New Hampshire Real Estate & Consumer Resources

Here’s a bit of news that’s bound to bring a tear to the eye of any current or former customers of Pipeline Data, Inc. whose experience may have been similar to mine.

In it’s latest quarterly “10-Q” report, which the company must publicly release by law, they reveal that things didn’t go so well during the first three months of this year. The company’s revenue decreased by $1.9 million, which is almost 17%. Those figures are in comparison with the first three months of last year.

The company states that their poor performance is due to a reductions in transaction volume which was due in large part to “the attrition of customers” and the current state of the economy.

I’m sure that the state of the economy has had a negative impact on their business, just like it has had for many others, however that’s not what stood out when I read the report.

I was more interested in the “attrition of customers” revelation.

Dictionary.com defines “attrition” thusly: “a reduction or decrease in numbers, size, or strength: Our club has had a high rate of attrition because so many members have moved away.”

There are other meanings, but I believe this is the one that the statement from Pipeline is eluding to.

To put it simply, they have lost customers – a significant number I’m guessing, and something that I do not find the least bit surprising.

Here’s something else that was extremely interesting to me. The company reports that “…seven members of the Board of Directors resigned and a new five member Board was formed. Daniel Nenadovic serves as the new Chairman of the Board.”

This may actually be good news for current and future customers of Pipeline Data, Inc. Perhaps the new board will bring positive changes to the company that are sorely needed. Time will tell.

I was a little disappointed to see that the fictional $99 that the company claimed I owed them and hired a collection agency to collect from me was not mentioned in the “10-Q” report. I presume it would have been a “loss,” since it must have appeared somewhere on their books as an uncollected debt until they realized it was a fantasy. A fact I made aware to them after I heard from the collection agency.

Anyway, I really did not expect to see that $99 on the “10-Q.” That was a joke, and probably not a very good one.

Here’s are some more fun facts from the “10-Q” report.

Pipeline owns a number of other companies, which they refer to as “wholly owned subsidiaries.” I think they are worth mentioning:

• SecurePay.com, Inc.
• Northern Merchant Services, Inc.
• Pipeline Data Portfolio Acquisitions, Inc.
• Aircharge, Inc.
• PayPipe, Inc.
• Paynet Systems, Inc.
• Valadata, Inc.
• CardAccept.com, Inc.
• PayPassage, Inc.

Speaking solely for myself, of course, I know that this will be a list I will check through if I ever find myself in need of a merchant account again in the future.

A careful consumer should always do their research.

If you would like to read the “10-Q” yourself, you can find it at Yahoo! 

It’s also kind of interesting to see that this company’s stock is currently trading at around 14 cents, making it a true “penny stock.”

Wow, 14 cents is not a lot of money, is it?

Since my nightmarish experience with merchant account services from Pipeline Data/Secure Pay/Whatever-other-names-they-use, I have decided to keep an eye on any news regarding the company (companies?) and also watch for any other tidbits that show up from other customers.

I do not easily forget experiences like the one I endured during my association with that outfit – and even well after I thought it was over!

As some readers may recall, these idiots caused me more than my share of grief. Most recently siccing a collection agency on me over a a debt that I did not owe.

In fact, the reality of it is that, technically, they owe me $30 for trying to withdraw money from my business bank account over a year ago, which due to “insufficient funds” in the account, resulted in a $30 penalty from the bank.

The money they were trying to withdraw was money that was not owed to them, and was attempted after I had already been told that I did not owe them any money, and that no other attempts to withdraw money from my account would be made.

An absolutely incredible demonstration of incompetence.

Anyway, the whole story has been covered in-depth here already, so I’ll get straight to the new business.

I came across a post in a forum from another unfortunate customer of “Secure Pay,” who is apparently having problems integrating their payment system into her website. No big surprise.

You can read about her wonderful experience here.

I’m sure you can imagine what kind of advice I might offer to her. I’ve said it before and will gladly say it again.

My advice is to stay as far away from Pipeline Data/Secure Pay as possible. I cannot imagine a worse choice for someone who is shopping for a merchant account.

If I ever hear a single word from Pipeline Data, Secure Pay or collection agency weasels working for them again regarding any more fictitious debts, the next contact they will have with me will be in a court of law, because I will hire a lawyer and vigorously explore all of my legal options. That’s a promise.

Pipeline. I suppose when most people hear that word they tend to think of things like the oil and gas pipelines that carry so much of the fuel that currently keeps human existence – as we know it – running from day to day.

One might also think of things like the pipelines that carry water to homes and businesses or runoff from rain storms. And how could we forget the big sewer pipelines that take waste away from homes and businesses and deliver it to large wastewater treatment facilities that turn that nasty stuff into water that can be discharged into rivers and streams in an environmentally sensible fashion.

The Pipeline I want to talk about today is quite different from those I have mentioned above. In fact, it’s not a “pipeline” in the true sense of the word, even though it bears a striking resemblance to the final variety of pipeline that I just finished talking about. In my personal opinion, of course.

The pipeline I want to talk about today is a company called “Pipeline Data Processing.” They are a company that offers merchant accounts to retailers who want to offer their customers the option of paying by credit or debit card. Pipeline collects the payments, deducts their fees and then sends the payment to the merchant.

For the background on this whole ugly situation, you might want to check out two older entries here and here, since I do not plan to relate the entire story from the beginning.

I was having a pretty good day yesterday. Sitting in my home office getting some work done and was just about to go outside to take care of some chores and get a little fresh air. It was a very nice day here in New Hampshire.

Just as I was about to go out, my phone rang. The Called ID display was showing “Glacial Star Gr” which was obviously the name of some company whose entire name would not fit on the display. Since it was the business line ringing, I thought it was a potential customer calling from work to place and order (happens more than you might think!), or a wrong number.

When I picked up the phone, the gentleman on the other end identified himself and said he worked for “Glacial Star Group.” I was expecting some kind of pitch for web-related services since our business is web-based and we sometimes get “phone spam” from people who want to re-design our site for us or want to help us get more traffic to it.

Then the guy starts talking about some kind of debt that I owe and wants to know what “my intentions were.”

At this point I am wondering what the hell this guy is talking about and why he is calling me. He addressed me by name, so clearly he had reached the person he had intended to reach.

At this point I am not even sure what I said to the guy. I was so dumbfounded, I cannot remember my reaction.

He than made it clear that his company was a collection agency and had been hired by – yes, you guessed it – Pipeline Data Processing to recover a $99 debt that I owed them.

At that point I suppose you could have knocked me over with a feather. It was total and complete disbelief, which I conveyed to the guy from the collection agency. As someone who collects debts for a living, I suppose he gets that kind of reaction all the time and probably did not believe me.

But let’s pause here for a little bit of history that I did not bother to enter here way back when I was dealing with all the problems I initially had with Pipeline Data Processing.

My last dealings with them were when they attempted to extract money from my business checking account during December of 2007. Keep in mind that this was well after I thought this nightmare was over and was given assurances that my account had been closed and I would have not further dealings with Pipeline Data Processing in any capacity.

Well, since I don’t often allow too much money to accumulate in my business checking account precisely because of companies like Pipeline Data Processing, there were not sufficient funds in the account to allow the withdrawal. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the bank charged me $25 for an “insufficient funds” fee. So I was out $25 because Pipeline Data Processing attempted to snatch money from my account that they should not have been trying to take.

I fired off an e-mail to the person I had been dealing with at Pipeline and inquired as to why they were trying to take money from me again. I never got a response back (she was impossible to reach on the phone) but I kept a close eye on my account to make sure it did not happen again.

Reluctantly, I decided to just let the whole matter go and see what might develop next. I was so tired of dealing with the incompetent idiots at Pipeline Data Processing that I did not have the will to get into it again with them for the sake of $25.

There are other reasons for that decision as well that I don’t care to talk about, but I will just say that a lot of things have changed in my life since that time, and I am not quite the same person I was then. I’m far more tenacious these days and not one that can be easily walked on. To say the least!

I never heard another word from Pipeline Data Processing and they never tried to withdraw money from my account again. I figured that they had realized their mistake after I sent my e-mail and actually closed the account and put a stop to any further efforts to take my money.

Fast forward to yesterday. Sixteen months after their final attempt at extracting money from my account, and I’ve got this character on the phone from a collection agency telling me that I owe him $99 on behalf of Pipeline.

Another thing the guy on the phone indicated was that they had tried to reach me earlier to inform me with regard to this matter. I confirmed he had my correct address and obviously my correct phone number, so I can only presume he was lying to me. Why, I do not know, but I feel quite confident that no attempt had been made to contact me about this alleged debt prior to the phone call I received yesterday.

I explained to him that this was all a mistake on the part of Pipeline and asked him why they simply did not contact me and let me know that they thought I owed them money. He had no answer and claimed that he did not even know if Pipeline had a collection department, which was later proven to my satisfaction to be a lie. After all, we are talking about a collection agency.

I will give the guy who called credit for being very business-like and polite for the vast majority of our conversation. At one point he asked me for some additional phone numbers I could be reached at, like a home or cell phone.

Now I wasn’t born yesterday, and I’m certainly not about to provide information that will help a collection agency get in touch with me. Especially, when the debt is not valid in the first place. That was the only part of the conversation that got a little touchy.

No doubt using some of his tried-and-true collection agency tricks, he said something along the lines of “I’m going to have to insist that you give me some other phone numbers I can reach you at.” Those were not his exact words, but it was something like that, and with an stern an authoritative tone, of course.

At that point he started to get me a bit agitated and I rather forcefully told him that I was not giving him any other numbers. Sensing that he was up against a brick wall (he was quite correct), he backed off and switched back to his softer and gentler collection agency guy persona.

At this point I informed him that I would be contacting Pipeline Data Processing to resolve this matter. He then wanted to know when a good time would be to call me back, so I gave him a time and we both agreed to talk again at that time.

I immediately called Pipeline Data and managed to find my way through their phone maze to the collections department. The woman who  answered was actually quite nice and very helpful and looked up my records in their database.

There was a long pause on the line and I could picture her reading all the past entries in their database that indicated that this matter had been resolved over a year ago and my account had been cancelled and I owed them nothing. I pretty much asked her if that’s what was going on and she rather sheepishly confirmed it for me.

She then told me she would be contacting my new friends at Glacial Star Group and telling them to stop all collection activities and that I owned Pipeline Data Processing nothing. I thanked her and ended the conversation.

I then got the guy from Glacial Star Group back on the phone and told him that he should be hearing from Pipeline soon to let him know that I really did not owe them any money at all.

I happened to mention the first name of the woman I talked to at Pipeline and he said something like “Oh, Judy Smith?” (not her real name), which is what tipped me off that he had lied earlier about having no knowledge of Pipeline’s collections department. The woman I talked to worked in the collections department – a fact that the guy from Glacial Star Group obviously knew. I’m quite sure he knew she did not work in the janitorial department!

Still, he was very polite and business like throughout the whole process, but I have no doubts about how that situation might have turned if Pipeline had not called off the dogs, so to speak.

The bottom line is this: I cannot imagine a worse choice than Pipeline Data Processing for anyone who is considering opening a merchant account. My advice is to stay far, far away from that company.

Any company that comes back after sixteen months of silence and hires a collection agency in an attempt to collect $99 from me that I never owed to them in the first place has some serious problems.

At this point I am left wondering if my contact with Pipeline Data Processing is finally reached its end. Will they try to extract more money from my bank account or hire another collection agency to come after me for a fictitious debt? I wish I knew.

Let me close by saying this: If you happen to be an attorney reading this and think that I have any recourse in this matter, I’d be happy to hear from you. I don’t like being harassed, having my name dragged though the mud and essentially being branded as a “deadbeat,” by having them hire a collection agency to come after me for a debt that never existed.

Plus, I might like to get that $25 back that they caused my bank to charge me when they reached in and tried to take money from my account back in December of 2007.

Like I said earlier, I’m not the kind of guy that takes this kind of crap laying down any more.

Any attorneys looking for work who think there might be something here, feel free to reply to this entry or use my contact page to drop me a line. Seriously.

It’s been a while since I have posted here about junk phone calls. I’ve been busy with other projects and have not had much time to post updates here, but since these people from “Opinion Search” were so determined to reach me, I decided I’d give them a little press, so to speak.

It started on April 2, and when I saw the Called ID come up with “Opinion Search,” I did not answer and let the answering machine get it. I was not foolish enough to think I would never hear from them again of course.

I checked this place out by doing some searching online and came up with a tip from someone else who provided a website where one could enter their number on this company’s “do not call” list. The site looked legit, so I entered in my number and got back a message that read something like: “Thank you. You will not hear from us again.”

Wow, wasn’t that easy! Was it too good to be true? Apparently.

On April 3 they tried again. This time I picked it up and was going to try a little trick on them. But, as these robo-callers so often do, it did not provide me with anyone on the other end to talk to. I was so glad to get out of my nice comfortable recliner to answer that call!

Just moments ago “Opinion Search” struck again! On a Sunday even! Must be a good day to catch people at home.

I answered the phone in a somewhat unusual way, saying something more like “Hallo” than “Hello,” since I wanted to set this up.

The caller launched into her spiel about some kind of opinion survey and I then interrupted her with “No English,” spoken with a fake foreign accent.

She responded with, “Oh, I’m sorry. Is there anyone in your home that does speak English?”

Well, since I don’t speak English, how would I be expected to understand that? I again repeated, “No English,” again with the fake accent.

At that point she gave up and said goodbye.

I’m not going to pretend this is an original idea, because it is not. I recall reading somewhere about someone else doing this.

My hope is that they update their evil robo-dialer database to reflect that nobody at this number speaks English and they will not bother us again.

Time will tell.

Interestingly, the first two calls came from 514-288-0420 but today’s call came from 613-230-2890 and the caller ID still displayed “Opinion Search.” Maybe they hire people to work from home or something, or have different call centers. Maybe they just spoof Called ID numbers. Who knows.

If they call again, I will surely post that information here. No matter how busy I am!

As I’ve mentioned before, we have a small retail business where we sell hobby-related products through a website. It’s not a big money-maker, but it does offer some nice additional income.

Having a small business presence on the internet opens you up as a potential victim for various types of scam artists who pretend to want to do business with you. These scams will usually be in the form of e-mail messages that indicate that the sender wants to purchase something from your company.

We’ve never received any telephone calls from scam artists even though our telephone number is available on our web site, but I suppose it is possible that some other small businesses have been contacted over the phone by scammers.

The latest scam e-mail we received recently was from someone claiming that his name was “Paul Stuggart” who claimed that he wanted to place an order on our site. Here is the e-mail that was received:

From: Paul Stuggart [paulstuggart@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, October 17, 2008 11:05 AM
Subject: Order Enquiry

Hello, I want to place an order in your store,Let me know if you ship to Australia method of payment will be credit card,I will be very glad if you can assist me with the order, I will await your prompt response as soon as you received this mail. I will be happy if you treat this email with good concern Warmest Regards PAUL STUGGART

The first tip off is that this scam artist is using a G-Mail account for his e-mail. G-Mail is a free e-mail service similar to those offered by Yahoo! and Hotmail, and you will not usually see legitimate business people using these types of free services for their business-related e-mail.

Secondly, there is no reason for him to be e-mailing us to tell us he wants to order something from our site. We do indicate on our site that we ship to Australia, and he could have simply placed his order online if he wanted to.

Thirdly, you may notice that the wording of the message is a bit peculiar. Phrases like “I will be very glad if you can assist me” and “I will await your prompt response” are the types of phrases that are often used by these scam artists, particularly the notorious Nigerian “419” scam artists.

The line at the end where he writes “I will be happy if you treat this email with good concern” really seals the deal, and marks the sender as a scam artist with almost absolute certainty. This is very typical of the language these guys use all the time.

I decided to play along and respond to his message, and let him know that we do indeed ship to Australia and asked him how I could help him. This was his response:

From:    paul stuggart [paulstuggart@gmail.com]
Sent:    Saturday, October 18, 2008 2:16 PM
Subject:    Re: Order Enquiry

Hello,

  Thank for your fast response and i want you to know that i came
across your store information via a friend and here is what i will
like to order for,

[Name of product removed]
qty:100

I will like you to get back to me with the total cost and the
shipping cost as the qty is much.and here is address for you to the
shipping cost via ups or fed ex.and please kindly get back to me if
this items is in stock because i do not want any delay on this.

XXX XXXXXXX Street
XXX XXXXXXX
AUSTRALIA
Phone:  XX XXX XXXX

Do this on time so that i can be able to give you my credit card
information and complete my order for me Best Regards Paul Stuggart

Again, this is typical of these scam artists. They will tell you they want to place orders that are much larger than the typical order, and want to discuss shipping options with you.

Also note the urgency he tries to inject into the transaction by saying he does not want any delay on this. The less time potential victims spend thinking about things like this, the more likely they are to become victims.

I have removed the address and telephone information that this scam artist used since it was the address of an actual business in Australia who I was able to track down through the internet and contact via e-mail.

The owner of the legitimate business that is at that address has been having problems with scam artists using their address.

There was some indication that the scammers may make their money on the shipping costs, although I did not get the full details of how they operate.

There are many types of scam artists out there, but there are usually numerous clues in their messages that reveal their true intent. Be alert for these signs and you will likely avoid becoming a victim of these criminals.

The sky is falling! The sky is falling!

There’s a lot of fear out there, and our friends in the media are feeding on it like a shark during a feeding frenzy.

Yes, the economy is bad, and yes, unfortunately some people are losing their jobs and that really stinks.

But what this is about is perspective. As most people know, Warren Buffett is one of the most successful investors (if not the most successful) of all time, and I dare say he knows quite a bit about business and the economy.

The media makes their money off of gloom and doom, and they are probably one of the few industries that’s thriving with all this bad news out there.

I’ll shut up now, and just hope you will watch this interview, and realize that the world as we know it is not about to end.

Watch Warren Buffett, and it just might make you feel a little better about this whole situation.

Law enforcement has managed to round up 11 criminals who were behind the massive computer hacking scheme that resulted in the theft of millions of credit and debit card numbers as well as other personal information from retail giant TJX.

Back when I first learned about the scheme, I posted that TJX needed a good slap in the face. At this point I’d like to amend that statement by saying they should get a good kick in the… Well, use or imagination.

Ever since I heard about it, I have wondered how the crooks managed to pull it off. Having worked in the computer industry for many years, these kinds of things interest me, and now that arrests have been made, I managed to dig up the details that had previously eluded me.

Here’s how this whole thing went down: The hackers made use of a technique called "war driving," something that has been going on for years. In involves driving around with a laptop computer that is configured to detect wireless networks. In this case, the hackers were said to have used a directional antenna which can greatly increase the range from which you can access a wireless network.

Believe it or not, there are plans on the internet that involve the construction of a rudimentary directional antenna for war driving purposes using a Pringles can!

In this particular case, the hackers parked outside a Marshall’s store near St. Paul, Minnesota sometime during July of 2005, and commenced their efforts to penetrate the stores wireless network. With wireless hand-held price checkers in use in the store, and probably other wireless devices as well, there was plenty of data in the air for the hackers to capture on their laptop. This kind of activity could also be referred to as "sniffing" since the hackers are simply gathering the data that is being transmitted between various store devices via the wireless network.

Some of this data that the hackers captures contained usernames and passwords for TJX’s main computer systems in Framingham, Mass. Those were the gems that the hackers were looking for. They had hit the jackpot.

You may be wondering why it was so easy for the hackers to penetrate the store’s wireless network and begin sniffing all the traffic. It was so easy because the store was using an outdated version of the encryption scheme that was used to protect the data. They were using an encryption scheme known as WEP or Wired Equivalent Privacy, which had been "cracked" as early as 2001, meaning that weaknesses in the encryption scheme were discovered, and resulted in the creation of readily available programs that allowed hackers to compromise a WEP-encrypted wireless network in minutes. For the hackers, it was likely equivalent to child’s play.

TJX, a $17 billion dollar retail empire, failed to upgrade their wireless network to a new scheme called WPA, which corrected the problems with the WEP scheme. An auditor later discovered that TJX had also failed to install network firewalls and data encryption protection on many of its computers connected to the wireless network, and didn’t properly install another layer of security software it had obtained. Maybe they just bought the extra software because it came in a pretty box!

When queried about these failures the company declined to comment on its security measures. Perhaps the $17 billion dollar company could not afford to hire qualified personnel to implement the protective measures. As they used to say on Saturday Night Live, "Yeah, that’s the ticket."

Once the hackers has access to the companies main computer systems in Framingham, they boldly created their own user accounts to access the systems, and even went as far as using the company’s network to exchange encrypted messages with one another to avoid duplicating their efforts and copy files that has already been copied.

The hackers collected TJX retail customer information from the TJX systems and copied it to other systems they had access to in the U.S. and Eastern Europe. They sold some of the data to other criminal elements, and used some it themselves.

Some of the data even included Social Security numbers, drivers licence numbers and military ID numbers, exposing over 450,000 customers to the threat of identity theft. Naturally, the company apologized for the incident and has improved their security, but I guess that’s a bit like closing the barn door after the horse has escaped. Once that data is out there, it’s out there and who knows how many criminals have access to it.

The whole nasty scheme started coming to light during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when some customers of Fidelity Homestead, a Louisiana savings bank, began to notice strange transactions on their credit card statements. Hey, just what you need after enduring the worst hurricane in recent history! Some low-life using your credit card info to go on a spending spree.

Meanwhile, the hackers were still having their way with the TJX systems and managed to go unnoticed by the geniuses in the TJX IT department for 18 months. That’s got to be some strict set of security guidelines they had in place in their data center, wouldn’t you say? But, hell, who needs to protect things like customer Social Security numbers and other personal information as well as debit and credit card numbers? Just let the usernames and passwords for those systems fly around the airwaves inside stores on a wireless network that was well known for it’s easy accessibility. Brilliant!

Apparently, various criminals around the world had a field day with the data and used it to make purchases and do whatever else they could with it to profit. Criminals are often able to obtain equipment that can be used to create credit cards that are copies of the originals once they have collected the required info they need to print on the cards and encode onto the card’s magnetic strip.

It was during the fall of 2006 when a group of morons on Florida decided to go on a spending spree that set about the events that started to put pieces of the puzzle together. A Wal-Mart clerk became suspicious of people buying large quantities of gift cards and alerted police.

With the help of store surveillance tapes, the police managed to track down and arrest the idiots, who were said to have "covered a lot of territory in a relatively short period of time," according to a special agent with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement. That’s what happens when stupid criminals allow themselves to get too greedy.

As the crooks in Florida were enjoying an early Christmas at someone else’s expense, an auditor at TJX warned the company regarding its poor security, and that the company wasn’t complying with many of the requirements imposed by Visa and MasterCard, according to someone who was familiar with the auditor’s report. The report noted the outdated WEP wireless encryption, as well as missing software patches and network firewall protection.

It took until December of 2006 before TJX finally began to realize what had been going on right under their noses for months. They hired computer forensics experts and notified the Secret Service. I can’t help but think that TJX could have spared itself a lot of grief, and more importantly, risk to their customer’s financial well being if they had hired some in-house experts to keep an eye on things, or at least some system administrators who were better trained in matters related to security.

As someone who worked as a system administrator for many years myself, it’s hard to imagine how newly-created, unauthorized access accounts were created on a system without being noticed for 18 months!

There were attempts to catch the hackers in the act but they managed to elude their pursuers by using publicly-available internet connections like those found in coffee houses and using internet addresses belonging to private individuals who had no idea what was going on.

The good news is that this whole fiasco could end up costing TJX $1 billion or more. A punishment that is richly-deserved in this consumer’s opinion.

Personally, I never plan to step foot in a TJX-owned retail establishment again. What can you find in any of their stores that you cannot find online anyway? I just love shopping online since I don’t care much for driving anyway, and I don’t care much for crowds or waiting in check-out lines.

The other good news is that the main figures responsible for this crime have been indicted by federal prosecutors and will probably face a nice hefty stretch of time in a federal prison if convicted. I am a bit concerned that the 11 crooks are spread among five different counties, so I suppose one can expect delays and complications as a result of extradition treaties and other bureaucratic red tape.

I hope this entire episode serves as a warning to big companies that deal with personal data belonging to customers, as well as the hackers who think they are clever enough to out-smart the authorities. What criminals like this don’t seem to realize is that no matter how clever they are (and I will admit they were likely pretty smart when it comes to hacking systems), there are people just as clever on the other side of the law who will be looking for them.

I wonder who had the big idea to put a little sticker on each and every vegetable or piece of fruit in the supermarket. Sure, I am exaggerating a little, since there are probably still some produce items that are not individually labeled, but probably not many!

I see this kinds of stickers regularly on things like peaches, pears, apples, plums, oranges and grapefruit to name a few.

Now it wouldn’t be so bad if these stickers were easier to remove, but apparently the product growers or vendors, or whoever the heck affixes these stickers to the produce hired someone from NASA to come up with an extra sticky sticker that is very hard to remove from some items.

For example, with peaches and plums, I usually end up tearing off the skin along with the sticker and then I end up with that stupid sticker stuck to my finger or thumb.

It hardly seems worth the walk to the trash container for such a small item so I usually look for a piece of junk mail or something on the counter to stick it onto. Even if I did take the time to walk to the trash, there’s the problem of trying to get that stupid sticker unstuck from me and into the trash!

I don’t know about you, but I’m not all that crazy about the idea of sticking my hand into the trash container to locate some item to transfer that sticker to when I’m about to eat a piece of fruit with my hands.

You can forget trying to shake that sucker off your hand and into the trash. By the time that happens, McCain or Obama will be in the White House!

I do appreciate the information on the stickers. I like to know where my food comes from, and they also imprint little code numbers on them sometimes that you can look up on the internet to get more information. That’s kind of cool.

Perhaps they could just put this information like country of origin and other useful tidbits on the signs in the store where the fruit is displayed. I think that would do the trick.

I have not taken the time to research this, but I’m beginning to wonder now whether these stickers were mandated by some consumer law or something. It sounds like something the government might do.

I just wish they would come up with a less sticky sticker. Maybe they could even come up with a way to tattoo the information on the produce. After all, it seems to be the "in" thing these days, but I would have to draw the line at body piercing where produce is concerned, since that would likely cause it to spoil a lot faster.

News has been coming out on some of the big media sites (see CNN) about a serious flaw that allows hackers to control how traffic is routed on the internet.

I’m not sure what took the media so long to catch this story, but this is something that has been known for a while, and I recall reading about it in a trade magazine some months ago.

The first thing the average computer user needs to realize is that there is no action needed on their part. The potential problem only targets DNS servers, which are the computers that route traffic on the internet.

DNS servers are usually owned and operated by big internet service providers like Comcast or Verizon. These DNS systems help internet users reach various destinations on the internet by allowing them to use simple names like www.homesfornh.com instead of the actual internet address which might look something like: 192.168.0.1 or 74.100.33.14.

Imagine how difficult it would be to use the internet if you had to type those kinds of numbers in for each website you wanted to reach! That is where the DNS servers come to the rescue.

Every computer that is connected to the internet has to know the address of the DNS server it will use to translate names like www.homesfornh.com into the actual internet address which is needed to reach that destination. Most of this stuff all happens behind the scenes and most users are not aware that their computer is even using the services of a DNS server, since it happens automatically for the most part, when the user brings their computer online.

What some clever hacker has figured out is a way to access the cache inside a DNS server and modify it to his liking. Think of "cache" as a kind of temporary storage area that a computer keeps in its memory to allow fast access to data that resides there. Retrieving information from a hard disk is slower than from memory, so cache provides an efficient way to access information that tends to be accessed a lot. Instead of pulling the data from the hard disk every time, the data can be snatched quickly from the cache as needed.

In this case, the data in the cache on the DNS servers contains information that is needed to translate the simple names I mentioned earlier into the actual internet address, which was that sting of numbers and dots that’s hard to remember. Since the typical DNS server can have hundreds or thousands of other computers asking it to translate names into numbers on a non-stop basis, the performance of the DNS server benefits greatly by using cache.

Lord knows how hackers figure this stuff out, but there certainly seems to be too many people out there with too much time on their hands which is obviously accompanied by a lack of morals.

Anyway, what the hackers manage to do is exploit some kind of program flaw on a DNS system which allows them to access the cache and modify it. This is known as "DNS cache poisoning."

Let’s say for example, that your bank is called "Big Fat Bank" and you can access your bank account online by visiting www.bigfatbank.com. Whenever you want to visit www.bigfatbank.com, an accommodating DNS server translates that name, www.bigfatbank.com , into the internet address that is needed to route your request to your bank’s website. Let’s say that your bank’s actual internet address is 192.168.37.1 in this case.

Well, when a hacker decides to "poison" the DNS cache on the DNS server that your computer uses to route you to the website you want to visit, he can modify the cache so that www.bigfatbank.com directs you not to 192.168.37.1 where your bank website actually resides, but to another address where he has set up a website of his own.

More-than-likely, the website that the hacker has created will look exactly like your bank’s website, and when customers try to log in to the fake bank site, guess what happens? The hacker records the customer’s account number and password and can then visit the bank’s real website and access the customer’s account.

The customer who attempts to log into the fake bank site that the poisoned DNS cache has directed him to will probably just see a message that says the site is temporarily down for maintenance or something when he tries to log in, and will probably just wait until some later point in time before he tries accessing his account online again.

Meanwhile, the hacker may be accessing the customer’s account and transferring money to one of his own accounts.

All of the major internet providers have been aware of this problem for a while and have probably applied the required fix to their DNS servers, so there is probably not too much to worry about at this point. In fact, I’d be shocked if a single major internet service provider has not implemented the required fix on all of their DNS servers.

However, always be suspicious of anything that seems unusual with any of your online bank accounts, and don’t hesitate to contact your bank or other financial institution if you think someone has gained access to your account or has discovered  your account number and password.

You never know when the next flaw will be discovered that will open a new door for the hackers to exploit, so it pays to be alert and on the lookout for anything that does not seem quite right.

It’s no secret that I pretty much hate telephone calls from anyone but family and friends. There are of course exceptions, doctor’s offices confirming appointments, employers, someone advising you that you won the lottery — that kind of thing.

Although I dislike receiving calls from those political pollsters, I don’t dislike them as much as I do the telemarketers.

Sometimes, I’ll even have a little fun with these pollsters, but will usually refuse to donate my valuable time to their cause, which is probably profit-driven in one form or another.

Last evening the phone rang and the Caller ID displayed the name of an outfit called "Research Center," with a telephone number of 231-224-2031. This call was coming in on our business line, so, figuring it could be a potential customer, I picked up.

The young lady in the other end babbled something about a political poll and if I would like to participate. I was in a pretty good mood, so I figured I would play along for a change and see what kind if info they were looking for.

The first question was something like this:

In the upcoming Presidential election how would you rate the chances that you will go out and vote?

A. Very Unlikely
B. Somewhat Unlikely
C. Somewhat Likely
D. Likely
E. Very Likely

Well, taking into considering my views concerning the state of this nation and in particular, politicians in general, I told her my answer was "A. Very Unlikely."

At that point, she thanked me and said goodbye.

So, that may be a useful tip if you get one of these calls. If you want to end it quickly and politely, just pick that "A" answer and you’ll be all done. I suppose they simply are not interested in opinions from people who have no plans to vote.