While in a local coffee shop waiting to meet a friend recently, a group of people nearby was engaged in a conversation. Now I don’t make it a habit to eavesdrop, but they were so loud you couldn’t help overhearing them. And they clearly weren’t overly concerned that virtually everyone inside was within earshot.
I was especially interested because their conversation was financial in nature. Frankly, it took all my willpower to sit still and keep my mouth shut.
Their conversation reminded me that too many people are simply not paying attention to financial details the way I believe they should. In other words, when it comes to financial matters, it’s important that you pay attention to more than just the large print.
One animated gentleman complained that taxes must have been increased in 2010 because his refund was going to be much smaller this year than last year. I obviously didn’t know his personal tax information, but my guess is that he totally forgot what happened to payroll withholdings earlier in 2010.
They were adjusted lower in an attempt to get dollars into consumers’ hands sooner, with the hopes that additional dollars in the pocketbook would help jumpstart the economy.
Other than that and the Roth IRA conversion option, the income tax code had no real significant changes last year. I have a feeling a lot of people will be surprised when their tax refund this year is smaller than in years past. More than likely, the reason is they took more money home every pay period.
Automobile leasing was the other financial topic discussed. I was alarmed at the lack of understanding about how it works. Everyone wants our auto industry to thrive, but I think you need to understand all terms and responsibilities, whether you buy or lease.
Because leasing is generally more complex than buying and because it’s estimated that nearly 20 percent of new autos driven off the lot this year will be leases, it’s especially important to understand leasing terms.
The good news is that financing is beginning to loosen up. But that doesn’t mean you should run out and get it just because you can.
In the coffee shop, the patrons were describing leases as purchases that ended on a predetermined date. In reality, leasing is simply renting a car for a specified period of time, with certain limitations.
For example, a vehicle may be advertised as $199 for 36 months. But as anyone who has ever leased a car knows, there are penalties for things like damage and excess mileage.
In the past, many lease prices were based on 12,000 miles per year. These days, many of them are based on 10,500 miles per year.
So, what does it matter? Well, typically, there’s a 15 cents per mile charge for excess mileage.
If you drove 12,000 miles a year for 3 years, there would be 4,500 excess miles. At 15 cents per mile, you’d be charged an extra $675 at the end of the lease. That’s why understanding all the terms and conditions is so critical.
So in the future, control your speaking volume at the coffee shop or any public place. And make a commitment to be smart about your finances. That means carefully scrutinize all the fine print and details.
Fax your questions to Ken Morris at 248-952-1848 or e-mail to ken [dot] morris [at] investfinancial [dot] com. Ken is a registered representative of INVEST Financial, member FINRA, SIPC and is Vice-President of the Society for Lifetime Planning in Troy.
It’s hard to imagine, but roughly 10 years ago as VoIP was being rolled out corporate networkers were quite concerned about the security of VoIP. As we faced a move from voice going over a traditional (and, by the way, unencrypted) network, there was concern
that VoIP would be much too easy to eavesdrop on – especially if it traversed the Internet.
We’ll leave the question of whether “legal intercepts” as a political and civil liberty question. Indeed, virtually any “good” technology can also have a dark side. Nevertheless,
“wiretaps” have been a part of voice communications essentially forever. Sometimes for the good of all. Sometimes not.
And “tapping” a traditional voice call, whether in analog or digital (PCM) format is trivial. Additionally, as discussed in
an excellent interview, “Web Wiretaps Raise Security, Privacy Concerns” on All Things Considered, as cellular technology was rolled out, there were provisions made for “lawful intercept.”
The issue that was discussed by FBI General Counsel Valerie Caproni is that with VoIP solutions – and Web-based VoIP in particular
– the individual conversations can be quite difficult to intercept and decode. Further, while at one time Internet-based voice
conversations were largely limited to “major” applications like Skype, there is rapid and widespread proliferation of “voice chat” capabilities. For instance, you can do a voice chat,
a video chat, or even call an external phone from Gmail. And this only covers voice-like capabilities, and doesn’t include
other messaging.
Interestingly, and in a move that makes sense, the government is not specifying exactly which services need to be modified
so that they can be more easily modified. As pointed out in the above-referenced interview, if the systems that were difficult
to monitor were identified, then this would make it obvious which ones could be best used for less-than-honorable purposes.
The implications for this for the corporate enterprise network are yet to be identified since we’re just on the leading edge
of the issue. But it is clear that we’ve come a long way from the days when VoIP was a “toy.” And the fact that it’s “just
another application” is making the task of lawful intercept even more difficult.
Steve Taylor is president of Distributed Networking Associates and publisher/editor-in-chief of Webtorials. Jim Metzler is vice president of Ashton, Metzler Associates.
CLEVELAND – The threat of foreign espionage seemingly disappeared with the Cold War. But there is a new spy game in town.
“Now you’re talking about economic espionage and that is one of the biggest threats to national security that we have,” said Brad Beman, head of the counter intelligence unit for the Cleveland branch of the FBI.
Beman warns that today’s spies are just as interested in the office computer as government secrets.
“Other countries that are not necessarily friendly to the United States are gaining out technology and gaining an edge potentially over us,” Beman said.
Some of the most dangerous spies don’t work for foreign governments, but for local companies. Employees motivated by revenge, money or patriotism are betraying company secrets, according to the FBI.
At Lubrizol in Brecksville, a disgruntled employee, Kyung Kim, sold trade secrets to a competitor in his native South Korea two years ago in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Another South Korean native, Kue Sang Chun, a former researcher at NASA Glenn, has admitted to using his credentials to acquire high tech infrared technology for another company to send to a company in his homeland.
Eric Vanderburg, an expert in information security at JurInnov, a Cleveland company that investigates corporate espionage, said theft of trade secrets is a more significant in Cleveland than most realize and happens more often than companies care to admit. Some foreign and domestic companies looking for an edge over the competition hire social engineers.
“A social engineer is a person who’s going to use persuasion to get you to divulge information or perform some action for them,” Vanderburg said.
Social engineers scour the Internet looking for someone to manipulate or even blackmail into divulging company secrets, making the coworker in the next cubicle or the neighbor next door a spy. But local companies aren’t the only targets of economic espionage.
“A lot of our research’s conducted at the university level and it’s unclassified research, which means that it’s much less protected and it’s easier for people to get access to it,” Beman said.
Copyright 2011 Scripps Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
The deepening riddle over a break-in allegedly involving South Korean intelligence officials presents diplomatic embarrassment to the country and threatens to foil its attempt to seal an export deal.
It was reported earlier this week that three unidentified people who broke into a hotel room of visiting Indonesian presidential envoys last week were actually officials at South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS).
The intruders intruded into the hotel room in downtown Seoul in an apparent attempt to steal laptops and fled after being walked in on by a member of the Indonesian delegation.
The Indonesian delegation, led by Indonesia’s coordinating economic minister Hatta Rajasa, was visiting Seoul last week at the invitation of President Lee Myung-bak. The delegates, six of whom are ministerial-level officials, asked for support of the South Korean government and local firms for their major economic projects.
Lee pledged the country’s active participation in the Indonesia Economic Development Corridors (IEDCs), mostly focused on developing Indonesian industries and building infrastructure, saying he will seek a reciprocal, “win-win cooperation strategy.”
The attempted theft, however, presented an unexpected hurdle in the growing rapport between South Korea and Indonesia, with the NIS becoming a lightning rod for criticism for what appears to be its bungled intelligence project.
The agency also has become something of a laughing stock — the three intruders, if they were indeed NIS officials, were far from professionals. Police have said the suspects returned to the room to give back the laptops, and were filmed by a CCTV camera at the hotel.
The NIS has a history of causing a diplomatic row for its activities. Espionage attempts of a South Korean official based in Libya upset Libyan officials last year, leading Seoul to replace its top envoy to the country.
Despite the intelligence agency’s repeated denial, speculation runs high that the NIS head, Won Se-hoon, has already tendered resignation to the president for causing diplomatic embarrassment.
“This incident did an irreparable damage to South Korea’s international reputation. The country will be repeatedly embarrassed for this incident,” a senior official at the main opposition Democratic Party said Tuesday at a party meeting.
“The government should get to the bottom of the incident and immediately fire the head of the National Intelligence Service to restore its tainted reputation,” the official said.
Indonesia, on its part, has officially asked South Korea to look into the case. Nicolas T Dammen, Indonesian Ambassador to South Korea, visited the foreign ministry in Seoul Monday to ask for confirmation of the alleged involvement of NIS officials. The foreign ministry said it plans to notify Indonesia as soon as local reports are confirmed.
Dong-a Ilbo newspaper here reported the NIS will likely take disciplinary action against the three officials implicated in the incident and express regret to Indonesia to placate the country.
Local media also say the president’s efforts to clinch a major defense deal with Indonesia have met a challenge with the botched espionage attempt.
South Korea has been seeking to sell T-50 Golden Eagle trainers to Indonesia, after it failed to sell them to Singapore and the United Arab Emirates.
JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, another leading daily here, quoted an unnamed senior official as saying that the export deal with Indonesia looked poised to be sealed before the incident took place.
Ashton Kutcher, who traveled to technology conference TED this week, has been punk’d. That’s what happens when you hang out on the same wireless network as a bunch of technology geeks — who probably don’t even need hacking-made-easy-tool Firesheep to eavesdrop on Internet sessions on unencrypted Web pages.
Kutcher’s over six million followers are now going to be aware of Twitter’s lack of security thanks to these two tweets Wednesday night:
The hacker who likely accessed Kutcher’s account through a shared wireless network at TED2011 in Long Beach, California, tweeted, “This account is not secure. Dude, where’s my SSL?” followed by “This is for those young protesters around the world who deserve not to have their Facebook Twitter accounts hacked like this.”
This security problem with Twitter got widespread attention last year, due to the release of Firesheep — a program that made hacking a fellow wireless network user’s account on non-encrypted sites easy. Pressure was put on companies like Facebook and Twitter to make their websites “https” (or encrypted) by default. Facebook has since made it an option for users to enable that feature (though it’s still not a default). Twitter also has a https option, though it’s also not the default.
Back in November 2010 during the Firesheep controversy, Twitter told me: “Protecting users and providing a safe Twitter experience is incredibly important to us. We’re actively exploring avenues for increasing user safety that would address this issue.”
We’ll see if the hacking of a high-profile user’s account makes Twitter explore those avenues more quickly.
Update (March 3): Twitter’s PR account tweeted late Wednesday night, “Users can use Twitter via HTTPS: http://t.co/q84H6K3. We’ve long been working on offering HTTPS as a user setting will share more soon.”
(To avoid @aplusk’s fate, make sure you do your tweeting at https://twitter.com/.)
