Even in the best financial times, knowing your credit score and what’s in your credit report is sound practice. Unfortunately, the three credit reporting bureaus make it just about impossible to attain your credit information, especially if you’re a young, mobile individual: the type of person who most needs to know their credit history.

The Bureaus and “Free” Reports

There are three major credit reporting bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion (occasionally Innovis will be mentioned as a fourth.) Each is a for-profit company: though the main goal is to provide credit information to the “real” customers (banks, rental companies, service providers, and others wishing to extend lines of credit to their customers),  the idea is to move as many paid-for consumer credit reports as possible. Though each is legally obligated to provide an annual credit report, all three never advertise this service. Instead, the credit bureaus push the pay-services, such as freecreditreport.com, and then attempt to upsell you with “maximum protection” packages.

To explicitly state it: freecreditreport.com does provide a free credit report, at no charge to the customer’s credit card. After seven days, however, the company begins a $14.95 per month “monitoring” service. Quoted from the FAQ:

Triple Advantage monitors all three of your national credit reports from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion. You will be notified of several important changes to any of your credit reports with email and, if you choose, SMS Mobile Text messaging alerts. You’ll know about new derogatory information, recent inquiries into your credit, and several indicators of possible Identity Theft. Remember, Triple Advantage members also receive unlimited copies of their Experian Credit Report and PLUS Score after the trial period.

Keep in mind that a credit score, credit history, and credit report can all mean different things. The most useful and valuable information is your credit history, since it influences the information that makes up your FICO score. Your history can be disputed and corrected with your work. The credit score is simply a mechanized weighted average of the different pieces of your credit history. Combined, these are called your “credit report”, but Experian, and eventually the other agencies, will provide a number based on a proprietary algorithm. Try and get your FICO score if possible: this is, by far, the standard used in determining credit worthiness.

Do you need programs like Triple Advantage? I don’t know, I suppose that’s a question of if the system works as Experian and the others want you to believe it does. I haven’t heard enough information one way or the other, but fortunately, if that $14.95 a month seems to pricey, there’s a different, cheaper and arguably better way to keep your credit safe.

Credit Information On Ice

The best way to protect against your credit being used for someone else is a freeze. A freeze works by preventing anyone, including you, from getting your credit history or score. Different states have different guidelines and rules, but most involve a fee per freeze creation, temporary lift (while you seek credit from a lender) and removal. In Massachusetts, the fee is $5 for each of these, or free if you’ve been a victim of identity theft. You’ll need to set up a freeze with each bureau: they don’t carry over.

The most taxing part of the freeze process is the lead time you’ll need to take into account when you apply for new credit. Plan on at least three to five days to lift the freeze, and notify the agencies which creditor(s) will be looking at your account. Having a freeze does not adversely affect your score, and as far as I can tell, it won’t hurt if you accidentally provide the wrong name for a creditor.

Proving you’re you

Anyone who has attempted to retrieve their personal credit history online has undoubtedly run across this sort of question (paraphrased here):

“Our records indicate that in November 1998, you may have opened a home mortgage account. Which bank did you open this with. If none of the options are applicable to you, or you do not pay mortgage payments, please select NONE OF THE ABOVE.

A) SMTH BRNY SAV & LOAN B) CRESTMARK BANK C) FIRESTAR BANK D) CITI BANK E) NONE OF THE ABOVE”

The credit bureaus claim that this information should only be known to you. The reality is that this question is scary, counter-intuitive, and poorly designed, and probably doesn’t go as far to “protect” you as the credit agencies want you to think.

For starters, there have been a plethora of mergers in the banking sector in the last five to ten years. Smith Barney? Now a part of Citigroup. Which do you pick? And that’s assuming you’re not being “tricked”. I obviously don’t (though I wish I did) have a mortgage payment, but what if someone stole my identity? I can’t answer accurately if I don’t have all of my information meticulously organized, and even then, the very thing I’m trying to prevent could cause me to be locked out of their system.

Keep your financial information together, and know your accounts and history as far back as you can go. The system, terrible as it is, is the one we’ve got right now, so when you face a question like the one above, having your stuff together will really make a difference.

Speaking from experience

Suck it up, invest some time (but not money) into getting copies of your credit report. You can put the burden on the credit bureau and write to them (information on http://www.annualcreditreport.com) providing some personal information such as current and past addresses, as well as your social security number. Unless you’ve been a recent victim of identity theft, don’t waste money on credit-monitoring, and even then, look into alternatives, like credit freezes. Shred your personal financial documents when no longer needed, and never give or leave out personal identifying information like your social security number. Ideally, you shouldn’t carry your SSN in your purse or wallet. Memorize the number, don’t write it down or store it in your cell phone, and keep your original card under lock and key.

You owe it to yourself to spend the next 4 minutes or so watching this clip. Photographer Robbie Cooper has a series of video captures (beautifully lit, I might add) of kids and young teens playing video games. Titled “Immersion”, one possible way to interpret the video is a damnation of the incredible magnetism of violent, borderline pornographic realistic video-games out today, and more importantly, the impact such immersion has on today’s youth. There are some particularly chilling, almost scary, clips, but the one that drove it home for me was the wide-eyed youngster in the Nike uni… no flinching from that one.

Link and vid from Geekologie

I came home late last night after spending an evening with a friend having dinner and, as always, checked my e-mail (one habit I’ll never break.):

“i find reddit to pose a quandary for myself also.

i dont have time or patience to dig around individually strenuously enough to at least be marginally aware of whats happening. to my perception the country i call home is experiencing a horrible meltdown and i dont trust the MSM. without reddit, yeah okay i would be Less Angsty but i would also be in Denial. a sheeple, much as i hate the expression.

how the hell are you going to inform yourself given the current sociopolitical climate, absent some kind of social news? who the hell do u trust?

sorry to sound angsty.”

Somebody responded to my article. Somebody I didn’t know. Somebody that wasn’t my mom. It’s a rare occurrence, so I responded to the e-mail with:

Ah yes, the “once you’ve seen our problems, you can’t unsee them” issue. I don’t implicitly trust the mainstream media, though I do find some sources more trustworthy than others, namely NPR and the New York Times: both currently appear unwilling to sacrifice the credibility they’ve earned for extra dollars in the bank. You have to remember that all news reporting, by its nature, is biased: unless it happens in your backyard (literally), by the time it gets to you, it’s gone through at least one reporter’s hands.

During the Revolutionary War, General Washington had several spies stationed in New York and at various strategic points in Long Island. Unlike his British counterparts, which favored using the material gleaned by the spies deemed most “trustworthy”, Washington laboriously cross-referenced the reports from ALL his spies, no matter his personal thoughts on them. It’s a subtle difference, but in a couple of cases, it was enough for Washington to have enough information to eke out a victory during battle.

To borrow a page from Washington, find as many divergent sources as you can: Reuters, NPR, BBC, the NRO, the Atlantic Monthly, Mother Jones, Reason Magazine, the opinion pages of the big dailies (NYTimes, Wall Street Journal, the Chicago Tribune, Boston Globe and LA Times). Each of these is a reputable news or current affairs magazine, some centrist in presentation, others on the ends of the spectrum. Contrary to popular reddit belief, you can type dailykos into Google and skip the reddit self-fawning. You can also try some conservative/libertarian blogs. Invest in a free RSS reader: paying a little now in setup time reaps dividends quickly. Everything that’s not a cited fact or a quote can get tossed out: it’s garbage. Keep the facts and quotes and check them against each other.

Remember that the printed word is the most concentrated and effective form of communication man currently has in his arsenal. The printed word, unlike the digital or the spoken, stands for all time, and is checked and rechecked by well-established hierarchies, all of which have their bacon on the line. A printed word is worth twice as much as its online or television counterpart. Trade having it “now” in favor of having it correct tomorrow.

I make it a point to spend the 30-45 minutes I used each day on reddit reading something elsewhere: maybe it’s a piece of nonfiction in book form, maybe it’s a newspaper, maybe it’s my blogroll.

But I’m not out to destroy reddit or social news: if you think it’s the best out there and you can’t do better yourself, or don’t have time to, don’t give up on it. Reddit is obviously better than nothing. Just remember the points I made in the original post: all cops aren’t bad, all corporations aren’t evil, and being trusting and courteous without being naive can go a long, long way. Speak out in the community, punish the “vote up”ers (your blue down arrow is a powerful beast), and keep an open mind.

Good luck out there. It’s incredibly lucky that I checked my e-mail and responded before I checked my website statistics.

I’ll be honest: my first thought was that StatCounter had seriously fucked up. I also thought that somebody had used my site to test their RSS feed reader and was hammering on it. Then the sweet, delicious irony hit me. All I can say is that: I didn’t post it. I posted under JoeCollege. I have no blood karma from this. (Feel free to post this to reddit if you must.)

After spending two hours last night e-mailing my web host, being wholly unprepared for having more people visit my site in a given second than I’m used to as a daily total, I’m a bit overwhelmed.

But while I’ve no doubt there are dozens of comments on reddit.com about this article, with a wide range of thoughts and styles, I can say that I am in awe of those of you that took the time to respond to the post either in the comments or via e-mail. Many of you were motivational, most of you were well-written, even in disagreement, and all of you were insightful. Truth be told, I still get goosebumps when I read: “You inspire me.” “I want to quit too.” “How well-put. This is exactly what I was feeling.”

I didn’t set out to inspire people, of course. I’m an engineer who wears a silly hat. I wrote to my personal blog about my frustrations with the lacuna between reddit and reality, and my experiences with it. Your mileage may very vary. You may favor Ron Paul and LOLcats. I don’t blame you: they’re interesting and fascinating, and I’m glad they have a part in the human condition. But I confess, in hope and inspiration taken, hope and inspiration is given. The comments and e-mails have made me more resolute in my decision to leave.

I’m not setting out to convert the world: stay with reddit if you think it’s the best you can do in the time you’ve got. Don’t sacrifice some information with noise to get none of either. Work on your filter, use the down arrow with passion.

But maybe you, like me, think you can do better than reddit. Maybe you can disconnect from the Web and engage friends, family, and coworkers. Maybe you live in a large city with seminars, book discussions and coffee talks. Maybe you live in a small town and the Internet is the escape from unpersonable, uncultured, uneducated neighbors. But read, think, and speak for yourself and never blindly accept what is presented to you. The single greatest thing I learned from reddit was to question everything and when the community discussions were at their best were when we were doing just that. Utill that reddit returns, I won’t.

That said, someone please e-mail me if we attack Iran.

I’ve been a reddit user since the early days: I lived through the multiple influxes of users from the much larger (and hence, by the theory of Internet audiences, more juvenile) digg. I lamented the death of the “good article”, the gradual replacement of interesting science and programming content on the frontpage for LOLcats and pictures from Russia. I survived the still-smoldering diatribes on Bush and that fresh minty wonderment of Ron Paul (the man it seems who can do no wrong). None of these were my source of frustration. I’m wholly aware that the “real” Internet is by and large a libertarian community: a free society of free thinkers who feel it should be kept free. It’s abhorrent to hear of police brutality, unfair business practices, and animal abusing Marines. In a sense, I’m glad that there’s a place where these problems appear front and center and are discussed, albeit somewhat sophomorically. Any discussion of a society’s consternations has value.

In openness, two articles I’ve submitted were found interesting enough by the reddit community to appear on the front page: one from the New Yorker called “We are all Larry David” (about how patients in therapy sympathize with the wince-worthy HBO character) and one called “The Man who Unboiled an Egg” from the Observer. Both are verbose, eccentric articles: I found them fascinating and submitted them. Overall, though, my ratio is poor: I’ve submitted other articles more for kicks, in an attempt to get a feel for what sticks with the community. And, in shame, I admit that I’ve submitted no less than three articles from this very blog. None gained any traction (in retrospect, that’s for the best.) I tell you this because I’m not one of those people who quit a community because they feel they’re not being heard. I was heard. I had one-liners and discussions, and reddit, until recently, served me well as an information and entertainment portal.

Reddit, however, has two major problems. One is that it’s very, very good at sucking you in. Any idle minute at my computer found me typing in www.re and selecting the first entry from the FireFox dropdown. Reddit sucks down those five/ten minute blocks in between tasks, then expands to fill the available space. I grew to rely on reddit: feeling uninformed if I didn’t visit at least once or twice a day. Nothing was equal to reddit: digg, the mainstream press, even rolling your own bloglist. I was a Reddit junkie. It eventually dawned on me that Reddit causes the problem it aims to eliminate: getting your information from only one point narrows your worldview.

A great thinker can analyze, critique, and respect a valid argument, and ultimately choose to reject it based on logic. But in order to become a great thinker, one needs to see a plethora of arguments for this process to reach maximal efficiency. Reddit, nor any community big or small, cannot do all the work of presenting arguments for validation: ultimately, any community collapses to the least common demoniator. I found myself blindly accepting those tales of police brutality, unfair business practices, and animal abusing Marines as representative of the whole. The reality painted by Reddit and the actuality of the real world are as opposite as fire and ice, but when you spend the majority of your time in the virtual world and not in the real one, which are you more likely to believe? Fortunately, some real world time gave me the following: I accidentally jaywalked in front of a cop and NOTHING HAPPENED. I bought a video game from Best Buy, set off the electronic sensor on my way out, and the security supervisor WAVED ME THROUGH. My belt set off the metal detector and when I apologized, the TSA representative said it HAPPENS ALL THE TIME. But after spending 20 minutes on Reddit, I’d be pissed as hell at cops, corporations, and corporals. (Sure, you could argue that if any one of these had ended differently, taken to some version of the back room and deprived of rights and freedom, this would be a different post. And I’d agree with you. The point is not that these things never happen, but that these things happen more rarely than Reddit would lead you to believe.)

The other problem is the Reddit community by and large likes to be the show, rather than see the show. Stories on Reddit come with comments, both in the form of editorialized headlines and in threaded conversations on reddit’s site. Additionally, Reddit allows (and I’d argue encourages) “self” posting, in which there’s no story, just a conversation. Some of these are interesting, others hilarious, but most are just venting and ad-hoc emotional votes. Here’s three of the latter type (from recent memory):

“Vote up if you don’t give a flying fuck about the Oscars.” “Vote up if you’re not watching the Super Bowl.” “Vote up if you think BUSH and CHENEY should be IMPEACHED!”

All three of these, if memory serves me correctly, were at or near the top of the front page. Maybe I’m not the audience: I watched the Oscars and the Super Bowl, and I’d think it’d be a major destabilization to an already shaky economy to remove the President from power or even force the administration to think about preparing a defense. (Granted, I’m not sold on that last one.) These “votes”, just as unscientific and uninteresting as the Ron Paul debate spamming polls, consistently get voted up to the top. Talking about the news is one thing, seeking confirmation that, indeed, other members of the community have the same ideologies as you is entirely something else. Ultimately, these were what drove me away; if the cream of an organization’s output is that we should “chimpeach the chimperor” instead of have a debate about the merits and shortcomings of the current administration, then what can you possibly learn by staying in that community?

So I’m done. I’ve blocked reddit at work (by routing the URL to the loopback address) and at home (by blocking it at the router). I’ve been gone for a week and already, I feel less angsty. Don’t get me wrong, the first 48 hours were hell: withdrawl sucks. But I can already feel the mindrot receeding. I’m not going to bitch about it at reddit, because I don’t feel the community wants to change.

I, however, do.

Technorati Tags: Reddit, addiction, Ron Paul

Every so often, however, I’ll get a form e-mail response: I’ve gotten multiple ones from MySpace.com thanking me for signing up for their service. This morning I got one from CCBC, the Community College of Baltimore County (had to look it up). I usually scratch my head: there’s no f’ing way I’d sign up for MySpace, and CCBC would probably be a step down for me academically, not to mention a hell of a commute. Doing some digging usually yields that someone signed up for a form or online service, using joecollege at gmail.

Um, hello? Why the hell would you do this? Taking the time to sign up for something like Myspace, just so I go and delete it, is absolutely ridiculous. It’s a waste of my time and yours as well. You don’t get anything out of it: even on Myspace, I get your password e-mailed to me and go and delete your account. I have the key to the box that contains the key to your box, and I can change your key without your knowledge.

Here’s an example: the CCBC form responses were mailed to me.

Form: askanadvisor

1. First Name: Joe
2. Last Name: College
3. Your E-Mail Address: (e-mail removed by me)
4. Verify Email address: (e-mail removed by me)
5. Phone Number:
6. Status at CCBC: Prospective Student
7. Credit or Continuing Education Student: Credit
8. Major or Program of Study:
9. Purpose for Attending CCBC: Associates Degree
10. Type of Question: Selecting a major
11. CCBC Campus attending: Catonsville
12. Question that you would like to have answered by an academic advisor. (Be as specific as possible): <blank>

Here are the fathomable possibilities:

1) Some jerk developer is testing his own website code skills. Solution: don’t be an idiot, use your own e-mail address. How can you test the form submissions if you use a “fake” address?

2) Somebody felt like submitting a form for shits and giggles. Clearly this person gets excited clicking submit buttons. Here’s my solution: form-submission computations. If you really feel like submitting a form, just for the hell of it, go to such and such website, fill out the form, and once you submit, we’ll borrow your computer for 15 seconds and do some number-crunching for cancer or something for the greater good.

Actually, why aren’t we doing this already everywhere? It’s like reCAPTCHA but on a form-submission level. If you’re going to legitimately sign up for something, 10 seconds won’t hurt. It makes it prohibitively expensive for multiple spam submissions, and it’s for the benefit of humanity. Time delay is less of a usability flaw than a litmus test on a confusing looking graphic. If you’re upfront with the form and say it will take 10-15 seconds, so much the better, since real people will wait. The actual data from the form is inserted into the database at the end of the time period, of course, forcing spambots to wait the whole time.

Hmm… Thoughts?

*My personal bacn filter is to move anything with the word unsubscribe in it (among others). It’s not perfect, but since I check the bacn folder often (at a subject line level) I don’t miss much.

Not a big deal, but I finally got around to changing my del.icio.us username to adamjcollege from joecollege. This is part of a larger strategy of offline RSS reading and tagging, instead of using Google Reader. No particular reason for this except that I happen to like niceness of Vienna. Full featured, acts like Mail.app, and I feel more in control. And it’s Applescriptable, but more on that later.

I’ve combined Vienna with Pukka, a really neat dock app that allows quick posting to del.icio.us. It’s not free, but I’ll probably spring for a license when my free trial is up.

I’ll be changing the section of the main page that shows link snippets from Google-based to del.icio.us-based soon.

Technorati Tags: Vienna, del.icio.us, Pukka

Listening was an entirely different matter: NPR provided Windows Media and Real Player formats, but Windows would get clunked down in codec hell and Real Player would hang for at least 45 seconds before each clip.

Fortunately, NPR now has a really slick web-based media player, with the critical playlist functionality. I can finally queue up some clips and go about my morning, listening to the news the way it’s meant to be heard.

Technorati Tags: NPR, media player