Damn those Scams

NPR apparently did a story this morning about online privacy and while this was happening, I got visited by someone at NPR.org. I can only assume that Steve Inskeep was listening to the story and decided to google himself. All the while, I was listening to the story and was wondering how easy it was to get someone’s information and use it for evil purposes. Within the 5 minute story, I was able to dig around, find out how old Steve Inskeep was, where he lived, how much he paid for his house, when he bought it, and how much it was going to be worth in 2007 (triple its value).

NPR finally covered what was floating around the net for a few months, how to stop waiting 20 minutes before talking to a live person when you call customer service for most large corporations. For example, you have a problem with your credit card and you call American Express, only to be prompted to type in your card number, press 1 for english, etc. Or your cellphone service has a billing mistake and you try to call Cingular only to be rerouted to their automated answering system. Its funny to hear Steve Inskeep from Morning Edition, a usually pretty muted guy, get so excited to learn how to skip all the annoyances when calling AppleCare.

Strangely enough, NPR doesn’t actually link the list on their website, so here it is in all its glory.