Jan 05, 2009 - 04:05:20 CST
The start of the new year is a good time to review a few annual online actions you should take. Among them:1) Get your free credit reports. By law, you are allowed to request a free credit report once a year from each of the three main credit reporting organizations: Equifax, Experian and TransUnion.
Some people like to get all three reports at the same time, once a year. Others like to get one report every four months during the year. The key is that these reports are free. There is only one official site set up by the three credit reporting groups to access your free credit reports: www.annualcreditreport.com.
There are dozens of other sites that will provide access to your credit reports but also will try to sell you fee-based credit monitoring services. You do not have to buy anything or subscribe to any service to get your free credit reports.
2) Check and renew "do not call" lists. Last year, the Federal Trade Commission's National "Do Not Call" Registry list was made permanent, meaning anyone who has put phone numbers on the list no longer has to renew the listings every five years.
If you haven't yet signed up for this, I encourage you to do so as soon as possible: www.ftc.gov/donotcall. Putting your home and cell phone numbers on this list will stop nearly all telemarketing calls (the exceptions: political organizations, charities, telephone surveys and companies with which you have an existing business relationship).
There also are several other do not call/do not send lists you can join which will help reduce the amount of unwanted solicitations you receive in several areas:
Direct market mail
www.dmachoice.org
Go here to the Direct Marketing Association's Web site to reduce or stop direct mail solicitations. You need to first register with the site, then select from lists of DMA member businesses and organizations the mail you don't want to receive. It will take a little time to go through everything, but it will be worth it in the end to cut down on the junk mail.
Direct marketing e-mail "Do Not Send" List
www.dmachoice.org
This list might not be as effective as you might initially hope: This will stop e-mails only from organizations that use the Direct Marketing Association's eMPS service (E-mail Preference Service) and, judging from the typical volume and content of spam mail solicitations I receive, very few at best are the kind that come from reputable business members of the DMA. Still, it can't hurt to sign up. Once you get to the Direct Marketing Association site, click the "Register for eMPS" link near the bottom right section of the page.
Stop credit card offers
www.optoutprescreen.com
This will help reduce the amount of prescreened credit card offers you receive via mail. The site is a joint venture of the top four credit reporting agencies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion). You can opt out of prescreened credit card offers for five years at a time or permanently.
There are a number of changes and anniversaries this year you should be aware of, along with related Web sites offering useful and helpful information:
1) Feb. 17: Digital TV transition. On this day, the age of analog TV in America ends and a new era of digital transmission begins. If you get TV programming through a cable or satellite service, you won't notice any change. If you pick up TV programs through just an antenna connected to your TV set (about 30 million Americans do), you'll need a converter box to continue receiving "over-the-air" free TV.
The best Web sites to get clear, accurate information on the digital transition include: Digital TV Transition (www.dtv.gov), DTV Transition (www.dtvtransition.org) and Consumer Reports (www.consumerreports.org/cro/electronics-computers/resource-center/dtv-transition-1-08/dtv-transition/dtv-transition-hub.htm).
2) July 20: Apollo 11 moon walk. On this day in 1969, man first landed and walked on the moon. NASA Web sites will be the best places to find information, photos, videos, audio and more related to this historic journey 40 years ago. Among the best starting places: Apollo 11 Home Page (http://nssdc.gsfc. nasa.gov/planetary/lunar/apollo11info.html), Apollo 11 Anniversary (http://history.nasa.gov/ap11ann/introduction.htm), Apollo 40th (www.nasa.gov/external flash/apollo40/index.html).
3) Aug. 15-17: The 40th anniversary of The Woodstock Music and Art Festival at Max Yasgur's dairy farm in Bethel, N.Y., near Woodstock. About 20,000 people were expected, but more than 400,000 showed up. Two good sites to visit are Woodstock 1969 (www.woodstock69.com) and Wikipedia's "Woodstock" entry (http:// en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Woodstock_Festival).
4) Internet's 48th/40th/32nd/26th/21st birthday. Depending on where you look and how you define the start of the Internet, this global network's birthday falls on Jan. 1, June 30, Sept. 2, Oct. 29 or Nov. 22. Or one of a dozen other dates. Below are some of the birthday contenders and related Web site offering more info on each date:
Jan. 1, 1983: On this day, the method by which computers talked to each other over a connection was changed from Network Control Protocol to Transmission Control Protocol and Internet Protocol. This made it possible for more computers to "speak the same language" when communicating with each other (www.wired.com/techbiz/it/news/2002/12/57013).
July 1961: Leonard Kleinrock, considered by many to be the "Father of the Internet," published the first paper on Packet Switching Theory, titled "Information Flow in Large Communication Nets." Some contend this marks the birth of the Internet (www.lk.cs.ucla.edu).
June 30, 1988: A network engineer named Hans-Werner Braun sent a message to the NSFNET suggesting the network allow outside traffic on the system, thus initiating the birth of the modern Internet (http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/3138/happy-20th-birthday-modern-internet).
Sept. 2, 1969: UCLA professor Leonard Kleinrock, along with a crowd of graduate students that included Net pioneers Stephen Crocker and Vinton Cerf, gathered in an engineering lab to send test data between two computers over a network (http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/businesstechnology/2002019651_btnetbirthday30.html).
Oct. 29, 1969: Leonard Kleinrock himself considers this date to be when the Internet "uttered its first words" when a message was sent over ARPANET, a predessor to the Internet (www.lk.cs.ucla.edu/first_words.html).
Nov. 22, 1977: On this day, the first three networks were connected to form what would later grow into the Internet: ARPANET, a packet radio network and the Atlantic Packet Satellite Network, or SATNET (http://cafe.elharo.com/internet/happy-30th-birthday-internet/).
(Keith Darnay is the webmaster and designer for bismarcktribune.com. His Web site, featuring this column going back to 1995, is at www.darnay.com.iec.)
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