thanks to bignickstyle!

Hoth Battle

Top 10

So it’s that magical time of year when everybody seems to have a list – shopping or otherwise.

I put together two – the top 10 most popular posts and the bottom 10 least popular posts on my blog this year.

Check them out below and have a great holiday season!

The Winners

• Interview with Thomas Mann
• Best Reggae Mixtape Ever
• Christian Andrew Haas – 4/19/73 – 7/20/10
• Reader’s advisory
• Down With YouTube, Up With ScreenToaster
• Why Tap Water is Better Than Bottled Water
• Binchotan Coal Water Purifier, Pitcher Size
• Brookings – Most/Least Educated Cities in America
• Fenix LD10 R4 Tactical LED Flashlight
• Talk about a downer…LOC refers me to Wikipedia!!!

The Losers

• Mountain of Storms
• What is Transliteracy?
• MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU
• Bowl eligible!
• QR Code
• Managing Employee Performance
• Unusually Colored Vinyl Records
• Lost Photos
• Supercharged Human Capital
• A Timeline of Information History

Data, information, knowledge, wisdom

A(nother) nice visual from informationisbeautiful.

I just learned a very disturbing amount of information on ATM skimmers and there’s apparently a lot more of it going on than you could ever imagine. It’s definitely worth a read (see below).

I unfortunately had 3 bouts with identity theft over the years so this type of thing is always high on my radar. I found out that registering with Experian, EquiFax, and TransUnion to be contacted each and every time a credit card is opened in your name is a service that, well, just doesn’t work (though they may have improved it).

The first time someone bought a $10,000 Dell server rack, next time it was > $400 worth of cheese (yes), and the last time I had my identity stolen it was used to purchase some groceries. Whats adds insult to it all was that there have been a couple times I’ve gone to get my free yearly credit report, was questioned on past addresses, and didn’t get the free report because I didn’t know the (fake) addresses in wherever that were used on my stolen identity cards.  They also refuse to remove the addresses even though I went through the procedures for declaring that fraud had occurred, etc.

You can read more about skimmers at – All About Skimmers. It’s from the thorough security blog Krebs On Security.

Krebs On Security info:

Brian Krebs worked as a reporter for The Washington Post from 1995 to 2009, authoring more than 1,300 blog posts for the Security Fix blog, as well as hundreds of stories for washingtonpost.com and The Washington Post newspaper, including eight front-page stories in the dead-tree edition and a Post Magazine cover piece on botnet operators.

His blog will feature posts on a number of recurring themes, including:

Online Crime Investigations – Latest Threats – Security Updates – Data Breaches – Cyber Justice