Can someone steal your identity if all they know about you is your first name and where you lived years ago? I used to know a girl who thinks so. For the sake of protecting her identity (!), we will call her "Lisa." She lived in Garden Grove, California.
In the summer of 1980, Lisa and another girl, Rachel (also not her real name) and I were fans of the actor Jack Kelly, who played James Garner's brother Bart on "Maverick." Jack Kelly was on the Huntington Beach City Council at that time, and Lisa and Rachel and I went to a council meeting and were able to talk to Jack and get his autograph
Flash forward to the year 2002. There was a website devoted to the TV show "Maverick," and the lady who ran the website, upon learning that I had met Jack once upon a time, asked me to write up a narrative about having met him. So I wrote my story, including that I had gone to Garden Grove, California and stayed with Lisa at her home.
When Lisa read the story on this website, she proceeded to, quite frankly, have a cow. She emailed me and flat out just short of ordered me to have the website owner delete all references to "Garden Grove" from the story. "I'm worried someone will read this and steal my identity," she explained. "If you just put 'Lisa in Orange County,' that's fine, but 'Lisa in Garden Grove' narrows it down too much.'"
To say I was dumbfounded is putting it mildly. This girl really seriously believed that someone could steal her identity just based on knowing that someone named "Lisa" had lived in "Garden Grove, California" way back when Jimmy Carter was still president?? I hadn't given a last name - I hadn't given if she still lived there or not - I hadn't given if she had ever gotten married - had moved away - anything except her first name and the city she lived in during 1980.
What Lisa was asking me to believe was that an identity thief "out in cyberspace" would have NO WAY of knowing that ANYONE with a very common first name like "Lisa" had EVER lived in Garden Grove, California, UNLESS that thief read those two pieces of information in that story I wrote about meeting Jack Kelly for the "Maverick" website.
He would have NO WAY of knowing that someone with a very common first name like "Lisa" had EVER lived in Garden Grove, California, UNTIL he read those two pieces of information on the "Maverick" web site. UNLESS and UNTIL he read those two skimpy pieces of information on that website, he wouldn't know.
But then AFTER Mr. Identity Thief reads those two skimpy pieces of information on that website, not only would he know now for the FIRST TIME that somebody with a common first name like "Lisa" lived in Garden Grove, California in 1980, he would ALSO somehow, someway, be able to know WHICH of ALL the women and girls named "Lisa" who have EVER lived in Garden Grove that I was talking about, and just based on those TWO pieces of information, he'd somehow be able to get her Social Security number, or her checking account number, or other pertinent information he'd need to be ABLE to steal her identity. In order to get the identity of the Lisa I was talking about, he'd have to wade through ALL the women and girls named Lisa who EVER lived in Garden Grove. So does that mean I endangered the identity of ANYONE named Lisa who EVER lived in Garden Grove, just by writing a story involving ONE such person with that name?????
And Lisa was asking me to believe that Mr. Identity Thief wouldn't be able to figure out that anyone with her first name had ever lived in her town ANYWAY. That an identity thief wouldn't be able to simply pick a common first name, arbitrarily match it up with a city or town anywhere in America, and score a hit.
And if someone can steal your identity if all they know about you is your first name and the name of any city you've ever lived in, no matter how long ago, how's come identity theft isn't even MORE prevalant than it already is? EVERYBODY has a first name, and EVERYBODY has lived SOMEWHERE. If all an identity thief needs is your first name and the name of any city you've ever lived in, nobody would EVER be safe from identity theft!
Lisa also ignores the fact that radio talk show hosts (such as Rush Limbaugh, whom she and I both love), regularly identify callers by first name and CURRENT city of residence without ever worrying about giving away their identities in the process. "Phil from West Palm Beach, you're next on the EIB network." "Thank you, Rush, mega dittoes." This is available not only to hear when you listen to Rush on the air, but in the transcripts of his shows on his website. Lisa would probably respond, "Oh, I would never let Rush identify me by city of residence if I called in to his show." But what about all the other people who DO? Is Rush endangering all THEIR identities by saying, "Our next caller is Phil from Portland - Phil, you're on the EIB Network." "Mega dittoes, Rush. I'm calling about..."
Lisa can be pretty clueless anyway. When she and I were first corresponding in the early 80's, we got to discussing one of our favorite foods, donuts. She talked about Winchell's Donuts, and I mentioned Dunkin Donuts. Her response was, "Oh, I don't think we have that chain here." Well, when I visited her in Garden Grove, we went to Disneyland. Lisa was working at Disneyland that summer. And guess what? There was a Dunkin Donuts RIGHT ON THE WAY TO DISNEYLAND. Which meant she drove by it TWICE A DAY, on her way TO and FROM work! And somehow, she NEVER NOTICED IT. Not even AFTER we had discussed Dunkin Donuts, which you would think would have made her more APT to notice it. As in, "Oh, look, there's a Dunkin Donuts right there, that's what she was telling me about in her letter! I'll have to write back to her and tell her we have them here after all!" Nope, she didn't notice it until I POINTED IT OUT to her. Then as we drove around Orange County and went to Los Angeles and so on, I noticed Dunkin Donuts all OVER the place. "Lisa, look - what's that? Oh look, what's over on THAT corner? Oh, look, there's ANOTHER one. I thought you said that chain wasn't here in California??" Her response was to just giggle like it was silly she hadn't noticed before.
Well, now she's doing it again, all these years later. She writes a blog, a very well done blog (much better than my pathetic attempt at blog-writing seen here in The Rambler), and when Hostess recently went bankrupt, someone asked her about Little Debbie snacks. Her response was that her family had never tried Little Debbie and she didn't think they were even available in California.
Head pounding on desk, I went immediately to www.LittleDebbie.com and typed in zip code after zip code in the "Find a Store" section of their website. Lo and behold, there are NUMEROUS stores all OVER Orange County that sell Little Debbies! Apparently Lisa (who my mom used to say "walks around in a happy fog,") has probably strolled by Little Debbie displays in the snack food aisles of various stores in Orange County and never seen them. I wanted so badly to get on a plane, fly to John Wayne Airport, go to her house, drag her to whatever supermarket she frequents most often, take her to the snack food aisle, grab BOXES and BOXES of Little Debbies, wave them under her nose, and say, "Lisa, what are these? Do you see the little girl on the box? Do you see the name 'Little Debbie' on the box? How could you NEVER EVER have NOTICED these before? Yes, Little Debbies are sold in California!!!! Wake UP!!!"
To think she is 50 years old and has never known the bliss of biting into a Little Debbie Swiss Roll....sigh...
Oh, by the way, back to identity theft for a second - Lisa never puts familiy photographs in her blog. She put a picture once of her younger son, but he was standing in the rain with a huge umbrella, and all you could see were his feet. She put a picture of her husband and two of their children and the family dog walking on the beach, but it was taken from such a distance that they were stick figures. So her fear of identity theft must extend to putting family pictures on her blog, too. BUT - BUT - BUT - her older daughter (let's call her "Katie") went to London a couple years ago and kept a blog of her activities there, and put HER picture AND pictures of Lisa and her husband "Dave," who had flown to London to visit her, on HER blog. Why didn't Lisa order her daughter to take those pictures down? Or did her daughter tell her, "Mom, go pound sand. I'm leaving the pictures, including the ones of you and Dad, on my blog, and that's that."
Dave, Katie, and two of Lisa's other children ("Jason" and "Samantha,") have Facebook pages with their PHOTOS, LAST NAMES, and CITY OF RESIDENCE all given on their Facebook pages. Lisa's mom "Donna" and her brother "Mike" also have Facebook pages with all that information on there. Why isn't Lisa raising the roof and insisting that her family, at the very least her husband and children, not be on Facebook because they are giving away FAR MORE information than I did in my story about our meeting Jack Kelly? Why isn't she bossing them around the way she bossed me around?
The kicker, too, is this - back in 2002 Lisa demanded that I get in touch with the lady who ran the "Maverick" web page and have her edit the story I had submitted about our meeting Jack Kelly and remove all references to Garden Grove. Which I did, and the lady told me she had done so. But later I went back and looked, and that lady had MISSED some of the references to Garden Grove, which were STILL IN THERE and had NOT been removed. Lisa, for all her panic about her identity being stolen, had not bothered to go double check, triple check and quadruple check to make SURE those references to Garden Grove were removed, but just sanguinely took my word for it that the lady had removed them. So I never TOLD Lisa those references were still there, and that website stayed up for two years before it disappeared, apparently having been taken down by the lady who ran it, and in that entire two years, Lisa didn't know her name linked with "Garden Grove" was still on that website!!!
Sunday, January 13, 2013
The flu epidemic and calling in sick to work
With the current flu epidemic, we are being told that if you are sick, you should stay home from work so as not to infect other people. What is not being talked about is what do you do if your employer is someone who discourages use of sick time?
Some years ago, I worked for an insurance company, and I will name them as they are no longer in business - Prudential Property & Casualty. Their sick policy was stringent, draconian, asinine. You got 10 sick days per year, in addition to your regular vacation days (it wasn't like today, where most companies just give you one overall bank of earned time off to use for any reason, be it sickness or vacation time). But you were allotted just two sick "occurrences" per 12 months, and the 12 months wasn't necessarily a calendar year.
Say you got sick in March, and called in, and were out just one day. You come back to work, and everything is fine. You catch a bad cold in November, call in sick, go back to work, and everything is fine. But then say you catch cold again in January. You figure no problem, it's a new year, I have a new bank of sick days, and I only used two sick days all of last year. Wrong! You now have a third "occurrence" within 12 months (you didn't get a clean slate just because it's January and a new year), and the Human Resources guidelines called for you to be "counseled" by your supervisor, meaning the supervisor reprimands you for having had too many "occurrences" within a 12-month period of time, and a warning is given to you. Now the next time you call in sick would be your fourth occurrence, and if you keep having "occurrences," even if they're spaced way apart and are only a day each time, you can get written up for it, and perhaps even terminated. It was almost impossible to get a clean slate, because who can go 12 months without getting sick? And if you do get sick, you're put in the impossible position of trying to decide if you're sick enough to get an "occurrence," how many "occurrences" have I already had, what if I get sick again six months from now and am forced to use another "occurrence," etc.
As far as I was concerned, if you got a new bank of 10 sick days when the calendar year changed, then all your "occurrences" from the previous year should have been relegated to the past as well, and you should have a clean slate. And if you missed only two days total for sickness the previous year, that to me is excellent attendance, not poor attendance. (What was also bad was suppose you called in sick on a Tuesday, felt better Wednesday and went back to work, then realized you'd gone back to work too soon and felt awful and called in sick on Thursday. Whammo, you've used two "occurrences" in one WEEK because you had that day back at work in between, so now you're sunk for the next 12 months!)
My supervisor, Margaret (I wonder what ever happened to her, where she is today, if she's even still alive - she'd be in her 80s now, I think) told me, "It's not that we don't believe you're sick, it's that we need warm bodies at the desks doing the work." That's an exact quote.
That was a horrible place to work anyway. I remember one of my job duties was distributing the mail to the claims examiners each day. I was also training a new lady named Alice. One time I was walking around with the mail folders in my arms, distributing the mail as per my duties, and Alice stopped me as I walked by so she could ask me a quick question. I stopped for all of 30 seconds to answer her question. Later, Margaret reprimanded me, telling me I was supposed to be getting the mail out to the employees and not chit-chatting with co-workers. I looked at Margaret and said, "I am also supposed to be training Alice, and she had a question for me, and I stopped for all of half a minute to answer her question; I'm sure taking 30 whole seconds to answer a question from a trainee did not impede the mail getting distributed!" (I took that tone because by that time, I knew I'd had enough and was so fed up I was going to quit my job soon anyway.)
Some years ago, I worked for an insurance company, and I will name them as they are no longer in business - Prudential Property & Casualty. Their sick policy was stringent, draconian, asinine. You got 10 sick days per year, in addition to your regular vacation days (it wasn't like today, where most companies just give you one overall bank of earned time off to use for any reason, be it sickness or vacation time). But you were allotted just two sick "occurrences" per 12 months, and the 12 months wasn't necessarily a calendar year.
Say you got sick in March, and called in, and were out just one day. You come back to work, and everything is fine. You catch a bad cold in November, call in sick, go back to work, and everything is fine. But then say you catch cold again in January. You figure no problem, it's a new year, I have a new bank of sick days, and I only used two sick days all of last year. Wrong! You now have a third "occurrence" within 12 months (you didn't get a clean slate just because it's January and a new year), and the Human Resources guidelines called for you to be "counseled" by your supervisor, meaning the supervisor reprimands you for having had too many "occurrences" within a 12-month period of time, and a warning is given to you. Now the next time you call in sick would be your fourth occurrence, and if you keep having "occurrences," even if they're spaced way apart and are only a day each time, you can get written up for it, and perhaps even terminated. It was almost impossible to get a clean slate, because who can go 12 months without getting sick? And if you do get sick, you're put in the impossible position of trying to decide if you're sick enough to get an "occurrence," how many "occurrences" have I already had, what if I get sick again six months from now and am forced to use another "occurrence," etc.
As far as I was concerned, if you got a new bank of 10 sick days when the calendar year changed, then all your "occurrences" from the previous year should have been relegated to the past as well, and you should have a clean slate. And if you missed only two days total for sickness the previous year, that to me is excellent attendance, not poor attendance. (What was also bad was suppose you called in sick on a Tuesday, felt better Wednesday and went back to work, then realized you'd gone back to work too soon and felt awful and called in sick on Thursday. Whammo, you've used two "occurrences" in one WEEK because you had that day back at work in between, so now you're sunk for the next 12 months!)
My supervisor, Margaret (I wonder what ever happened to her, where she is today, if she's even still alive - she'd be in her 80s now, I think) told me, "It's not that we don't believe you're sick, it's that we need warm bodies at the desks doing the work." That's an exact quote.
That was a horrible place to work anyway. I remember one of my job duties was distributing the mail to the claims examiners each day. I was also training a new lady named Alice. One time I was walking around with the mail folders in my arms, distributing the mail as per my duties, and Alice stopped me as I walked by so she could ask me a quick question. I stopped for all of 30 seconds to answer her question. Later, Margaret reprimanded me, telling me I was supposed to be getting the mail out to the employees and not chit-chatting with co-workers. I looked at Margaret and said, "I am also supposed to be training Alice, and she had a question for me, and I stopped for all of half a minute to answer her question; I'm sure taking 30 whole seconds to answer a question from a trainee did not impede the mail getting distributed!" (I took that tone because by that time, I knew I'd had enough and was so fed up I was going to quit my job soon anyway.)
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