Author: OneWorld

You’re NOT too small to be hacked

You’re NOT too small to be hacked

We’ve come to expect cyber crimminels to target giant companies like Facebook, Experian and Marriott International. But many individuals assume their assets are too small for hackers to bother with. This kind of thinking leads to sloppy security practices and opens you to even more risk.

What the average person forgets is what is actually stolen in the big corporate breaches — individual customer information. Names, passwords, security questions, saved credit card numbers, addresses, and more. This information may let a hacker into your hacked account.

The amount of damage that could be done varies greatly depending on the account, what information is available to the hacker from the account, and how quickly you learn baout the breach and take corrective action.

For example, a user with access to your Adobe account could run up bills at Adobe, change your password and or account email to lock you out, or use your saved address and phone number along with any other saved information to attempt to break into other accounts or open other accounts in your name.

If you caught this breach right away, had not saved your credit card number in your accoun,t and did not reuse your password or security question and answer, you may be able to limit damage by quickly changing your password.

Freezing your credit will help block thieves from opening new accounts at major department stores, banks or credit card companies. It won’t stop thieves from opening accounts in smaller businesses that may not check against the credit bureaus. Nor will it stop people from opening cell phone accounts in your name because, surprisingly, cell phones use a different credit bureau than other accounts.

If hackers access a different acount – the damage they can do can be far greater. A hacked Facebook account provides much of the same information AND access to spread to all of your contacts. The hacker can send infected messages to all of your contacts, who will be more likely to click on a link to malware or open an infected document that appears to come from you.

The potential for thieves to drain your finances if they hack a bank, credit card, or mortgage account are more obvious. But people forget this same kind of damage can occur if they reuse passwords or security questions on multiple accounts. Hackers can write a script to try stolen credentials at hundreds of businesses in seconds. If you use the same information on multiple sites, the hacker can use that to log in and access those sites as well as the original site.

Many individuals object, “But I don’t have much money – why would someone target me?” If I ask if they would pick up a ten dollar bill off the ground – everyone says “sure” – even though ten dollars isn’t a large amount of money. To a hacker, if they can clean out your account for even a few hundred dollars with little effort, why not? And many people have much more credit than they realize. So while you may have a small amount of cash in the bank, you may have a significantly larger amount of credit. Reused passwords? You have multiplied the number of your accounts a thieve can get into,

Now multiply this by the number of other people whose accounts have been breached. Up to 500 million customers had their data stolen in the recent Marriott Interanational/ Starwood breach. At even a few dollars per user, the money for the hackers quickly soars into hundreds of millions of dollars. So no matter how little you have – you have a lot to lose.

Thank you veterans! Here’s a way to help homeless vets and their pets

Thank you veterans! Here’s a way to help homeless vets and their pets

The Greater Good network reports that over 1/2 million are homeless in the United States. 15% of these homeless are our Veteran’s. To many people – homeless our not – pets are our truest friends.  Unfortunately, homesless shelters rarely accomodate animals – keeping homeless veteran’s with pets out of shelters that provide safety, shelter and nurishment.

GreaterGood.org is working to change this. Their program Safe Haven in Philadelphia will be the first housing in the city for homeless vets that accomodates pets. You can help simply by clicking on the link at greatergood.org/project

Or donate directly to the program. Help keep our veterans and their pets stay out of the cold.

 

Bio-Fences are an innovative use of trash to help resolve the trash problem

Bio-Fences are an innovative use of trash to help resolve the trash problem

by BJ Moore

Imagine a line of trash trucks dumping their loads into the ocean, a truckload each minute. Hard to imagine, yes, but that is the amount of trash landing in the ocean day in, day out. Guateamala is using plastic bottles and nets to create bio-fences to stretch across rivers to capture trash floating on the surface of the water. These bio-fences have helped reduce the amount of trash in the sea by 60% in the areas where used. These inexpensive measures along with people picking up trash from beaches and recycling can make a difference.

Every bit of plastic we can keep out or remove from the ocean is important, but large scale work still needs to be done. Annually, 100,000 sea mammels and nearly one million birds die from eating or becoming entangled in plastic. Almost 2/3rds of the world’s fish have ingested plastic, causing harm to the fish and bringing plastic and its chemicals into our food chain.

Learn more about plastic waste: https://wef.ch/2qYKCbI

Gardeners Supply Pledges Food for Hungry Americans

Gardeners Supply Pledges Food for Hungry Americans

It’s nice to see companies following through with company ideals. Gardeners Supply https://www.gardeners.com not only sells everything a gardener might need, they also believe in giving back to the community through a variety of good works.  They donate 8 percent of profits to programs that use gardening for good. They also have turned a piece of land that had been treated as a dumping ground and created a garden that produces 500,00 pounds of produce annually.  They’ve pledged to donate food from their farm to help feed hungry Americans. And they are challenging gardeners everywhere to join them by donating their extra produce to food banks etc. through their #gardentogive project.

Help Pen Guy Art make recycled art

Help Pen Guy Art make recycled art

Clean out your pen drawer & help Pen Guy Art make recycled art

recycle a million pens

Pen Guy Art is collecting used pens and creating incredible life transforming recycle art. Over 500k pens donated so far. Donate your Ball Point, Dry Erase, Crayola, Felt Tip, Markers, Mechanical Pencils or any other type of pen and experience the transformation into beautiful recycled pen art.

Manifesting Circle
Manifesting Circle

Go around your house or business and locate all the pens that are stashed or hiding inside drawers, boxes and/or couches.
If you are wondering what types of used pens you can donate, the answer is easy…everything. And by everything I really mean EVERYTHING:

Ball Point • Felt Tip • Dry-Erase • Sharpies • Crayolas • Markers • Gel Pens • Every thing else

Gather all the ones that are ready to be shipped and place them in an envelope or box depending on the amount of dead pens you have. There is no minimum amount of pens you can sent.
Pen Guy says “I love getting notes so feel free write something on post-it and include it with your shipment:)”

The Pen Guy – P.O.Box 994 – Forestville, CA 95436

If you are sending via UPS or FEDEX please address it to:

The Pen Guy – 6484 Mirabel Road, #994 Forestville, CA

Save Money on Prescriptions with Good RX, WebMDRx, mail Order, and manufacturer programs

Save Money on Prescriptions with Good RX, WebMDRx, mail Order, and manufacturer programs

Prescription costs keep rising and the cost varies widely from pharmacy to pharmacy. Simply going to the pharmacy across the street could save you hundreds of dollars – if you knew!  But there is help.

Pharmacy prices vary widely
Pharmacy prices can vary widely                           Image by GoodRX

Several drug manufacturers offer deep dispounts on medicines – but you have to sign up for their discount program.  These programs are free to join – the trick is finding out about them.  Ask your Doctor if any exist for your medications.  One diabetic drug that is normally over $700/month is only $25/month (holy cow what a savings!) through the manufacturer’s program. Another medicine is actually free through that program.  If a program exists, your doctor will probably have a brochure that explains it and how to sign up. No credit card is needed and the signup process is very quick. A Google search  can also help you find these manufacturer programs.  This works whether you have insurance or not.

Another option is a discount program such as GoodRX (www.goodrx.com) or WebMDRX (www.webmdRX.com).  Unlike the manufacturer drug discounts discussed above, these programs are not specific to a single medicine.  Both are free to use and do not require registration or a credit card. They work at over 60,000 (WebMDRX) and 70,000 (GoodRX) pharmacies nationwide.

Since price varies widely between pharmacies – even in the same area – you can use these websites to compare prices. Both websites let you put in your zip code and will show you the drug price at locations near you. GoodRX also offers coupons for additional discounts. On either website, simply enter your drug’s name and your zip code on the home page and it will list the prices near you.

Both sites also let you print a discount card for your wallet – without the need to signup for anything. You can use either or both tools. Note: Not all discounts can be used with Medicare/Medicaid. Check with your pharmacy.

If you have more than one prescription – remember the lowest price may not be at the same pharmacy for all of your medicines. You can use the comparison shopping tool to choose a pharmacy that offers the best overall deal for you. A little quick research can save you lots of money.

One more option to look into is mail-order. Be sure to use a reputable mail-order pharmacy such as OptumRX! Scammers exist. If you have private insurance, your plan may offer access to a mail-order pharmacy.  This is best for medicine that you use long term – not a 10 day course of antibiotics. Typically you will order a 90 day supply from the mail order pharmacy. The savings are tremendous – often it works out that the cost for 3 months mail order is the same or less than 2 months bought once a month at a time from your corner drug store. That’s a 30% savings. Another benefit is no waiting in line to fill a prescription – it comes to you. You can also set up automatic refills.

Which option is cheapest will depend upon your prescription. Comparing prices is simple, quick, and save you a lot of money.

 

Be an armchair traveler

Be an armchair traveler

The Louvre, Paris

Paul Dufour

Now you can choose your comfiest chair and tour great museums of the world without TSA checkpoints, flight delays, crowds, and the other “joys” of modern travel.

Several of the world’s best museums are available to visit online with virtual tours – including the Louvre in Paris, University of Chicago’s Oriental Institute Museum, and the Smithsonian  National Museum of Natural History and many more. Click on the linked names in this article to begin your visit today.

Are you taking basic steps to secure your information?

Are you taking basic steps to secure your information?

computer security
Protect Yourself from Computer Crime

It seems like every day there is another scary story about hackers, massive data breaches, and identity theft.  Attacks get more sophisticated each day so how can anyone be safe online? Unfortunately, many of us are suffering from burnout with the seeming hopelessness of securing their PC. The result – we get lazy and start to skip the basic security steps.

No method is fool proof, but many basic steps will provide tremendous protection for your computer.  Strong passwords DO make a difference and its important to use different passwords for each site. A password manager will make it simple to do.  It will also make it feasible to update your passwords periodically for best security.

Another simple safety measure is to use unique security questions and answers.  Remember, if someone does break into one account and you reuse the security question and answers, you’ve made it much easier for the hacker to break into more of your accounts. Don’t use personally identifiable information in your security questions. For example, some websites still ask for things like maiden name. This information can be found online easily so it offers no security at all and can help expose you further to ID theft. You can make your security answer anything – it doesn’t have to match the question.  When you use the security question and answer to recover your password, all that matters to the computer program is that your answer match what you’ve told it originally.  You an list your city of birth as Mars or even hotdog. An unrelated answer is much harder to crack.

Keep your software up to date. Set Windows, your antivirus software, and other programs to update automatically. At a minimum, set them to notify you when updates are available.  Many software updates are security patches to plug recently discovered vulnerabilities.

Don’t click on suspicious links, offers that are too good to be true, or open email attachments that you weren’t expecting.

Doing these simple things will provide a reasonable amount of security without requiring much effort on your part. Considering the potential cost and damage of identity theft, ransomware, or other potential computer security problems, these small actions are definitely worth the effort.

 

Help fight hunger

Help fight hunger

Help fight hunger

Pay with Discover at Walmart and they’ll donate 9 cents to Feeding America to help provide one meal with every purchase thru May 15, up to $1 million.