data security is a very difficult contept. On one hand, security through obsurity is important. For example, if someone asks for your mother’s maden name, do you give it? I personally make up something. Would someone really expect Einstein to be my mother’s maiden name? How about Plank or Newton? Is there someone in history that motivated you? How does Armstrong work for you? He was the first person to step on the moon and the first person to win 7 Tour de France races. I realize that these are two differet people but the last name is the same and it works for a secondary password. With this you have the power to hijack someone’s bank account. I personally don’t give out this information but make up something that is difficult to spell. One of the banks in Louisiana, for example, said that their name is their first line of defense. Most hackers don’t know how to spell their name. This is a good first line of defense. In fact, I use it for my pet’s first name. I don’t use the name of my first dog because it is a common name in Spanish. Instead, I use the high school that my father went to. I use it because it is a small town in West Virginia that very few people know how to spell. If I don’t use this, I use something obscure like my college ID number which is based on the year I stated and the sequence I was in applications. I realize that this is something crazy to use but is something that is engraned upon my mind and I can’t forget the nunber.
How many times do you give someone a check? The check contains your name, address, and typically your drivers license number. Giving someone this information has an implicit trust and you are trusting that the company that you are workign with will not use this information for marketing purposed. Have you thought about how difficult it is to track someone based on their drivers license number? If you were a busines, how would you figure out how to contact someone based on this information? Can you trrack someone based on their drivers license without someone inside the department of motor vechicles or a privatge investigator that does? It is troublesome. Do you really trust the address on someones checks? Typically, yes. Very few people lie on this address because it needs to match your drivers license to cache a check. I had a friend who got a call from a company that she bought went to for a shoe purchase. The owner of the company called her up the next day and asked her out for a date. She was really freaked out by this sleaze that used the information on her check to call her and ask her out for a date.
I personally cache checks at a grocery store or my bank. My bank does not care what address is on the check, only what the last four digits of my SSN is. The grocery store only cares that my frequenty buyer card that I have is current. I realy don’t need to have a valid or current address on my checks. I question the viability of having the corret address on checks as a form of identification.
The true question that I keep coming back to is what is trustworthy and what is a con job? Do I really know the difference? I hope so. If you receive a message from me years later that I am the direct decendant of the Ottoman Empire and and need your checking account so that I can transfer millions of dollars into my checking account and need your help please, please report me to the FBI. I need some serious help or some serious time in a federal prision. I only hope that I spend minimal time for the minor crimes that I am committing against my current and former employeers.