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Wednesday, September 7, 2011

The Most Annoying Face Book Habits that Bug Your Friends



Facebook friends, honest, I really like you. But, no. I won’t milk your cow or join Mafia Wars so you can take over the south side of Insanityville, where you’ve suddenly gone to live.

And in my household, if you throw food at me, somebody’s going to smack your body in a very impolite manner.

Before you “de-friend” me (and when did “friend” become a verb?), I’d like to say that I've seen your family photos; the class reunion updates; and the funny stories about your kids. I even like to know what you’re doing at work and when you’ve made a really fabulous meal — or deal.

But this new technology gives us the ability to engage in the electronic equivalent of eating with our mouths open or talking through a movie. Sometimes these bad habits can even hit your friends in the pocketbook, which is not a nice thing to do.

We’d never do these things in real life because we’d know they were impolite, annoying and hurtful. But perhaps because so many of us are new to social cyberspace, we’re not as aware of how we’re bugging our Facebook friends.

Here, according to my informal survey, are the 3 most annoying (and costly) things we do on Facebook and how we can handle them differently.

Farmville: Some 60 million of you are building cute little farms in cyberspace and swapping animated livestock. In fact so many of you are spending real money to buy and build pretend barns and corn fields that Facebook has created its own currency. And Farmville is just one of more than a dozen games that people spend hours playing on Facebook. What makes the games so popular? According to both Time Magazine and the web-site Cracked, Farmville manipulates you into playing.

To be sure, no one should tell you that you can’t spend your hard-earned cash to buy pretend machine guns to protect your personalized turf in Mafia Wars. But the constant updates generated so many complaints that Facebook just announced changes that will restrict the number of posts sent to non-gamers.

Still, the games encourage players to manipulate their friends into playing with pleas like: “My cow is lost! Please help me find her!” Or “Help me build my barn/plant my crops/fix my tractor!” Seriously, you asked for less help when your mother was in the hospital.

It makes us feel guilty to ignore you. After all we love you, but we’re working and Bessy, the lost cow, is not real. If you promise to stop asking us for help on a farm that exists only in cyberspace, we promise to help when you need us in real life. In the meantime, please stop sending us goats.

Chronic “like”rs: Some people seem to “like” everything and need affirmation that you do too. First you get the message: “Suzie likes rainbows and wants you to like them too!” And you think…Uhm…Okay. Seems silly, but who doesn’t like rainbows? Click.

Barely a second goes by before Suzie is liking unicorns and walks on the beach and sailboats and dolphins. She wants you to click the “like” button too! Right about now my thoughts turn sinister:“I am not a Care Bear.”

What’s this whole “like” thing about anyway? Marketing, according to Justin Brookman, senior fellow at the Center for Democracy and Technology in Washington, D.C. He says the current “like” button is the latest iteration of “fan” pages, which are aimed at selling everything from books to blogs.

When you click on “like,” your profile information suddenly changes to add unicorns and rainbows and Mama Di’s Restaurant and Target and Black & Decker skill saws. Pretty soon, your Facebook account becomes a fast-clicking billboard for a panoply of products, drawing advertisers to you like flies.

Worse, says Brookman, is that malicious programmers know how easily we’re all affected by habit and peer pressure. So they create buttons that say: “click like to see something cool.” If you get that message from a friend, you’re likely to click on the “cool” thing your friend recommended and find out that it just hacked into your system and installed worms and malware that are not cool at all. One of these worms, by the way, is going to send an identical message to all of your friends, so you can infect them too.
Like as many things as you like in the real world, but use Facebook’s “like” button sparingly.

Impolitic Tagging: You went to a party, had a few too many drinks and ended up napping under the table, drooling into the host’s Labrador. Naturally, somebody snapped a cellphone picture and posted it on Facebook.

The photo is funny. Your friends want to see it. Posting an embarrassing photo of a friend is not the crime. The crime is “tagging” the photo so that your friend’s employer, or prospective employer, can easily find it too.
Jodi Schneider, a veteran recruiter and trainer who writes the blog DCWorks, tells all job applicants to “scrub” their Facebook profiles before sending out resumes. But one of the most pernicious problems for young applicants are friends, who never think twice before tagging an impolitic photo.

For those who don’t know, “tagging” just means that you’ve labeled a photo with a person’s name. Once labeled, that photo is going to show up on the “tagged” person’s Facebook account, whether they put it there or not.
That could keep your buddy from getting work, said Schneider. So post all the photos you want, but use some discretion about identifying a friend acting badly.


[Re blogged from an earlier article] -Birdy

5 Reasons Using a Debit Card is Dangerous


More people are using debit cards than credit cards these days, which has spurred the Federal Reserve to push ahead on restricting the amount banks can charge merchants for each debit swipe. While banks gripe and merchants rejoice about the fledgling Fed rules that were put in place in late 2010, budget-savvy experts consider the rise in debit card usage good news because it means that shoppers are attempting to spend no more than they have in the bank.

The bad news is that using a debit card is just not as safe as using a credit card — even after new rules went into effect to restrict overdraft charges caused by debit purchases. What makes using a debit card so dicey?

Phantom charges
Traveling? Be careful about pulling out that debit card. We all know that when you use your credit card at a gas station or hotel, they charge the card when you leave for the amount of the purchase. It doesn’t work that way with a debit card.

When you check into a hotel with a debit card, many hotels put a “hold” on money in your account. That “hold” starts the moment you check in and can be for more than the amount of the room multiplied by all the nights you’re planning to stay, too.

How can it be for more than you’ll be spending? They argue that you may decide to use the mini-bar or charge things to your room, so they’re just protecting themselves from your potentially free-spending ways. Meanwhile their hold, while temporary (and often arbitrary), can cause devastating results for you. One consumer complained that a phantom charge — a hotel hold for a room that was eventually paid for with cash — cost him $140 in overdraft fees because he was unaware that his stated bank balance was made partly “unavailable” by the undisclosed hold. That caused his regular bills, which were scheduled to be paid while he was away, to bounce.

Gas stations also commonly place holds of $50 to $75 on your bank account when you use a debit card to purchase gas. These holds can last for days after your visit to the gas station. And it doesn’t matter that you only put $10 of fuel in the tank to top off the rental car.

If you use your debit card at a gas station or hotel, find out what their hold policy is and make sure you have plenty of money in your account to cover it.
Overdrafts
Last summer, the Federal Reserve Board enacted new rules that stopped banks from automatically enrolling consumers in overdraft plans that would subject them to high fees when they used debit card for purchases that exceeded their balance. Banks have gone to great lengths to actively enroll people in these costly overdraft plans since then. If you were gullible enough to sign up, you could be at risk of overdrafts if you use a debit card anywhere. If you weren’t, any transaction that exceeds your balance should be declined.

The only catch: Some debit transactions — any debit transaction that does not require a pin number, for instance — aren’t recorded immediately, opening the door to overdraft charges. The good news here is that you may be able to dispute these overdraft fees, saying that they should never have been levied. The bad news? Dickering with your bank is not fun.

Merchant disputes
Let’s say you’re doing some shopping online and the goods show up damaged — or don’t show up at all. When you’ve ordered using a credit card you have two things going for you: You’re usually billed some weeks after the purchase, giving you a chance to receive and inspect your order before you pay. You also have the right to dispute a charge — and not pay that portion of your bill — when something shows up damaged or the merchant fails to deliver it.

When you use your debit card, the amount of the purchase is subtracted from your account immediately — often long before you’ve seen the goods. You then have to fight with the merchant to get your money back. If this was a reputable merchant, you shouldn’t have a problem. But good luck if you’re dealing with a crook.

Account safety
Like credit cards, federal law limits your liability for fraudulent use of your debit card to $50. But that’s only if you report the card stolen within two days of discovering the theft. If you take an extended holiday and don’t check your statements for a couple of months, the crook can drain your bank account and there’s nothing you can do about it. If there’s any chance that somebody could steal your debit card, you need to keep close and regular track of your bank balance and dispute any unfamiliar purchases promptly.

Pay Now/Reimburse Later
If someone has fraudulently used your credit card, you (or your credit card company) are likely to spot it before you get the statement. That means you’re never out the money. You dispute the charge, subtract the disputed amount from your bill and let the credit card issuer worry about it. With a debit card, the stolen money may have already left your account. That means you have to dicker with your bank to get reimbursed. Some banks are quick and helpful in resolving these disputes. Others? Not so much.



-Birdy

Five Most Costly Lies in Finance


Most financial professionals are not trying to confuse you on purpose. They simply spoke so much jargon in business school that they forgot that most people don’t know that a “subordinated debenture” is a low-priority debt or that “PEG” is a short-hand way of talking about a company’s earnings growth.

Unfortunately this confusing Wall Street-speak could put you in in a fog when approaching financial transactions. And that can make you vulnerable to people who would like to trick you out of your money. When salesmen and con artists see that your normal radar for bad advice, toxic investments and outright scams is getting nothing but fog (the potential result of all the hot air on Wall Street), they ramp up clever lies to separate you from your cash.

You can fight back by knowing Wall Street’s 5 most costly lies. When you hear these phrases, run for cover.

Lie #1: This time it’s different.
As every market bubble in history approached a spectacularly devastating pop, stupid and scummy “advisors” spit out this ridiculous statement to convince people that gravity no longer applied to this portion of the earth. To be sure, each time that it was(not) different, they were able to articulate a good justification for why it should be.

During the stock market bubble of the late 1990s, for example, it was “different” because “the Internet changes everything!” The Internet would make workers more productive; companies more profitable; communication easier; and foster international business transactions. And, of course, it did.
So did the telephone, the automobile, the typewriter, the printing press, the airplane, the assembly line, the cotton gin, and computers…just to name a few. And yet these market-changing technologies did not change the relationship between stock prices and fundamental indicators of value. Not then. Not now.

When a stock is selling for a price that substantially exceeds it’s earnings multiplied by its growth rate, sell it.

Lie #2: It’s returns, not fees, that matter
This clever lie is almost always spoken by somebody whose livelihood depends on you overpaying for his or her services, such as planners who sell high-cost “load” funds, annuities, and “wrap” accounts.

The lie is effective because it’s based on a partial truth: If you could guarantee higher returns, you wouldn’t mind paying higher fees. But in reality, the high fees are a sure thing. The returns are not.

In fact, decades of academic research has come to one inescapable conclusion: The more fees you pay, the worse your average annual returns.

Lie #3: This opportunity won’t last!
Again, there’s a chance that at least part of this statement is true. Financial regulators could get wind of the “opportunity” you’re being sold and shut it down before more people are scammed. For instance, you can’t invest with Bernie Madoff anymore. You also missed your chance to invest in hundreds of “initial public offerings” of companies that went belly-up shortly after raising investor capital. Brokers selling these dogs rightly said the “opportunity won’t last” because the companies issuing these shares were taking their last rattling breaths, which is why institutional investors refused to buy their shares and why brokers were trying to peddle the stock to you — or anyone gullible enough to buy it.

In reality good investment opportunities are commonplace and consistent. They don’t go away overnight. Take your time evaluating investment options. If you invest in haste, you’ll repent in leisure.

Lie #4: Banks don’t understand it
When somebody offers you a “guaranteed” 20% profit, the only logical question to ask is: Why are you offering this to me? After all, if the salesman really had a sure-fire route to earning a 20% profit, he/she could go to a bank, borrow the money at 5% or 6% and pocket the remaining double-digit return. They wouldn’t need your money. But here the salesman says: “Banks just don’t understand this opportunity…”

News flash: Your local bank teller may not be an Ivy League graduate, but someone in that bank building likely is. And they’re not at all confused. Neither, by the way, is the promoter who is talking to you. He’s functioning on one of Wall Street’s favorite truths, best expressed by P.T. Barnum: “There’s a sucker born every minute.” If you buy an “opportunity” that the banks don’t understand, you are that sucker.

Lie #5: You can trust me
If you wanted to peddle some smarmy, rotten investment, would you go find a ugly, rude person to sell it? Of course not. You’d go out and look for a charming, good looking salesman who would smile at prospective marks and say, “You can trust me. I put my Grandmother in this investment.” 
 
These guys will pull out your chair, bring you coffee and take your elderly grandmother to the grocery store. Why? The idea is to build trust — to make you think that a salesman is your friend. If they do this right, you’ll be so convinced you can trust them that you’ll fail to read the legally required disclosures that spell out all the red flags.

If someone wants you to invest your hard-earned money, make sure you read and understand the fine print. 
 
Trust no one with your financial security who doesn’t live in your house and share the rewards or penury along with you.

-Birdy

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