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• Where The 'Bleep' Did My Identity Go?
  I am a die-hard Mac user. Have been for over twenty years and it only gets better. The PC certainly has its place but for creative projects well... the Mac is superior and the good news is is that Mac's do not get viruses.
  
  My partner is a die-hard PC user. If you ever viewed the recent Mac commercials then you can imagine our relationship. I have recently added creative video production to my advertising agency's services and my partner began to feel a bit competitive. I have always thrived on competition and believe it to be good... even if it is with your partner.
  
  My first video was a Creative Director's dream -- my client gave me complete creative carte blanche. My partner, who is a copywriter, had recently bought PC video software and... well, he was just dying to use it and prove that it would triumph over the Mac.
  
  Once I completed all the storyboards, I sent a crew out to shoot on location. As I passed my partners office, I peaked in his office and I could see sweat dripping from his forehead. He was struggling and I silently laughed, wishing we had made a bet. Two weeks later the video was completed; fully edited and designed on my Mac. The client approved the video and it was a 'go'. My partner, on the other hand, was still trying to learn the software and his final product was 'the homegrown version' clip. It is comical, but seriously our differences actually are our strengths.
  
  An experienced Mac user tends to be 'cocky' at times because there really are no limits to what our little machines can do, and I am no exception -- I rarely see any limits. There was, however, a disadvantage I experienced recently that unfortunately is nondiscriminating towards neither a Mac nor a PC: Identity Theft. This week I became victim to Identity Theft and therefore a statistic in the wonderland of technology.
  
  No longer holding the 'it could never happen to me' mentality because it did and it happens to millions of people a day without some consumers ever realizing it. Technology is incredible and we can do things today that were never imagined twenty years ago. But as technology juices up the creative sector, it also feeds the larcenists and opens up a world of crime unheard of years ago.
  
  Once considered a protection, our social security number has actually transformed into the very bait that perpetrators look for to steal identities. Who is walking around with my name? Who is walking around with my numbers and personal information? Is it someone reading this article? Is it someone I do business with? Is it my neighbor? This is a form of terrorism, which stalks our daily lives in the twenty-first century and ruins lives.
  
  I have been 'Judi Lynn' all of my life and 'Lake' for the past eleven years and am very happy to be me. How dare a stranger invade my life and steal it from me. I have heard nightmare stories of people haunted for years through Identity Theft and to quote the 1970s movie Network, "I am mad as hell and I am not going to take it anymore!"
  
  Unfortunately, in this day and age, high security precautions must be taken both personally and professionally. The best defense against this heinous crime is education and guidance but 'the damned if you do' fact is that skilled identity thieves will use a variety of methods to gain access to your data. There are many websites available on the Internet that educates people on steps to protect themselves before and after Identity Theft occurs. One such site I recommend is The Federal Trade Commission For The Consumer.
  
  Some Steps To Take Today Before You Fall Victim
  1. Place passwords on all of your credit card, bank, and phone accounts. Avoid using easily available information like your mother's maiden name, your birth date, the last four digits of your SSN or your phone number, or a series of consecutive numbers. When opening new accounts, you may find that many businesses still have a line on their applications for your mother's maiden name. Ask if you can use a password instead.
  2.Secure personal information in your home, especially if you have roommates, employs outside help, or are having work done in your home.
  3. Ask about information security procedures in your workplace or at businesses, doctor's offices or other institutions that collect your personally identifying information. Find out who has access to your personal information and verify that it is handled securely. Ask about the disposal procedures for those records as well. Find out if your information will be shared with anyone else. If so, ask how your information can be kept confidential.
  
  Don't think that identity theft can not happen to you, expect that it will so that it won't -- stay informed and stay educated so you do not become a statistic.
  

  About the Author

  Judi Lynn Lake successfully runs her own advertising agency which handles everything from logos, branding, videos and websites while continues to work closely with self-published authors from design to promotion. To learn more visit http://www.judilake.com

  Article Source:Content for Reprint

• Avoid Falling Prey To Mold Scams
  Mold inspection and mold remediation are relatively new businesses in the general field of water damage restoration services. As a result, the mold industry is in its infancy of becoming a regulated and specifically licensed service.
  
  Combine that with the all of the recent attention being given to mold and its toxicity, and the result is a field primed for scams. Whether you are just proactively making sure your home or commercial space is free of mold, or you are frantically in need of mold removal, it is important to be aware of mold scams and the so called mold scammers.
  
  What follows below are several examples of folks like you and I who have been victimized.
  
  Tim and Amy were in the process of selling their home to very educated buyers who requested that a mold inspection be done prior to closing. In an effort to be compliant with their request and to have the deal go through smoothly, they hired a gentleman who referred to himself as a mold inspector.
  
  He came to their home and spent a great deal of time inspecting the basement, the attic, window areas, and appliances. He took samples from the home and set up an appointment to come back with the report and to discuss the results.
  
  Amy and Tim were shocked when they were shown the report indicating the presence of large amounts of mold in their home. They had never seen any indication of mold in their home, had never noticed a musty odor, never had any water damage, and as the original owners of the house, were simply shocked by the findings.
  
  After anxiously calling their real estate agent to relay the news and see how to proceed, they learned that a scam exists where the so called mold inspector does not really use the samples obtained from your home, but instead uses samples from another source known to be contaminated with mold.
  
  Helen, a grandmother and retired school teacher was concerned about a musty odor in her basement following a period of heavy rains and flooding in her town.
  
  Although she had no obvious water damage, the odor concerned her and she called the water damage restoration company that had helped so many of her neighbors. Water damage was found in the drywall of her basement.
  
  She was then instructed to call her insurance company, who promptly told her that she had no mold insurance coverage. Herein lies the scam, as it is quite obvious that it was water damage (covered by insurance) that directly caused the infestation of mold.
  
  Insurance companies and their adjusters have been known to perpetrate other frauds as well; from hiring incompetent people to perform the testing and instructing them to test for mold in the least likely locations, to purposefully using inadequate and ineffective testing supplies.
  
  This is all done in an effort to defraud their insureds by making sure that mold will not be discovered. Unbelievably, some insurance companies have even gone as far as hiding results of mold testing from their insureds, even in cases of serious and deadly mold infestation.
  
  The Stockton family returned from vacation to find that their basement had serious water damage due to a large leak in the water heater. Although the damage had only been present for a day or two, the foreman of the water damage cleanup crew convinced the family that they needed to move out temporarily due to the discovery of a mold problem.
  
  After hearing of deadly mold on a television news program, the family vacated their home to allow for the so called mold remediation. What happened next is shocking and utterly criminal, yet true.
  
  The crew went to work shutting off ventilation, closing the windows, wetting fabric and upholstered items and cranking up the heat. This is known as house cooking and not onl