Virtually Secure

Citi Virtual Account Numbers win the Product of the Week Award



CitiBank Card Virtual Account Numbers
Virtual Account Numbers on Technorati
Credit Card Security
Identity Theft

After having had my own Credit Card numbers stolen twice now, once having the thief charge up a storm on websites, the other time having had thousands stolen by way of Western Union (a popular conduit for credit card thieves), I decided something had to be done. Well, lo and behold, CitiBank created Virtual Account Numbers (or V.A.N.). This system is great for creating "disposable" credit card numbers. You can set your own expiration date and, most importantly, set the amount available. The number can only be used by the single merchant, and only up to the amount you set. Because you never give out your real number, it stays safely in your wallet.

Need to provide a number for PayPal or DirecTV authorization, whereby they just need to verify address data? This is the way to go: just create one good for $4 or so, provide it to your merchant, and you need never worry about that number coming back to bite you in the butt.

I've used it a lot; it even lets you go in and close out numbers after the merchant has charged on it for added security.

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Hillary and her Hegelian Administration

Hillary and her Hegelian Administration



Hillary Clinton

Yahoo! ran the following in their Answers section: Tell Hillary Clinton: How Can We Improve Health Care?

Most notoriously, it purports to be posted by Hillary Clinton herself. Unfortunately, the reams of responses reveal just how far gone over the slippery slope of socialism the American public already is.

Socialized medicine is NOT the answer!

Any programs whereby the government extracts taxes from the public and then attempts to produce entitlements is sheer welfare, with all its inefficiencies, and only harms the crucial and innovative work of the nation's real producers: its private sector.

The answer is the same as it always was in any industry: government needs to GET OUT OF THE WAY. It is the health industry's reliance upon base level Federal law that lets it get away with factoids like the following:

"Over a million patients are injured in hospitals each year, and approximately 180,000 die annually as a result of these injuries. Therefore, the iatrogenic injury rate dwarfs the annual automobile accident mortality of 45,000 and accounts for more deaths than all other accidents COMBINED." -- Journal of the American Medical Association, July 5, 1995

When medicine is socialized, quality of care will hit the skids... and the above statistic will grow much worse. Look at the quality of care in countries that have attempted Universal Health Care. The Brain Drain is only one issue. When America institutes this plan, doctors won't have anyplace to go except to become a second assistant bookkeeper for more money.

The only answer to this and any question of how to lift Americans out of poverty and low living standards (which are really the underlying problem) is to foster free markets.

Source(s)

Journal of the American Medical Association, July 5, 1995

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Time Warner Cable Problems

Time Warner Cable: "...under-trained, ignorant people..." according to an actual Time Warner Cable employee.



Satellite TV is Worth the Extra Cost!

Time Warner Cable Problems

This horror story about Time Warner Cable was reported on the CONSUMERIST by Devlin from Simi Valley, CA:


GoToDish says (in response to a previous poster's rant about never getting a call back in a Time Warner Cable service request):

I know why you were never called back. As a former Time Warner Cable employee who recently quit, it was a result of under-trained, ignorant people and a desperate attempt on TW's part to fill positions due to Adelphia employees leaving. I was hired in July under written notice that we would be in four weeks of in-class training and two weeks of nesting (side by side training on the phones with tenured employees). What my class received was one week of half-assed training by one trainer who was leaving and the second trainer was amazed at what we DIDN'T learn and crammed two weeks into one. Bottom line, we were thrown onto the phones in two weeks and two days, basically set up to fail. The choices left were to either ask for the training you felt you needed and be marked a 'problem, not qualified employee,' or sit there day in and day out and (provide) the exact type of service you experienced, and that is to BS the customer into believing the problem has been resolved. I've been in customer service for years and years and happen to be one of the few who took pride in what I did. Unfortunately, TW wouldn't allow me to do that. They prefer the BS'rs in order to buy time. Considering the major transition within Time Warner/Adelphia/Comcast, many of us felt that not even four weeks in-class training would have been adequate enough in order to make up to valued customers legitimate complaints. I fought hard to retain my position in order to give all of you the service you rightly deserved, but nothing gave me more pleasure than to get a customer who had been struggling, just like you, and I resolved her problem in a timely manner, received her gratitude and simply unplugged my phone in the middle of the day, packed up my desk and said Adios. I am currently employed, making much better money, but most importantly, I'm building a customer base I am proud of and providing people with what they honestly deserve.

Devlin
Simi Valley


PS.. The first poster pretty much has the Crackhead point accurate.

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Conan the Totalitarian

Conan the Totalitarian, otherwise known as Arnold Schwarzenegger, the "left-est" rightwing Republican who ever existed, California's governor, seeks universal health care. Look out, Middle Class!



The plan, which Schwarzenegger estimated would cost $12 billion, calls for many employers that do not offer health insurance to contribute to a fund that would help pay for coverage of the working uninsured. It would also require doctors to pay 2 percent and hospitals 4 percent of their revenues to help cover higher reimbursements for those who treat patients enrolled in Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program.

According to the Herald Tribune, the governor outlined his proposal to an audience of health care experts and reporters via satellite from Los Angeles. He made it clear that a variety of mechanisms would be used to provide all Californians with insurance and that the responsibility of providing it would fall on the government, employers, health care providers and (emphasis added) the uninsured themselves.

"Everyone in California must have health insurance," Schwarzenegger said.

What he and others who propose such haughty socialist plans fail to realize however, is that you cannot mandate any qualitative state that depends upon the products and services of voluntarily cooperative individuals. You can no more legislate away the "problem of health insurance" than you could walk up to a bum on the street and outwardly proclaim that he will be made affluent because it is now the law that he must be.

What's that? Can't afford health insurance? The Governor isn't helping you with the costs; he's attempting to make the problem vanish by making you a criminal instead. Don't put up with it. Sound off!

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Touched by Tissues

Get Touched... by Kleenex. (Yes, Kleenex).

Rarely one to be moved by advertising, I find myself touched by the new grown-up ad campaign of one of America's oldest brands: Kleenex.

The new "Let it Out" spots feature true-life interviews with real people who share moving snippets of their lives, reminding us that Kleenex is not just there when you're sick. This campaign transmogrifies it from simply a receptacle of snot and into an indispensable tool for social change.

Consequently, Kimberly Clark gets catapulted from staid maker of personal paper products into a catalyst for discussion surrounding important issues such as depression and personal closure.

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Soulless "Cell"

Stephen King's "Cell" is straight from Hell. Why would such a master of prose offer us this debile idiocy?

Why would our reigning master of prose offer us this pulpy Michael Chrichton-esque pastiche? I found myself, for the first time ever while reading a King novel, putting it down in favor of a Koontz novel.

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Happy New Year!

Happy New Year!

Did you mutilate the lines of Auld Lang Syne in a drunken stupor? You weren't alone. Millions of Americans joined you. Let's make 2007 a year of peace and recovery.

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