Simply put, you get a special credit card when you buy a new Dodge (not every new Dodge, but most). You can use this credit card to buy fuel for $2.99 a gallon at any service station for three years following your date of purchase, regardless of the actual market price. Sounds great right?

Well it's not. Check out this article explaining why it's actually WORSE to take advantage of this deal than to buy a car normally.

Anonymous posts anti-scientology videos on Youtube. They get canceled. They start a new account in order to try again and perhaps not get canceled this time. They get canceled.

Apparently Youtube policy is that if you've been banned, you get no second chances. Any new account you create will be destroyed…. Unless you're paying money as in the case of the Cult of Scientology.

And yet Scientology is back on YouTube. This time, it's paying for the account. It's also paying for ads on the site, looking to drive some traffic onto its new channel. "Get the facts," the ads say.

Not too long ago, I put an item on my Christmas wishlist that my wife bought, but I put a link to a fraud company as a place to buy it. If I had bothered to check it out first, I would have quickly realized as much and saved us both a lot of trouble.

So before you pull out your credit card, you should check them out.

This was faster than I thought.

The Arizona Department of Insurance has reviewed LifeLock's service and does not believe it is an insurance product, department spokeswoman Erin Klug told the Arizona Republic.

That's pretty interesting since I determined it's nothing but insurance. If what Arizona has said is true, well then I guess Lifelock is nothing at all.

Lifelock is that company run by the dude who boasts, "Here's my Social Security Number! I can't be hurt by ID Theft Man, I'm In-VINCIBLE!!!!" or some such nonsense.

First of all, he was robbed by some guy in texas which proves the point I've been trying to make all along: Lifelock doesn't PREVENT ID theft. But more important than that is how this company advertises. Besides having ads just damned everywhere on the web, I've found a wealth of fake sites that pretend to be 3rd party recommendations, but have little to no content other than Lifelock ads disguised as reviews. Whether this is the direct result of Lifelock marketing or the fault of over-zealous users of a Lifelock affiliate program, but either way, having sites like this really damage what little reputation Lifelock has.

This is getting dull so here are some more listed in no particular order

lifelock-promo.com
lifelocktv.net
safeidentityreview.com
getlifelock.net
identitytheftsecrets.com
reviewsonlifelock.com
www.f1racing.ws/

And the following are sites that have other posts, but at least one on lifelock that pretends to be a review, but isn't:

http://www.brokencode.us/finance/lifelock-scam/ (3 articles)
http://brinformatica.alojagratis.org/2008/04/06/lifelock/ (3 articles)
http://mbaonlinedegree.biz/2008/04/10/lifelock-review-for-the-id-prevention/ (1 article)
http://dmnewexpress.com/?p=128 (4 articles)
http://infinitum-media.com/ (4 articles)
http://www.drcopa.com/index.php?s=lifelock&x=&y= (1 article)
http://www.ginolopez.com/?p=43 (1 article)
http://abshome.blogspot.com/2008/04/value-of-life-lock_13.html (18+ articles)
http://msteenybopper.multiply.com/journal/item/146/Lifelock_Promo_Codes (1 article)

And a million more. Just do a search for Lifelock and you'll find them everywhere.

If you weren't already suspicious of such services, you should be. Companies like this that prety on the weak and defenseless while simultaneously pretending to offer a helping hand are the worst kind of scum.

It's this easy to destroy someone. Just post an ad on Craigslist.com stating that everything on a man's property is free and people will rob the place blind. All that's required is for someone to know when you're out of town.

(H/T to Digg.com for the link)

Josh discovered a mysterious $13 fee on his parents' phone bill, and as he tracked down the source of the bogus charge, he learned a lot about cramming. The FCC describes it as "the practice of placing unauthorized, misleading, or deceptive charges on your telephone bill" by third party companies, who bank on you being too confused/distracted/annoyed by your hard-to-read bill to notice.

Read his story here.

My main reason for digging this besides warning (or reminding) you about this practice was the first comment after the article:

Just another example of the disparity between corporations and people. Corporations freely get away doing things that people would go to jail for.

Amen.

Though the Virgina legislature examined payday lending, they only solution they brought forth was to limit them as far as interest rates and repayment periods. However, at least one small town has kicked out payday lenders via zoning laws. While this may not rate "big news" it is good news and caught my attention for this alone:

The sole proponent of amending the zoning was Randy Phelps, manager of the Advance America lending store in a nearby town. His company, whose Web site says it operates 2,800 stores nationwide, was seeking to open a cash advance store in a new strip shopping center, part of the town's new Wal-Mart complex.

"We're not evil people," Phelps protested to the council. "We provide a needed service."

"We're not evil people"…. Doesn't that give you chills? If pretending to hold a hand out in friendship while stabbing someone in the back with the other hand isn't evil I don't know what is. Of course, he could be oblivious to his own evil just like some other people.

I can't stand these companies that take advantage of a problem to make some money. Lifelock is that company where the CEO posted his Social Security Number with a challenge to take his identity (which someone promptly did). If you've been considering getting the service, wait. First realize what you're paying for.

If you were to go to their site and read through what they actually do, you'll find that you're not getting much for your money.

1. They place fraud alerts. The problem is, fraud alerts are worthless and do absolutely nothing to protect you from ID theft.
2. They renew the fraud alerts every 90 days. Note that this isn't actually a separate benefit, but they sure seemed to want to have six benefits to their service instead of just five.
3. They remove your name from pre-screened credit card offers. You can do it yourself, freely, and quickly at optoutprescreen.com. Also note that Lifelock fails to mention that this is a one time benefit and not something that you should be paying monthly for.
4. They order your credit reports once per year which is easy for them becuase they can use the free annual credit report you are due by law. The bad part here is that if you wanted to use the very clever advice of getting your report from one of the companies every four months so you can keep a semi-constant tab on your credit, you can't. Lifelock blew your free coupons all at once.
5. They'll keep a list of the companies you have credit cards and such with so you can quickly call them if your wallet is stolen. The FDIC has a great guide about how to do this yourself including the advice to carry a bare-minimum of cards and information and to make your own call-down list.
6. Lastly, insurance.

So to sum up, they give you useless fraud alerts and will renew said useless alerts on a regular basis. They'll order your federally mandated free credit reports for you saving you a whopping 20 minutes of time per year. They put you on a list that prevents many pre-screened offers which is a one-time 5 minute cost to them. They'll keep a list of all the companies you should contact if you lose your wallet though if you have so many to contact that it's that hard for you to do yourself, I'd be more concerned about the number of credit cards you have. And of course, they're an insurance provider.

When all is said and done, Lifelock is nothing more than credit theft insurance with little more benefit. And rather than pay a monthly fee for insurance, you are far better off getting a Credit Freeze which actually does protect against ID theft rather than just try to clean it up after the fact. Factor in that a freeze is a fraction of the cost of insurance (and free in some cases), Lifelock just doesn't have a leg to stand on.

Let's hope the hype dies down soon and we can watch Lifelock drift into business oblivion. The sooner the better.

Related topic(s):

The Credit Monitoring Ripoff
Bogus Lifelock Sites Litter the Web
Class Action Suit Against Lifelock
Lifelock Adds a REAL Service!?
Another Class Action Suit Against Lifelock

It should be no surprise to anyone that enterprising scumbags everywhere are using the hopes of the economic stimulus package to scam people out of their information.

"They're calling people on the phone and asking for their personal information, and the people are thinking they're going to get some money quicker than they normally would," Special Agent Jeff Lanza, spokesman with the FBI Bureau in Kansas City, told WDAF-TV.

Remember simple safety: don't give out information over the phone especially to someone who calls you.

Say what you want about Arnold, but there has been some really good laws and policies to come out of California since he became governor. Getting rid of payday loan scammers is another great ideal from the "Governator".

(H/T to Public Citizen for the link)

These guys are scum sucking theives. Don't give them your money.

And I'm not talking just about no-name place, I mean ALL of them. Do not use payday loans, tax refund anticipation loans, or anything similar.

My poor wife went to a website that I directed her to to buy something for me for Christmas. It turns out that website is a front where they take your money and give no product. If we had known about ResellerRatings.com, we'd have saved ourselves the hassle, but now we have to cancel the order and possibly get a new credit card issued.

Well, you can bet we'll be checking a site's rating before purchasing directly through a non-major site again.

Anyway, I'm ticked and I'm going to do everything I can to make life miserable for this slimeball. First I'm going to dispute the charges with my credit card and ask if they have any means of prosecution/persecution. Second, I'm going to try and get his hosting, domain name, and merchant accounts canceled (with no domain name, no hosting for his site, and no merchant account to take credit cards, I'm guessing it will be harder to scam people in the future). And, if I can, I'm going to see what agency is responsible for this kind of fraud and see what they can do about it.

I'll post updates here if I manage to get any of this accomplished.

Many gift cards (or parts of gift cards) go unused. Don't buy gift cards unless you consider the possible disadvantages first.

Consumeraffairs.com has an article today about extended warranties. With the way they present it, I wonder why anyone would ever buy one.

It turns out that I mostly agree with them. I sold extended warranties for a long time and I can guarantee that you'll get your money's worth in some specific cases, but unless you know your rights very well and push for them in the face of opposition from the store and the company, you probably will never recoup your costs.

If you don't have the tenacity to fight for your warranty terms, you're better off avoiding the expense.

The church is accused of being a criminal organization involved in extortion, fraud, unfair trading, violation of privacy laws, and unlawfully practicing medicine. Both the Belgian and the European branches of the church should be brought to court, according to the authorities.

Too bad our government is so corrupt that it can't stamp out stuff like this too. I mean, not only do we not prosecute them, we make them a legitimate religion? Crazy.

The German government considers Scientology a commercial enterprise that takes advantage of vulnerable people.

Duh.

Related topic(s):

http://www.clambake.org/

It turns out that Comcast thinks they have the right to control how someone uses the Internet. Bittorrents, often, but not always used to distribute copyrighted content is one of the types of filesharing that big nasty companies like the RIAA target. Whether in the spirit of cooperation with the RIAA or just to save a little money by preventing heavy Internet users from actually using the Internet, Comcast is throttling Bittorrent shares and actually blocking seeders (people who provide the content originally).

If this disgusts you, now is a good time to become a supporter of net neutrality.

I don't know how they get away with calling these non-profit. The Consumerist calculates that the interest being paid by their example case is still at 252%.

Whenever you get something like this, always go to the source, never respond to the e-mail.