Beware of The Jury Duty Scam

This has been verified by the FBI (their link is also included below).

It is spreading fast, so be prepared should you get this call. Most of us take
those summonses for jury duty seriously, but enough people skip out on
their civic duty, that a new and ominous kind of fraud has surfaced.

The caller claims to be a jury coordinator. If you protest that you never
received a summons for jury duty, the scammer asks you for your Social
Security number and date of birth so he or she can verify the information
and cancel the arrest warrant. Give out any of this information and bingo;
your identity was just stolen.

The fraud has been reported so far in 11 states, including Oklahoma ,
Illinois , and Colorado . This (swindle) is particularly insidious because
they use intimidation over the phone to try to bully people into giving
information by pretending they are with the court system. The FBI and the
federal court system have issued nationwide alerts on their web sites,
warning consumers about the fraud.

Check it out here: http://www.fbi.gov/page2/june06/jury_scams060206.htm?

And here: http://www.snopes.com/crime/fraud/juryduty.asp

If you have been affected by identity theft....LifeLock can help. Check out their link below:

Choose The LifeLock Protection That's Right For You! Enroll For As Little As $10 Per Month! LifeLock.com

Protect Your Good Name

I am a big fan of Montel Williams (I'm so upset his show is going off the air next week) and watching his show a couple weeks ago on Living Well, I learned about a company...LifeLock that protects consumers from Identity Theft.The representative he had on the show explained in detail how the company works. Montel fully endorsed this company and praised them for the outstanding protection they have provided to many people.

This information came alittle too late for me because I was already a victim this past year.I can honestly say the situation cost me alot of stress, time and money to straighten it out.

Identity theft is one of the fastest growing crimes in America, victimizing over 10 million people a year and costing billions of dollars.

Did you know that stolen identities are used up to 30 times, with most victims only discovering the theft after they've been turned down for a loan or contacted by a collection agency. You may already be a victim, many times over, and not even know it

How LifeLock Protects You:

1. They ask the credit bureaus to set free fraud alerts on your behalf. Then every 90 days or so they ask the credit bureaus to do it again.

2. LifeLock requests that your name be removed from pre-approved credit card and junk mail lists and they keep making the requests as they expire. Statistics show that this is one of the many ways that thieves hijack identities.

3. Then they order free credit reports on your behalf from the major credit bureaus and they are sent directly to you. They do this every year.

Their monitoring package:

* scanning known criminal websites for the illegal selling or trading of your personal information (including your Social Security number, credit card number, driver’s license and email address, if provided) and informs you when something is found.

* notifies you when we detect any new address information associated with your name in address databases nationwide. This helps alert you if a criminal has changed your address to steal mail and obtain your financial information.
If your Identity is stolen while you are a member of LifeLock, they do whatever it takes to recover your good name,

LifeLock spends up to $1,000,000 to do it...that's their guarantee



Choose The LifeLock Protection That's Right For You! Enroll For As Little As $10 Per Month! LifeLock.com

For Your Safety

I was home today and when I completed everything on my 'to-do' list, I decided to see what is on TV during the day. Clueless, I was channel surfing and came across the Tyra Banks show.

She had an interesting segment on "For Your Safety". It was actually geared towards women and dating, but this information can be applied to everyone...even children.

The segment was showing how when women go out and are approached by a man (or men), they give out so much personal information during conversation. I was amazed as I listened and watched a video showing a man walking up to a woman, who then started to flirt with her. He started asking her questions about where she lived, where she worked etc..and the women gave him exact addresses. What was she thinking? She didn't even know this man. He could have been a stalker or worse.

We don't realize as we are engrossed in a conversation just how much personal information we give out to complete strangers.

In this day and age there is so much we need to protect ourselves from. Identity theft, stalkers, rapists, pedophiles, theives.

The Internet is a constant for most people and you may not realize what information you are providing to others about yourself.

This is something to teach your children too. Innocent ones should never give out information to strangers. Teenagers may not be aware of the dangers or think the conversation is one to not worry about, but what they are doing is providing a way to be found. Young people sometimes have a narrow mind about the world and don't realize what can happen.

Please be cautious when in conversation with someone you don't know. Think before speaking about personal information... if in the wrong hands it can cause you harm.

Link Scam Exposed

In the blogging sphere, I find for the most part bloggers support one another. We believe, trust and hope that we all have the same morals and ethics. On occasion we find there are people who attempt to take advantage of others and are dishonest in their approach to acquire links for those interested in rankings. And, at times these same people offer promises they have no intention of keeping.

A few weeks ago I came across an offer to review a blog to receive a link back that would increase my website ranking. Although I was not interested for that is not my reason for being involved in blogging.

However, I noticed some of my blogging friends did take advantage of this offer, so I did alittle investigating. What I found was disheartening. The site offering their links was not who they suggested they were. They mislead, were dishonest and have ignored many requests via email to verify their offer.

There were questions floating around if this site ezine.org was related in anyway to ezinearticles.com. I was hoping that was not the case, for I have 10 published articles at ezinearticles.com and have had only a positive experience.

I wrote to ezinearticles.com regarding this and received an answer:
Sep 24, 2007 3:28 PM
EzineArticles Support wrote:
Hi Andrea,
Thank you for notifying us of this.
We do not have any affiliation at all with this website/blog.
Thank you,
Casey
Member Services Specialist
http://EzineArticles.com/
I hope this answer from ezinearticles.com makes anyone who thought they were involved more comfortable.

My personal blog A Circle of Women is mentioned in the below post from my friend Bobby.

If you reviewed the blog mentioned in the below post, it is my opinion you take action by removing your review post or link. It disturbs me that trusting individuals were scammed into believing they would receive a linkback which is very important to others.

This is an excerpt of Bobby's post:
Ezine.org Link Scam Exposed
When I think of Ezine, I think of a reputable site(s). Don’t you also think of E-zine as being on the up an up? I was unethically tricked into writing a post, Ezine Link Love, to help improve my page rank. I hate to see them involved in internet scams.

Andrea from A Circle of Women and BeachBum, both pointed out to me that Ezine.org has a page rank of 0. I already knew that but assumed the links would come from one of Ezine’s other sites.

Here is the url of the scam site: http://www.ezineblog.org/?page_id=95

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