There are many reasons I love American Express. Here’s one more. I was greeted with this email yesterday:
“At American Express, the security of your account is of the utmost importance. In an effort to protect and serve our Cardmembers, we consistently monitor accounts for possible fraudulent activity. Occasionally, we find it necessary to contact our customers to verify certain charges.
(Transaction amount and vendor name were listed)
In order to verify that these charges are legitimate, we ask that you please have your American Express Card available and call the American Express Account Security Group as soon as possible at 1-800-824-9289. Representatives are available 24 hours per day, 7 days a week to assist you.
You may also call the number on the back of your card and when prompted by our system, please enter your 15 digit American Express Card number. This will automatically transfer you to our Account Security Group.”

Being the untrusting/paranoid person that I am, I called the number on the back of my card (I rarely trust anything I get like this through email or a phone call.) I called and verified that the transaction was indeed fraudulent. They are always nothing but professional on the phone. Upon verification, they canceled the card and I should be getting a new one in the next few days. Aside from getting Cash back (I have a Blue Cash card) they’re on the lookout for the bad guys. Now, I’m curious about from where my credit card info leaked. I charge so many things to it that I’ll probably never know.

For those of you that run AVG Free (free for personal use) there is a major update available. For those of you that don’t run any antivirus software on your computer - SHAME ON YOU!
This new version includes anti-spyware, so if you have AVG’s anti-spyware (Ewido) installed, you’ll have to uninstall it first (go to Control Panel, then Add/Remove Programs.)
Here are a few bonuses of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition:

• available free of charge to home users for the life of the product
• virus database updates are available for the lifetime of the product
• doesn’t slow your system down (like other anti-virus systems I’ve seen)
• integrated spyware protection
• LinkScanner feature that gives users safety rankings for their Google, Yahoo, and MSN searches.

So, go and download it!
The install only takes a few minutes so don’t put it off, do it now!

I never put much thought into it until now, but while biometrics seem like an easy method of security they lack…um…security. This article is specifically talking about fingerprints.

Get your German interior minister’s fingerprint here

I like Bruce Schneier’s comment on this:

” This is 1) a good demonstration that a fingerprint is not a secret, and 2) a great political hack. Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s interior minister, is a strong supporter of collecting biometric data on everyone as an antiterrorist measure. Because, um, because it sounds like a good idea.”

I received this email last week from reactivation@google.com and it almost had me going (until I examined the included link more closely.) That and Thunderbird gave me a nice warning:

the email says:

This message was sent from a notification-only email address that does
not accept incoming email. Please do not reply to this message.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dear Google AdWords Customer,
Please sign in to your account at http://adwords.google.com/select/login , and update your billing information.
Your account will be reactivated as soon as you update your payment information.
Your ads will show immediately if you decide to pay for clicks via credit or debit card. If you decide to pay by direct debit, we may need to receive your signed debit authorization before your ads start running, depending on your location.
If you choose bank transfer, your ads will show as soon as we receive your first payment.
We look forward to providing you with the most effective advertising available.
Sincerely,
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The Google AdWords Team

The email looks surprisingly official and doesn’t have any typos or strange wording. The only bad thing is where the link actually took me. As I moused over the link, it pointed to a page on adwords.google.com.djieh3.cn… some server in China. That server has since been taken down, but I’m sure it was a very official looking site where the scammer was saving the login and credit card information given by anyone willing to share it. I can’t help but wonder how many people fell for it.