Keep Your Credit Card Safe

Most people have at least one credit or debit card, and many people routinely carry them all.
The obvious problem is that if a person's wallet or purse is stolen or if all the cards are stolen it's a huge headache to inform the various credit card companies and banks and it may be too late to avoid incurring the charges that a thief runs up on those cards.

What is at least as bad is when the card owner does not realize for a long time that their card has been stolen. Thieves are now substituting similar-looking expired cards for the owner's original and it's likely the theft will go undetected until the next time the owner tries to use their card.

But there are ways for credit card owners to reduce the risk of becoming a victim of this card switcheroo:

1. Every time you take your card out, look at the name on it to verify that it's your card and not some stolen or expired card.

2. Every time you hand your card to anyone, a store assistant, waiter or pizza delivery guy, check that the card they give back to you is indeed your card.

3. Don't leave your purse or wallet lying around where someone can switch your credit cards.

4. To minimize the effects of a theft, try to carry only one credit or debit card in your wallet or purse. If you need to carry more than one, then consider carrying the extra card in some other location such as in a money belt, in a secure pocket that can be buttoned, zippered or Velcro'd closed, or even punch a hole in one corner of the card, run a cord through the hole and carry it around your neck! (provided you can do it without breaking the card and losing it.)

5. Finally, always keep a photocopy of each credit and debit card in a secure location so that you can quickly contact the credit card company or bank that issues the card with details.

Sure, it's a pain to have to do all this, but as long as you have money or credit, someone is going to want to take it away from you.

The Lesson of the Japanese Tea Bowl

In Japan, drinking tea has been a carefully orchestrated ritual for centuries. The tea is served in a bowl, rather than a cup with a handle. If the tea is too hot to cradle the bowl in the palms of your hands, then it's too hot to drink. Think of it as a warning system to stop the tea drinker from scalding their mouth.

Here in the west, we go to the local Starbucks or similar coffee place and drink tea and coffee from mugs and cups with handles or get it to go in a paper cup with an insulating cardboard sleeve, or our own insulated container with a lid.

Most of us have scalded ourselves at some time or another with that first hasty sip from a cup containing near-boiling liquid. Why? Because we have circumvented the Japanese warning system. By insulting and protecting our hand with a mug handle or a protective sleeve, instead of our hand being the first thing to be scalded, it's our mouth.

We insulate ourselves from an early warning system in other ways too. Any time we are out in public and we are listening to music through stereo ear pieces, or we are texting while driving and not watching where we are going, we risk becoming a victim of an attack or an accident.

Don't insulate your senses from what is around you. Remember the lesson of the Japanese tea bowl.

Book Signing Today!

Today is a big day for the Junkyard Dog. I'll be signing copies of my book, "Dealing with Danger" at Borders Books, Flatirons Mall, Broomfield, Colorado at 1pm. The book is $15.95 and you can also order it online at www.lulu.com and also at www.amazon.com . You can also check my website www.junkyard-dog.net for more details.

The next book signing is also at Borders in Broomfield on Saturday, June 26th at 1pm.

Have a great weekend, and don't forget to look around you and be aware of your surroundings!

What Did the Times Square Bomber Really Hope to Accomplish?

Readers of this blog and my book Dealing With Danger -- Be Prepared, Aware and Decisive will know that I preach the concept of always being aware of what is going on around us and making a point to question what we see in relation to how it might affect us personally. In this way, we can act in time to avoid a lot a bad things that may be coming our way.

The NYPD officer who first noticed something wrong with the parked Nissan Pathfinder and correctly and decisively invoked the plan to evacuate Times Square is a hero. He did everything right that was within his control.

But it seems to me that many officials including the Mayor are deluding themselves that somehow, they dodged the bullet because they are so smart and the terrorists are so stupid.

Underestimating your enemy is a very dangerous thing to do.

General Custer did it at the Little Big Horn, and the Indians wiped out his command.

Do we really know what the true goal of alleged terrorist bomber Faisal Jahzad was when he built his car bomb and placed it in New York's Times Square? Here is a man who appears to have connections to radical terrorist groups, and who is educated and intelligent. But according to statements made in New York, he built a bomb that was "amateurish".

We cannot rule out the possibility that the main purpose of planting the device was not to create an explosion, but to learn how security forces would respond to such a threat. It is not inconceivable that, as in other parts of the world such as the middle east, the larger plan would be to attract police into the area by planting a small device and then trigger a much larger bomb.

The most important lesson we can learn from this incident is that if we really want to know what our enemies have in store for us, we must look at what they are already doing successfully in other parts of the world. Terrorists swap ideas and training amongst different groups. Whatever works in Iraq or Afghanistan, Beirut or Israel will eventually be tried in the USA and the UK.

Three Little Words That Can Be So Dangerous

Readers of this blog know that we examine various things that people can do to either avoid or deal with all kinds of threats to their well-being: violent crime, dangerous weather conditions, terrorism. etc.

Over the years I've had conversations with lots of people about various scenarios concerned with these types of incident. When I talk with people who are just beginning to realize that they need to take responsibility for their own safety and come up with simple but effective plans before anything bad happens, I often hear them blithely state some one-line plan that may at best address just one small slice of the problem. In other words, a lot of people don't really think through the entire scope of the problem before coming up with their plan.

For example, problem: violent mugging; solution: shoot everybody.
Problem: natural disaster--hurricane, earthquake, volcano; solution: leave town.

There is never any mention of a plan, never any mention of determining the exact criteria to enact the plan, never any thought about the possible outcomes.

When forced to think about how they would deal with a life-threatening disaster, many otherwise rational people seem to treat it like the script to a Hollywood disaster movie where common sense and adherence to the law go out the window and are replaced with a superhuman capability to "wing it."

It used to take me a while to detect some people's ability to dive head first into Hollywood Reality at the first mention of a disaster scenario, and their preference for relying on horsepower and cool equipment instead of planning and logic.

But I finally figured it out.

Any conversation about disaster preparedness that includes the phrase, "Well, I'll just ... " is a waste of everybody's time.

"Well, I'll just shoot the bad guys."; "Well, I'll just fire up the 4x4 and head for the hills."; "Well, I'll just dial 911." (You and everybody else in town.)

"Well, I'll just ..." One of the three great examples of not thinking things through, along with "Officer, I've only had two beers." and "Honey, I don't know how that lipstick got there."

How Your Car's GPS System Might Make you a Crime Victim

Global Positioning Systems (GPS) have become so popular as a means of navigating while driving, but like most things, there are pros and cons to having one.

There are basically two types of GPS used in cars and other vehicles: The portable system that attaches to the inside of the windshield with a rubber suction cup, and plugs into the cigarette lighter, and the built-in system that comes with the vehicle from the factory.

Security conscious drivers remove the portable system from it's suction cup windshield mount when they leave the vehicle and either take it with them or hide it somewhere in the car. Unfortunately, thieves look for that tell-tale ring left on the inside of the windshield by the suction cup, and often break into the vehicle, expecting to find the GPS unit stuffed under the front seat. This happened to a couple of friends of mine in Austin, Texas a few weeks ago. The cost: replacement of one broken side window and a GPS unit. So, the lesson learned here is to regularly clean the ring left by the suction cup off the inside of the windshield.

Car owners with an installed GPS system should be aware that all the information in that system: owner's name, home address, bank, friends names and addresses, etc. stays with the vehicle when it is sold. Car dealers are under no obligation to delete that personal information before selling the car. Since identity theft is so comonplace, it pays to remember to delete all information from the GPS before selling the car. I'd even go one further and say only input the minimum amount of information necessary, because you never know who else might access it: car thief, valet parking attendant, mechanic, etc.

What Kind of a Survivor Are You?

Here's an interesting little survey from The Survivors Club. I'm not sure how much it actually tells us about ourselves, but I do think it prompts us to question how we would handle specific threats and emergencies.

So for that reason alone, I took the survey. It only takes a couple of minutes. Click here to go to the survey. You may be surprised what you find out about yourself.