Here we are between in the 'holiday season' once again, the period
between Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Years. A message from our
news feed today deals with the accelerated activity of phishers and
spammers and scammers at this time of year, and it should be obvious
to this group of readers at least, to be extremely careful about
personal infrormation given out over the computer.
As a general rule of thumb, **never** respond to any message you
receive on the computer asking you to click on a link, or at least
read the total link first and understand *where* it is going to wind
up. The best way is to open a new browser window and from there go to
wherever you were told to go for whatever 'maintainence' is purported
to be needed on your account, etc.
And it is not just computer transactions which need to be watched
closely; in face to face, person to person transactions as well,
between now and Christmas Eve, frauds and scams will come out all over
the place. Ask almost anyone who works in the credit business;
i.e. accepting point of sale transactions of credit cards, or 'back
office' functions on credit cards. The amount of fraud is worse than
ever between now and the new year. Especially please, use very good
judgment on Christmas Eve, which is the biggest fraud transaction day
in the year. I do not mean to sound like a Scrooge; just use extremely
good judgment. *They* are hoping your sentiments for the season will
rule instead of your good sense.
On another topic:
Beginning about two months ago, I started running a modest (and I hope
tasteful collection of pertinent ads on the Digest web site, in
an effort to *eventually* take the pressures off of readers who
faithfully support me and the Digest financially. It has not worked
all that well, as of now, in fact Google has not yet remitted anything
thus far. (:
I have always elected to keep it as a user supported forum, and for
the most part keep it spam and virus free. I am *only* able to do this
because of financial support from readers and advertisers here, and if
you would rather not see these messages every month, then please pitch
in and help now and then! Consider it sort of like public radio,
which goes on for days at a time trying to raise money ... and maybe I
should adopt the same system. Turn over the entire Digest once or
twice a year to fund raising (entire issues, etc) and stop doing it
when the budget for the year has been raised. But for now, I will
stick with the present system of devoting a few messages at the end of
each month to raising money for the Digest publication expenses, and
presenting a small collection of advertisements on the web site. Out
of 400-500 messages per month, in a spam, virus free environment, two
or three (only) devoted to fund raising. You know who you are; please
provide some help here financially.
You can use Pay Pal to donate with a credit/debit card by going to our
web site http://telecom-digest.org and at the bottom of the home page
look for the PayPal 'donate' button. Or if you prefer, send a check
or money order to Patrick Townson/TELECOM, Post Office Box 50,
Independence, Kansas 67301-0050. The amount you send is entirely up
to you. You know best how much you can afford and whether or not this
Digest has any value for you, and I hope in a few months this message
will not be needed at all, if Google 'comes through'. Thank you very
much.
Patrick Townson, Editor/Publisher
TELECOM Digest
TELECOM Digest Editor (ptownson@massis.csail.mit.edu)