Copyright Law: A Form of Identity Theft?

You work hard for the life you enjoy. You don’t seek sympathy, nor do you promiscuously extend it. Instead, you ask simply that you be given proper credit for the work you do, just as a stuntman wants proper credit for risking life and limb to make the picture’s star look courageous, or a scholar demands proper credit for advancing her field. Those who understand the name of the game know that giving and receiving due credit is more than simply stroking egos; it’s a form of industry protection. In an economy in which production is largely that of a creative, intellectual, immaterial sort, your professional identity rests on the competencies you bring to a project. Like anyone with skin in the game, you’re constanting monitoring your colleagues work for any theft of your ideas. Indeed, it’s no overstatement to say that in such a context, “borrowing” another’s creative effort amounts to fraud.

It’s probably the case, however, that the average person you’d have a hard time persuading that intellectual or creative “borrowing” without proper credit amounts to theft or fraud. The culture generally encourages such things; memes of “remixing” and “curating” permeate popular discourse, if in fact do not dominate it. It seems that the only ones monitoring such behavior are the publishing, recording, and film industries, which are keen to maintain strong copyright protection. This aggressive vigilance places then at daggers-drawn with the bulk of the populace, many of whom – particularly the under-30 set – have come to adopt, as a constituent of their personal identity, an ethos of liberal quoting, sampling, and other kinds of borrowing. These activities they regard as neither theft nor fraud, but as simply the available means of contemporary cultural expression.

So many-layered and intertextual has contemporary culture become (when not constrained by copyright protection) that concerns about theft or fraud seem laughably unfounded, because at work behind it is a notion that the creative act and its product are the sole province of the individual engaged in that act. The artist-as-creator identity is a deeply entrenched one, and goes a long way toward explaining why the publishing and recording industries insist on minutely monitoring the uses to which its output is put. To their way of thinking, the best forum for giving credit to their stable of talent is the cash nexus.

Monetary exchange strikes you as an extraordinarily anaemic way of voting for your favorite performers. Yet this is precisely how the publishing, film, and recording industries would have it. How else to explain not only their relentless monitoring of their products’ use, but also their tireless lobbying efforts to get their raft of legislation passed that would constrain end-users’ freedom even more than it currently is? In a very real sense, these assaults on your freedom to consume culture represent an assault on your identity. It may just be that you, the consumer, need more protection from the media industries than they need from you. ACTA, PIPA, SOPA – so sounds the devil’s tri-tone, the dissonant ascending scale that has darkness and bitterness, rather than sweetness and light, as it’s primary effect. So offensive are the terms of these proposed pieces of legislation that it leaves you wondering whether the media industry, pious fraud that it is, has wrapped itself in the mantle of market ethics in order to commit a greater theft than consumers could ever conceive – a theft of your liberty. You can certainly credit it with certain diabolical craftiness.

Liberty is as fragile as it is precious. Encroachment on it can come from any quarter. Protection from vile legislation proposed by media industries simply isn’t enough to ensure it. Monitoring situations with a view to establishing the danger you face and the identity of the malefactors involved is certainly one way of preserving it. You have to remember that in these wild, wired days of the Digital Age, fraud and theft can strike from just about anywhere. It’s to your credit that you’re able to recognize danger. But do you recognize the danger that comes with failing to carrying identity theft protection or credit monitoring? These are as real threats to your liberty (not to mention your happiness and peace of mind) as any copyright bill crafted in the halls of power.

Identity Theft Articles Keep You in the Know

identity theft articlesSeveral articles in your life you simply cannot do without. Perhaps it’s an iPhone or iPad. Maybe it’s not an Apple product at all, but a Blackberry or an Android device. Whatever that item is, it’s no doubt is a specialized piece of advanced technology. Such things are as vital to work and play as the hoe or fife were in ages past.

Would you be shocked to learn that, for all their 21st-century razzmatazz, these articles represent so many possible vectors for the intrusion of identity theft into your life? It’s true. Ask anyone practiced in the art of fraud (if you can indeed establish his identity as such), and he’ll no doubt credit the existence of these devices for his many successful crimes. The startling truth is that, whenever you should happen to do a little online banking via your device, you may not be the only one monitoring your finances. This news should have you scurrying for protection.

Yet where are you to find protection? You read every day online and in print advice on how to use this app for this and that app for that. You pay close attention to this advice, scrutinizing even prepositions and articles, and you have come to feel that you’re getting your money’s worth when it comes to using your smartphone. And though you credit yourself with being a smart, savvy electronics consumer, it may be that all along you’ve been monitoring the wrong headlines. You have staked your identity on too small a pelf. You should be as concerned with protection as you are with performance, because, as crimes go, theft and fraud is an equal opportunity destroyer, drawing no distinction between techies and know-nothings.

You fool yourself by thinking destruction of that sort will never visit you. More than just constituent of your identity, the reasons you give yourself to justify your confidence are so many articles of faith. It doesn’t take much, though, to wreck such confidence. And faith, once it’s shaken, is difficult to restore. You look to the object of your faith for protection. Perhaps you even credit it with having provided you protection without your even knowing it had done so. Maybe you believe it is monitoring your affairs and seeing to it that you suffer no harm. But the hard fact remains that theft and fraud do not partake of the ethereal. They only seem to – especially when they happen at a distance, as is so often the case in the Digital Age.

Yes, the Digital Age harbors perils aplenty – perils that are largely unseen, and thus doubly dangerous. Can you only look to yourself or your household saints for protection, or will you take it upon yourself to see that your finances benefit from sound monitoring? If you have answered “yes,” it’s entirely to your credit. In many respects, theft and fraud are quite protean. You could say they are like articles of clothing in that there’s one that fits every identity or occasion. Theft and fraud suited to smartphones, theft and fraud tailored to laptops – it really doesn’t matter, the device; cyber-crooks have put themselves in a position to capitalize on any lapse of security on any piece of technology.

Knowing that this is the situation, you’d be wise to direct your device to one of the many identity theft articles available on the Web. These articles will not only acquaint you with all the various forms of fraud and theft you can encounter online, they also allow you to determine for yourself the typical cyber-cook’s identity. It is having in mind an actual profile of such a malefactor that represents the important first step toward the protection of your finances, credit, and reputation. The second step – itself as important as the first – is to secure the services of a well-reviewed identity theft protection or credit monitoring provider. They offer added vigilance at a moment at which theft and fraud has grown ever more obscure. Keep yourself and your devices under the protection of these services should do more than simply secure your identity; they can offer you even more articles of faith in which to believe.

Savvy Credit Card Users Credit ID Theft Protection and Credit Monitoring with Keeping Them Safe from Fraud

credit cardRemember when you received your first credit card? Do you recall the thrill you felt when it finally arrived in the mail? Perhaps you had been on pins and needles for weeks, monitoring the arrival of the mail carrier to see when that white envelope (plain and unmarked for your protection from fraud, of course) would arrive. When it finally did arrive, you eagerly tore it open to access the precious contents within it. More than a mere card, it was to you to all the glories of the material world. With your new credit card you could set about consolidating and expanding your lifestyle and identity, while at the same time estblishing a credit rating, that all-important bit of reputational capital needed to partake of all the oh-so desirable big-ticket items that a globalized market has to offer. You offered it the best protection you could muster; to see others handle it filled you with dread of theft. You knew that at base this was a silly fear, but you couldn’t help feeling it.

The feeling that comes with gaining access to credit is a delicious one, indeed – especially if you had to weather adversity to get it. Always interested in your protection, your parents, who are generally well-intended as concerns their involvement in your affairs, may have nattered at you about the potential perils of pitfalls of credit card use. “Your purchases on your card need strict monitoring,” they might have warned you at one point, “because the interest stacks up pretty rapidly; and, before you know it, you end up paying twice the store price for the items you bought.” You may have come to learn that your parents fears are well-founded and extend well beyond that of any potential fraud or other expropriation of your identity. Interest and fees can have a distastrous effect on your personal finances. Once you’ve dug yourself out of the hole of credit card debt you got yourself in, you’ll wonder if you weren’t a victim of theft, after all

Equating compounding interest and capitalized fees with theft might seem like a bit of a stretch, but anyone has had to climb out of a deep credit card debt hole will tell you that the experience does leave you with that impression. It seems, then, that a lot of the monitoring of your purchases and finances should be devoted to establishing protection from yourself, that is, from your own impulses or worst buying habits. The possibilities for you to establish your identity in a consumer-driven world are practically infinite; your finances, sadly, are not so. You have to ask yourself to what extent buying on credit represents fraud on the part of your present self committed against future self. This question isn’t meant to pose you with a difficult philosophical problem on the nature of time or identity. Rather, it’s meant to serve the more practical end of giving you pause the next time you begin waving your credit card around too liberally.

Credit cards too liberally used are credit cards too quickly used up. The bills from the credit card companies begin stacking up around your ears. Soon the claims against your income – i.e., the amount of principle and interest owed – come to exceed the amount of income you can generate. You find yourself situated between a pile of purchased goods that, should you try to sell them, would exact a price lower than what you paid for them, and a mounting pile of zeroes that will keep adding up until doomsday. Because your credit is exhausted, monitoring your finances can do little for you. Where can you run for protection? Sanctuary from creditors is difficult to find. Your world begins to crumble. Your credit rating, which in many ways is more important than any other aspect of your identity (family name, eye color, height and weight) as far as commerce is concerned, lies in ruin. At this point, theft and fraud are distant dangers. You face the frustrating prospect of having to settle debt not easily discharged.

As frustrating as the prospect of settling huge credit card debt may be, you can console yourself with the knowledge that countless others have found themselves in your position, and have managed to put their affairs in order. Any cursory monitoring of news headliness or rss feeds quickly reveals many testimonials to the fact that credit card debt can be discharged, without having to resort to any desperate, if not outright felonious, measures, such as theft, fraud, or some other bit of criminal deception. The task isn’t easy, and it requires much perservance, fortitude, and self-denial – as well as a bit or common sense. Concerns as to your ego, lifestyle or identity will have to be put aside for a time. But once you have seen through the process of settling your debt, you can once again set about getting and spending, albeit doing so more wisely than you had in the past. Credit cards used sensibly can make for great ease and convenience.

Yet even if the danger of unserviceable debt has passed, you must realize that there continue to lurk the perils of fraud and theft. That’s why the identity you should inhabit, that of “smart credit card user,” requires not only disciplined monitoring of your spending habits and developing methods of protection from your own worst tendencies; it also requires that you purchase from a reputable provider sound identity theft protection or credit monitoring. Deploying such strategic assets in the war against fraud is to the credit of any credit card user wishing to keep his identity and finances within the pale of a very necessary form of protection for these wild, wired times.

Identity Theft Protection Reviews: Valuable Intelligence for Savvy Consumers

identity theftIn one sense, the Internet has proven to be a great blessing, because it contains vast amounts of information.

In another sense, the Internet have proven to be a tremendous curse, because it contains vast amounts of information.

Information without some way to organize it leaves that information lying about in a heap. You can’t help but think that at least part of the reason why folks would rather get their stuff from a department store than from the town dump has to do (issues of cleanliness aside) with the fact that its far easier to find things you’re looking for in the first than in the second. This is to say that we rely on information of one sort into order to deal with that of another. This first sort of information is evaluative in nature and consists of reviews, ratings, opinions, and so on.

Without reviews of various kinds it becomes tremendously difficult to navigate the Information Superhighway. Monitoring the superabundance of information on the ‘Net is daunting even for the cleverest digital native. We sometimes fail to give credit to these reviews for the necessary work they perform. Without reviews it is extraordinary difficult to establish the identity of quality goods and services on the market. Indeed, reviews offer the alert consumer a degree of protection from substandard, defective, and even dangerous items. Reviews also afford consumers from the fraud and theft that goes on everywhere in both cyber- and “meatspace.”

So reviews shield consumers from theft, fraud, and defective merchandise. But are these the only forms of protection they offer? That is, do reviews do more than simply allow consumers to ascertain the identity of this good or that, or do they do something more? Indeed, reviews prove indispensible when it comes to monitoring the consumer market for lemons and crap, but it is equally the case that they deserve credit for serving to strengthen certain ethical ties that make exchange possible, whether this exchange happens online or elsewhere.

Around sites that specialize in presenting reviews of various products often grow up virtual communities. Cynics would reason that these communities exist solely as means of a sort of wagon-circling, as the various members seek protection in numbers from theft, fraud, or worse crime. Paranoiacs might argue that these communities exist in order to foster a spirit of monitoring and surveillance of each member by other members, and be each member of him- or herself. Neither explanation seems satisfactory, however. What’s missing is the deep need felt be the members for a sort of group identity based on common interests, the bind force of which is – You guessed it! – the reviews that brought them to the site in the first place.

So if you’re the sort to credit reviews with the knowledge necessary for effectively monitoring your affairs and for protection against the worst kinds of fraud or theft, then you’re certainly the right sort of person to purchase identity theft protection or credit monitoring. Don’t just take anyone’s world for it, though – especially if you’re not sure of that person’s identity. An abundance of identity theft protection reviews (and reviews for credit monitoring) exist on the Web to help you to make an informed decision as to the risks you face and the benefits you stand to gain. The cultivation of a trustworthy identity is commendable in both individuals and groups, and how this cultivation is effected – whether through monitoring progress or seeking protection – is simply a means to an end.

The Virtues of ID Theft Protection and Credit Monitoring

You deserve a lot of credit for the many things you’ve manage to accomplish in your life. You never allow yourself to be caught flat-footed. You’re alway monitoring situations for any opportunity that might happen to present itself. Risky ventures don’t send you scurrying for protection. Quite the opposite: You meet new challenges head on, with fortitude to spare. The threat could be that of theft, fraud, or something more injurious. It doesn’t matter; you’ve staked your identity courage and unflagging optimism.

As qualities of identity go, courage and optimism are certainly good ones to have. It’s much to your credit, then, that you have been able to cultivate them. You also pride yourself on being an autonomous self-starter. This, you think, only goes with the territory. And others around you are pleased that you have cultivated yourself so. Your boss and co-workers, for instance, are no doubt happy that you get your work completed competently and punctually, with little need of monitoring. They come to feel that, with you on the case, their interests enjoy as much protection as they would were they themselves looking after them. You enjoy such a reputation for virtue that, were you to commit fraud or theft, say, your boss and co-workers would be as shocked as they would be had night suddenly turned to day.

Night and day you have labored to cultivate an identity as a brave, virtuous person. But you’re not so arrogant as to credit only yourself with your development in that direction. You realize that your parents have helped you to journey down that path. Their care, guidance, protection, and close monitoring of your behavior were as essential to your present identity as deception is to fraud, or misdirection is to theft. You’re quick to acknowledge their influence whenever others praise you for your good works, and esteem for you only increases as a consequence.

You really have to credit the wise men and women of old for their understanding that the right attitude brings the right sort of abundance, prosperity, comfort, and protection into your life. This is not to say that ill will never befall you. Crime could certainly come your way at any time. Fraud could visit you a few sleepless nights; theft could have you looking over your shoulder for weeks – and this despite any amount of cautious monitoring of your affairs. Yet, through it all, the fundamental constituents of your identity prove such a solid edifice that the worst assaults or outrages can do little to shake it.

It nonetheless remains the case, however, that you would like to shake ne’er-do-wells wherever and whenever possible. After all, you don’t stake your identity on any pretense to otherworldliness. When push comes to shove, you don’t seek the protection of heaven or solicit the monitoring faculties of saints. You rely on the lessons of experience. Whether you’re confronting theft, fraud, or some other crime, you credit your own mental faculties with the ability to discover the best remedy.

Sometimes remedy isn’t forthcoming. At such times caution and protection will have to suffice. Monitoring the Web for news of theft or fraud is one way to stay on top of developments. Ascertaining the identity of dangerous situations is another. It’d be to your credit, however, for you to discover other means of protecting your interests. Effective identity theft protection and credit monitoring are two such means, and they have proven effective time and again in helping customers to ward off the onslaught of the most determined fraudsters. Credit for your protection and the successful monitoring of your affairs against fraud and theft ought to rest solely with you, and ought to be as constituent of your identity as any other quality.

Your Lady Will Go Gaga Over the Latest Accessories for 2012

You can certainly credit trendspotters, tastemakers, and assorted fashionistas with one thing: When it comes to monitoring the ephemeral entrances and exits of various fads, they’re second to none. It’s no big secret that the U.S. economy has suffered something of an identity crisis over the past thirty or so years; protection in the form of policies and tariffs have largely disappeared, and with this the lion’s share of domestic industry. For those classes that relied directly on industrial production for their livelihood, this development they consider nothing short of a form of fraud or theft.

“Fraud” and “theft” are certainly strong words, but you can understand why the so-called wokring classes might want to use them. As the nation shifted from an industrial to a service economy. These once reasonably confortable working classes had the financial rug pulled out from beneath them. Feeling this assault poignantly, they gave credit where credit was due and apportioned blame as they saw fit. The villians they considered to be those of the classes over them, those whose standard of living and ability to consume appeared to have gone untouched during this period of upheaval (or what economists like to call “churn”). The affluent continued to live high on the hog, secure in the protection of Reagan-era policies that favored them, and, indeed, further enriched them. Grown resentful, the dispossessed working classes continued monitoring the headlines for evidence of any subsequent outrage, the identity of which they, as a consequence of being schooled by hard knocks, could establish immediately.

For their part, however, the affluent classes paid little heed to those classes seething beneath them. Instead, they applied themselves with increased attentiveness to stock tickers in order to discern which investments of their they could let ride, and which needed protection. About the only largesse falling to the quasi-pauperized working- and significantly reduced middle classes was the extension of easy consumer credit (the terms of which were perhaps not so easy). With this, getting and spending kicked into high gear, and an era of overheated consumption began. Given powerful new life also was “the brand.” The latter achieved new significance; it’s identity was everything. Only in this could profit be had, because in terms of use there was very little to distinguish a Toyota from a Mazda sedan, or a Polo from an Izod shirt. Brand wars engendered new lows of fraud, theft, and deception – not only of one company by another, but also of the public by all companies.

Fraud and theft rely crucially on deception, which is where the tastemakers come in. Water bearers for the cultural elite, trendspotters and marketing gurus served only to consolidate brand identity to the nth degree. And you really have to credit them for having done a tremendous job of it. Few places remain where you can find protection from the daily assault of advertisements and pitches. In the digital era especially do you feel as if marketers are monitoring your every move, waiting to discover something about your behavior that can help them to refine their pitch. And, indeed, precisely this sort of thing goes on every day.

If your identity is important to you (Whose isn’t?), then it deserves proper protection. You credit yourself with being a prudent, vigilant individual. And perhaps you are. The sad fact, though, is that such qualities aren’t enough to keep you safe, because the powers for monitoring your situation do not extend beyond your person and your immediate surroundings. In times of rampant cybercrime such as ours, theft and fraud can visit you from literally a world away.

More than any fad, fashion, or trend, then, identity theft protection and credit monitoring are vital necessities. The need for them defies any cycle or season, for crime springs eternal. If you would prefer not to see your finances and good credit “offshored,” you must take the appropriate action right away.

The Importance of Trust in Web Commerce

You deserve credit for being an astute and alert consumer. With more and more business conducted these days on the Web, monitoring your affairs has never been more important. Theft and fraud are merely two of the many dangers you face during your daily comings and goings on the information superhighway, but they are two of the greatest. Rendered unstable with the technological progress has been identity. Who we are, the image we present to the world, the digital “fingerprints” we leave as we make our cyberspatial rounds – these are some of the very things that can deprive us of the protection afforded us by our private lives in so-called “meatspace.”

It’s not as if “meatspace” lacks perils of its own, however – perils that summmon every bit as much effort at protection as do your dealings in the virtual realm. And, indeed, just as your neighborhood may need monitoring to make sure life in it remains safe and order, so too may virtual communities require such vigilance. Nonetheless, care alone cannot counteract the many risks you face. Sometimes you find yourself taking on faith the word of strangers, feeling compelled to credit them with intending to carry out their promises to you. The identity of situations will therefore never become completely knowable beforehand. What you might consider to be a gift might turn out to be an attempt at theft, a gesture of goodwill an act of fraud.

You’re heartened when you establish the fact that a gesture of goodwill was indeed made authentically. This of course makes it easier to credit the person who made the gesture with benign intention when it comes to future interactions. “He couldn’t possibly be interested in theft or fraud,” you think to yourself. You relax your guard, if only slightly. You conclude that future business with this individual may not demand as close monitoring as did your initial business. The identity of a well-intentioned person firmly established, you set about the rest of your activity with greater ease of mind, your anxiety about maintaining protection temporarily relieved.

Yet inevitably there will again come a time when protection is once again necessary. This may come in the form of a disciplined and steady monitoring of emerging situations – or it may come as something decidedly more forceful. As with so many things in life, however, a notion of proportionality must be operative when assessing a state of affairs for purposes of establishing its identity as concerns the relative risk it presents. Whether this risk is theft, fraud, or some sort of physical violence, to that individual who keeps his or her head much credit accrues. Over-reaction tends to do more harm than good, and it itself risks breeding new, even riskier states of affairs….

Such talk of risk may create the impression that protection is largely impossible. If something bad is going to happen, it’s going to happen. And no amount of monitoring will do anything to stop it. Theft is always an evil; fraud always a betrayal. The credit that is liquidated in the act is never to be recovered. It is the identity of foul actions as foul actions that makes all the difference when it to fostering protection for yourself and your interests.

A strong impulse toward protection must be tempered by an equally strong impulse toward trust. Trust is the bedrock of the credit you extend to others, and that others extend to you. In most cases, alert monitoring of develops provides enough insight into your best means of protection, whether it be against theft, fraud, or some other kind of crime.

Many consumers like you have grown to trust the services or reputable identity theft protection and credit monitoring providers. It’s no overstatement to say that such services are a vital necessity in an age when theft and fraud are frequent occurences. Only by trusting the right parties will you find adequate protection against the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Once you have done so, you’ll learn how others are able to sleep easy at night.

Take the Bite out of Fraud by Sinking Your Canines into ID Theft Protection

canineThe dog is man’s best friend. It sleeps beside its master, dreaming perhaps of ages past, when man and dog slept together in caves, both warmed by the fire. The dog looks to its master with benevolence. It follows him on his travels across land, whether he hike or jog, and wags its tail in joyful solidarity. The dog and man are one. As he runs, it runs; four legs are like two when they run with love.

The dog, it loves. It looks with eyes brown or blue and gazes at its master. Together they are one. Over thousands of years, across time and space, man and dog have come together in a symbiotic relationship. Is the dog the child of the man? Perhaps the man is the child of the dog. For the dog was first on this earth. When man was swinging in the trees, making his home among the leaves, the dog ran with buffalo and gazelle and looked to the stars. What did those stars look like to the dog? Bright, but colorless. Close, but distant. The dog does not dream of running among the stars, the dog does not know the star is not one with his tail and four legs. The dog only knows the wind and rain and the taste of meat fresh from the bone.

Of these things the dog dreams as it lies by its master. Master dreams too, but of things darker, more abstract. In his dreams, master does not feel. He only sees, only thinks with his mind, not his two legs or that vestige of a tail. Together they sleep, dog and man, and run together, but seperate, in their dreams.

Sometimes the relationship between man and dog turns sour. Dog distrusts man when dreams no longer are one. Dog sees man’s machines and distrusts man. He hears the cogs and the wheels. He feels the engine’s vibrations. Each morning he sees man climb into machine, when the sun crests over the horizon, dog sees man enter the machine, a machine that goes, and takes man away. This makes dog anxious, for the world is not the world that dog dreams each night, where bodies huddle together in dark, warm caves and the fire flickers shadows on the wall.

When the relationship between man and dog sours, dog sometimes bites man. Dog becomes vicious. Biting, tearing, chewing, rending – of this dog dreams. And sometimes his dreams become real, and he bites man. When this happens, dog ends up behind bars, behind a chain-link fence, or maybe in a cage. This is terrible, the cage. It is impenetrable, and dog misses man. For all dog wanted was man’s identity. By biting he becomes – or so he thought. He wanted to tear and wrest man from himself, he wanted to become man. Why?

Animal psychologist Higgin Blumentower wrote on the topic. “Sometimes a canine will become mad with desire for his master’s identity. He yearns to steal it – a sort of identity theft. Dog wants to become man, and he does not want to wait for evolution. Dog wants to steal man’s identity right now, without waiting. It wants to consume man, and by consuming man, become him. In recent years, dogs have become more aggressive. Attacks have increased across the Northern Hemisphere. Millions of dogs have decided to become men. But their brains, they are small, and lack insight. And so the dogs bite – they bite to become. What will come of this only time will tell.”

What will come of these dogs who try to steal men’s identities? We cannot say; it is too new, we have not yet adequately prepared for the canine takeover. Canine identity theft is one of the nation’s most pressing problems right now; one in ten masters have had their arm or leg bitten by a canine identity thief.

Don’t give in! Watch your dog. Be on the lookout for strange behavior. If the dog stare too often, or salivates excessively, understand this might herald the beginning of an attack on your identity.

Of course, you must also watch out for human identity thieves – but they are far easier to forfend against. Invest in one of the popular identity theft protection or credit monitoring services on the market. Watch your credit score. Guard your identity as you would your life. Because really, you only have one, and millions of dogs want it.

College Memories and the Threat of Identity Theft

college and identity theftWhile you were at university, you strove to make yourself dean’s list material. High grades you pursued with zeal; college credit you amassed with great diligence. Not a semester went by when you weren’t monitoring your grade point average for even the slightest fluctuation. Indeed, it’s safe to say that being a top student was a core element of your identity. You reacted to poor grades and unflattering professors’ comments with all the horror that most people show when they hear news of a murder or theft. Anything less than peak best academic performance left you feeling like a fraud. So driven were you that straight A’s was less a measure of perfection than a means of protection from your harshest judge – yourself.

The lengths to which you’d go to ensure such protection often exacted a steep price in terms of your personal life. Socializing you came to regard as a theft of your time that you could otherwise have devoted to more study. You came to see your college friends as guilty of a mild form of fraud. “They tore me away from my books just to gas on about nonsense?”, you’d often find yourself thinking. Of course, you weren’t so impatient with them as to fail to credit them with an ultimately virtuous impulse toward you. You felt as if they had been monitoring you and your habits, taking note of your extreme dedication to academic excellence. “You certainly correspond to the identity of someone hurtling towards premature burnout,” they’d remark to you seemingly in jest. You never knew, however, how to take this joke.

All joking aside, a discontent grew in you as the semesters wore on. Days turned into weeks, months, and years, and all your monitoring of your academic performance began to strike you as an empty, futile exercise. “The only one who would ever think I’m a fraud is me,” you found yourself thinking one day late in your senior year. Suddenly, all those evenings you spend with your friends, which you had regarded as a theft of your time, you now regarded as so many golden moments deserving protection from the onslaught of banalities whose identity is all too easily established – examinations, quizzes, and term papers. Those golden moments have since dropped below the horizon of the past. It is certainly to your credit that you came to this insight, but the sad fact remains that you came to it too late.

Too late to recapture the easy freedom of your college years it may be, but it is as yet too soon to retire. You survey the broad expanse of your productive middle years, keenly monitoring them for possibilities that, though perhaps not equivalent to the all-too-infrequent pleasures of your university days, do offer something of the joys you had denied yourself then. The real fraud seems to you now to have been the rigors of academic life itself. The greatest theft you experienced actually turns out to have been that of all the hours you logged in study and lecture. Now that you have established the true culprit’s identity, what’s left to you but to rue the very outcome whose protection you so strenuously sought to ensure. You look at your life and credit those who made the most of their college years with a certain instinctive wisdom that you apparently lacked.

Wisdom lies in recognizing past not only failures but also present risks. One such present risk is that of identity theft, one of the most common forms of fraud going on in the world today. Security from ID theft can be had by taking the appropriate action, which begins with purchasing identity theft protection or credit monitoring from a reputable service provider. Don’t allow yourself to get so lost in memories of opportunities lost that you fail to consider the present state of your credit and finances.

The Vital Necessity for “Situation Awareness” in the Digital Age

Your family and friends credit you with great judgment and discernment in life matters. Whether it comes to managing egos, monitoring behavior, or providing protection, the people around you have come to count on you.

And you’re all to happy to be counted on; being a “go to” guy or gal is as much a part of your identity as your surname and eye color. You worry sometimes that deep down you lack what it takes to be a leader. You fear that others will show you to be a fraud. All it takes is that one high-profile slip-up, and you find yourself as naked and exposed as if you had had the theft of the clothes on your body happen to you.

Admittedly, this theft-of-your-clothes simile might state the matter too strongly, but it doesn’t make the fear of being exposed as a fraud any less real. From such fear you understandably seek protection. After all, there’s nothing less at stake than your identity. It takes a real knack for monitoring situations for potential threats to your reputation – threats that could seriously diminish other people’s willingness to credit you with competence, smarts, and discretion.

The military has a term for the sort of monitoring you find yourself doing every day – “situation awareness.” Credit for the best definition of this term goes to Wikipedia. “Situation awareness is the perception of environmental elements with respect to time and/or space, the comprehension of their meaning, and the projection of their status after some variable has changed, such as time,” the entry on the subject reads. “It is also a field of study concerned with perception of the environment critical to decision-makers in complex, dynamic areas from aviation, air traffic control, power plant operations, military command and control, and emergency services such as fire fighting and policing; to more ordinary but nevertheless complex tasks such as driving an automobile or bicycle.”

You can appreciate that to some degree or another you are also a decision-maker moving about in a dynamic environment, whether you’re moving about in “meatspace” or cyberspace. Everywhere in the latter, fraud lurks, just as the potential for theft permeates the former. One of the chief virtues, then, of highly developed situation awareness is the ability to quickly establish the identity of potentially dangerous elements in either type of environment.

The identity of dangerous elements, once established, equips you with knowledge that allows you implement strategies for enhancing the well-being of yourself and your neighbors. Differentiating fraud from fact is simply one expression of highly developed situation awareness. You look across the street and observe a shifty-eyed character entering a bodega. As he passes inside you see him reach into his jacket. You suspect that a crime – theft, perhaps, or possibly something worse – and so you spring into action. You rush to contact the authorities, who, thanks to your decisiveness, arrive on the scene in time to thwart the would-be felon. The shopkeepers and various onlookers, understanding that which had just transpired, credit you with the protection of property and persons. You’re everyone’s hero – at least for that day.

And “hero” is an identity anyone would no doubt be pleased to enjoy. Credit and adulation are intoxicating to such an extreme degree that against their irresistable efflux you find there is no protection. Nor would you even want to protect yourself from it. Lingering in your mind is the fear that deep down you’re a fraud, and perhaps this fear leads you to be on guard against any potential theft of your good name. Yet the real danger of such a spirit of hypervigilance is a tendency toward monitoring situations a little too closely or frequently. As with many other things in life, the individual who’s highly adept at situation awareness knows when to apply it and when to relax it.

It may be, however, that the time to relax your situation awareness has not yet arrived. Conditions in your life – finances, credit standing, professional reputation – continue to require monitoring, because nothing less than the protection of your livelihood depends on it. In an age when anyone can be Googled as a means of gathering intelligence, identity is everything. Any individual suspected of being a fraud is quickly revealed as such in this wild, wired age. If you’re guilty of theft, for example, you can count on your crime being rather quickly made public knowledge. It’s best for you and your loved ones that you stay on the straight and narrow.

The sad fact is, however, that a great many individuals fall off the straight and narrow. Pinched by necessity, they turn to such crimes as theft and fraud to get for themselves the things they want and need. Identity theft is one of the world’s fastest growing crimes. This is why you need to purchase trusted, effective identity theft protection or credit monitoring. These represent your first line of defense against the many crooks working everywhere to victimize you, a law-abiding, hard-working, tax-paying citizen.

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