BlackChampagne.com -- No longer new; improvement also in question.

BlackChampagne Home Buy Crap! I get 5%. Direct donations to cover hosting expenses are also accepted. Site Information --What is Black Champagne? --Cast of Characters & Things --Your First Time. --Design Notes --Quote of the Day Archive --Phrase of the Moment Archive --Site Feedback --Contact/Copyright Info Blog Archives --Blogger Archives: June 2005- --Old Monthly Archives: Jan 2002-May 2005 Reviews Section Movie Reviews (153) Ten Most Recent Film Reviews: --Infernal Affairs -- 5.5 --The Protector/Tom Yum Goong -- 6 --The Limey -- 8 --The Descent -- 6 --Oldboy -- 9.5 --Shaolin Deadly Kicks -- 7 --Mission Impossible III -- 7.5 --V for Vendetta -- 8.5 --Ghost in the Shell 2 -- 8 --Night Watch -- 7.5 Book Reviews (76) Five Most Recent Book Reviews: --Cat People -- 4 --Attack Poodles -- 5 --Caught Stealing -- 6 --The Dirt, by Motley Crue -- 7.5 --Harry Potter #6 -- 7 Photos Section --Flux Photos --Pet Photos (7 pages) --Home Decor Photos --Plant Photos --Vacation Photos (12 pages) Articles See all 234 articles here. Fiction Original horror and fantasy short stories. Mail Bags Index Page Features --Links --Slang: Internet --Slang: Dirty --Slang: Wankisms --Slang: Sex Acts --Slang: Fulldeckisms --Hot or Not? --Truths in Advertising Band Name Ratings (350 Rock Bands Listed) FAQ -- Feedback A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- X -- Y -- Z Hellgate: London --The Unofficial HGL Site --The Hellgate Wiki Diablo II --The Unofficial Site --Flux's Decahedron --Middle Earth Mod
	BlackChampagne -- no longer new; improvement also in question.: Your Credit Score... Do You Know It? Friday, July 17, 2009 Your Credit Score... Do You Know It? Over the past year or two, the ubiquity of those , "check your credit score" websites, ads, ad banners, email spam, has grown disturbing. Lately, it seems like half the banner ads that sneak past my Firefox blocking scripts have to do with credit scores. My dad uses AOL for his ISP (over a cable modem, which drives me crazy) and every email he sends has a little ad bar at the bottom, and it's always full of credit score ads. (Apparently they run TV ads too, though I had no way of knowing before I saw the video at the link below.) I neither know nor care what my credit score is (too high, judging by all the goddamned pre-approved credit card offers I get snail mailed), and hadn't really given any thought to the ads, other than to wonder who was buying them and how the companies selling them were making enough money off of them to keep up the ad buys. If I'd had to guess, I would have said they were ID-theft scams. Trojan horses to obtain your personal information which would then be resold to every other rip off service on earth. Whether or not they correctly informed you of your credit rating wasn't even something I'd seriously considered. Apparently they're not that bad, or so this financial blogger informs me. Well, they might be; he doesn't address the info-selling aspect of things, but he does point out what a waste of money any such services are. First, the score itself is not very useful to consumers. What's useful is the report -- if there's an error on the report, then the consumer can try to rectify it. Secondly, and much more importantly, if you want a free credit report, there's only one place to go: annualcreditreport.com. That's the place where the big three credit-rating agencies will give you a genuinely free copy of your credit report once a year, as required by federal law. You won't be surprised to hear that freescore.com is not free: in order to get any information out of them at all, you have to authorize them to charge you a $29.95 monthly fee. They even extract a dollar out of you up front, just to make sure that money is there. Ben Stein, here, has become a predatory bait-and-switch merchant, dangling a "free" credit report in front of people so that he can sock them with a massive monthly fee for, essentially, doing nothing at all. Naturally, the people who take him up on this offer will be those who can least afford it. I actually think this is good news. Not that Ben Stein is a hack, but that these services are just preying on the vulnerable and gullible to sell them something free for $30 a month. I'd have expected a much more massive fraud. Labels: online scams Posted by: Flux # 4:21 PM Comments: On a semi-related note, have you noticed a surge of the Nigerian 419 Scams? It seems like 75% of my junk e-mail folder and probably 20% of my regular inbox consist of these things, where I hadn't received 1 in the past 6-7 years I've had a regular e-mail account. I wonder if it's related to the 'economic crisis' everyone seems to keep talking about... #: 6:24 PM posted by SageDarius Post a Comment << Home Archives May 2005 June 2005 July 2005 August 2005 September 2005 October 2005 November 2005 December 2005 January 2006 February 2006 March 2006 April 2006 May 2006 June 2006 July 2006 August 2006 September 2006 October 2006 November 2006 December 2006 January 2007 February 2007 March 2007 April 2007 May 2007 June 2007 July 2007 August 2007 September 2007 October 2007 November 2007 December 2007 January 2008 February 2008 March 2008 April 2008 May 2008 June 2008 July 2008 August 2008 September 2008 October 2008 November 2008 December 2008 January 2009 February 2009 March 2009 April 2009 May 2009 June 2009 July 2009 August 2009 September 2009 October 2009 November 2012

Archives