest ones didn’t get re-elected when they refused to play ball. (Didn’t you ever wonder why people raise and spend Millions and Millions of dollars to get someone else a $400,000/year job?)

Mid-year elections are coming up for Congress. Vote wisely. Gridlock is Good. And make your voice heard to your elected officials by writing to them. They don’t really care what you think, but at least you can say you expressed your opinion. (Congress.org is good site that lets you easily write to them online)

As many of you may know, you are entitled by law to a copy of your credit report from each of the 3 credit bureaus once per year. It is a good idea to spread these out and request one report every 4 months. This lets you keep an eye on your credit report throughout the year and makes it more likely that you will quickly notice any inaccuracies or problems with the report.

I just retrieved my credit report from Equifax and all is well. Another 4 months and I’ll check with TransUnion.

To request your free credit report go to: AnnualCreditReport.com

The credit report is free, but the credit bureaus try and convince you to pay for additional services (credit score, credit monitoring, etc). So be sure to say No to any of these items if you want a truely free credit report.

Now go ahead and pull yours and make sure everyting looks ok. It is a sad fact of life that your credit history is extremely important and can open or close many doors based on what information it contains.

And of course a late Merry Christmas to everyone and a Happy New Year.

In another assault on personal privacy, I just read about a plan to move towards using biometric identifiers for hotel room access over standard room keys. Read Hotel Card Keys Edge Toward Extinction. I had never thought much about biometric identifiers as security risks until recently. I figured unique to me as a person was a good thing, but after listening to Brandon McMillon speak on A Primer to Secure Coding (Parts 1 and 2) at the 2005 Alabama .Net Code Camp many good points about biometrics were raised.

1) In computer terms, a biometric reader (fingerprint, handprint, retina scan, etc) takes unique values from the physical attribute and converts it into a numeric value (we’ll call it a hash).

2) That hash is compared to what is stored in a database and if a match is found, then identification is verified

3) So, the validation system is only accepting a hash (generated by the machine that examines the biometric attribute) which is a number, and a certain type of reader will always generate the same hash value

4) If you somehow gain access to that number, you can always spoof the reader that generates that value to the authentication system (of course this does rely on being able to gain access to the intermediate system).

And then the real kicker that has made me anti-biometric (and didn’t I just read that United States Passports will start containing RFID chips, and probably personal info, maybe even biometric by October 2006). If someone compromises the hash and has access to the intermediary system…you can’t do anything to change your identifying information to restore security to the system. The manufacturer would have to change their hash algorithm. If a username or password is compromised, I can change those easily. Hard to change my fingerprints or retinas.

So hopefully, these hotels will have some backup authentication mechanism in place. It would seem they would have to. Big Rob brought up the point last night about people with no fingers. Can’t discriminate against them. I for one will refuse to stay at a hotel that demands biometrics. I just don’t trust the security of the systems.