Safety


August 12, 2009: 12:43 pm: Safety, Technology

Protecting your identity online is more than just worrying about what you put on your credit cards.  There is now an entire field of marketing dedicated to protecting something more precious than your bank account, your online reputation. Online reputation management is now an entire sector of marketing. It helps companies and individuals take back control of their online identity.

Because there is no internet police, literally anyone can write anything about you. The problem with most internet information is that it can have completely no basis in fact and still be designed to look like it is true.  Most of the information online does not have anything solid or particularly scholarly to back it up. While that is what makes the internet great, it is what also can make it a very frustrating way to receive information.

For example, the company Next Day Blinds has run into this. Despite having won numerous awards from customer service, it is still easy to hurt their reputation. If someone, or even their competition writes something online that is untrue about them is can cause Next Day Blinds review to come up in a search engine.  That might cause someone searching for the company to click on Next Day Blinds review.  Even if Next Day Blinds review are very few and far between.

This is just an example of how the internet can be unreliable and why managing your online reputation is so important. This is especially so if you are one of the many job seekers right now in America. Because you can bet that most employers are probably doing an internet search on you. It’s important to go ahead and Google yourself to see what kind of results come up. That way if you don’t like them you can try and change them.

August 3, 2009: 4:56 pm: Legal, Politics, Safety, Society

One of the programs of the United States government, created to track down terrorists and those fund them, can frighten customers unnecessarily.  The critics of the suspicious activity report claim that those who are conducting legitimate transactions are being victimized by the financial institutions.  They claim that the paperwork created by the filing of the reports is useless and is burdensome to those who are employed by such institutions.  A burden with the financial cost of billions of dollars and creates work that they deem time consuming and not necessary.  The reality is that the system and the procedures that are required, are ways in which the funding of terrorists and the crime of laundering money are detected.  Another aspect that has people frightened is that is against the law for those filing the reports to inform those about which the report is being filed against.

Reports are generated when activities take place that are considered to be not of ordinary circumstances.  If they are transactions that the customer is not usually known to make, the personnel is required to file a report.  This can be related to being pulled over due to a traffic violation.  A law enforcement officer may see a driver weaving and having difficulty controlling their vehicle.  The may pull the driver over under the suspicion that the driver is impaired, when in fact perhaps the steering or the transmission of the care has gone out.  When the facts are uncovered the truth is revealed.  The Suspicious Activity Report is extremely regulated.  If no crime is being committed, evidence will be gathered that supports that innocence.  People who are truly doing nothing wrong, need not be nervous or afraid.  These reports have resulted in the interruption of funding for those who were intending not only crimes that break the laws of the nation, but crimes against humanity without regards to moral or ethical action.

: 3:03 pm: Legal, Politics, Safety, Society

During the years following the September 11th terrorist attack on the United States, governments around the world are creating the means and the organizations which create difficulties to those involved in the financing of terrorist activities.  One of the elements used in the fight against money laundering and other forms of financial corruption is the Suspicious Activity Report.  This has become one of the most important and one of the most valuable tools, as the reports will allow the proper law enforcement agencies access to the information that will serve to further their investigations.

Throughout the world, criminals have been laundering money, for decades, as a way to conceal their criminal activities.  Such activities include the trafficking of drugs, financial fraud such as tax evasion and scams, and even the funding of terrorist cells.  To not address the activity of money laundering, is to allow the criminals free reign to keep on conducting their business, giving power to the drug dealers, the arms dealers and the terrorists which threaten the lives of innocent citizens on a daily basis.  Not stopped, their criminal gains will look legitimate through the process of laundering the funds.

Suspicious Activity Reports should be filed when a company or an individual suspects that the funds being deposited, or when certain transactions are suspected to revolve around such illegal and criminal activity.  Aspects to look out for are really common sense situations.  If money deposited smells like chemicals or has a strange odor or if a young kid walks into a bank with a bag full of money, attempting to deposit it and set up a wire transfer.

If one notices that a customer is sending and receiving transfers of large sums of money to and from various individuals.  Certain amounts of cash transactions require employees to fill out Currency Transaction Reports, and it goes without saying, that should a customer attempt to bribe an employee to not fill out the report, that would warrant the filing of an SAR.  Human behavior plays a large role, and noticing signs of fraudulent activities can save the institution from loss of integrity and possible criminal connections to those committing the crimes.

July 8, 2009: 6:43 pm: Safety, Society

Most thieves when breaking into a house, consider the door first.  It is often times the easiest and the quickest way to enter a house and commit burglary.  Most experts will state that dead bolt door locks will deter most burglars, they will see a dead bolt lock, and just move to the next house on the block.  The doors most often searched out by home intruders are the ones that are located off the street and away from the eyes of the neighborhood or those that are passing by, such doors are the ones along the side and the back of a house, those that attach a garage to the main living quarters.  And in this economy especially, most look at the price of a lock and base their decisions on that alone, but it is worth it to do a little research and spend a little more cash, in order to better protect those possessions and to protect their lives from those that may do them harm.  The quality of the door lock is of utmost importance.

Some locks can be broken with a hammer or picked or pried apart with pliers, drilled off with a power tool.  And if the door is located close to a window, thieves may break the window in order to unlock the door from the inside.  There are two classical types of locks most residential developers install in houses, the dead bolt and the latch, the best lock combines the two.  There is a system that is used to measure the durability and the security of door locks that is put out by the American Nat. Standards Institute.  Their recommendation is that a Grade one dead bolt be installed.  They also recommend that one should install a lock that is controlled by a key, on both sides of the door, especially important on doors that have windows that can be broken, or those that are located close to windows.  These careful considerations will cause sufficient deterrents to the burglars that may approach ones house.