Virtual Credit Cards

Fraud-wary customers use `virtual credit cards'

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/business/12859942.htm?source=rss&channel=miamiherald_business

Single-use card numbers offer customers fearful of identity theft a safer way to make transactions online or over the phone.

BY CAROLINE E. MAYER

Washington Post Service

WASHINGTON - John Roos used to be afraid to shop online. ''I hate to give out my real credit card number,'' said the retired manager of a computer center.

But Roos, of New Rochelle, N.Y., recently bought a $500 TV online after he discovered a little-known credit card service that allows him to give Internet retailers a substitute credit card number for his account.

Offered to holders of Citi, Discover and MBNA cards, these ''virtual credit cards,'' or single-use card numbers, are designed to give some peace of mind to consumers concerned about credit card fraud.

CLASSIFIED INFO

''The only people who know the real number are you and us,'' said Jim Donahue, spokesman for MBNA.

Although initially designed for Internet shopping, the card number can also be used to buy goods and services over the phone and through the mail, but it cannot be used for in-store purchases that require a traditional plastic card.

MBNA has been offering its ShopSafe program for three years. ''It's very popular with the people who use it,'' Donahue said.

In fact, consumers who use the number tend to use it more often and spend more, according to Orbiscom Ltd., the Irish company that provides the technology to the three credit card issuers. Orbiscom declined to provide exact usage numbers, saying only that transactions are doubling every year.

Even so, credit card industry officials say it's not widely popular. American Express, for example, discontinued its virtual card last year because ''only a very small number of card members signed up,'' said spokeswoman Kim Forde.

''This technology has been around for six years and has never caught on, despite all that we hear about compromising data centers and stealing key consumer information,'' said David Robertson, president of the Nilson Report, a newsletter that monitors the credit card industry. ``Americans, by and large, are trustful of buying online.''

Yet some credit card issuers say use is increasing with each report of identity theft, including the June disclosure that more than 40 million credit card numbers may have been compromised after a computer hacker broke into a card processing center.

Overall, 3.9 million Americans were victims of credit card fraud in the year that ended in May, according to a study by the research firm Gartner. That's down from 5.5 million the previous year. The study found that 46 percent of victims had no idea how the fraud occurred, but 21 percent said they thought their credit card number was stolen off the Internet. The previous year, 18 percent blamed the theft on the Internet.

ON THE RISE

Steve Furman, Discover's marketing director for e-commerce, said its program, Deskshop, has ``grown at a fairly strong pace over the last six to eight months.''

Many Internet security and privacy experts, however, question its necessity. ''It's a good idea and clever, but I've never seen the need to use it,'' said Bruce Schneier, chief technology officer of Counterpane Internet Security. Noting that consumers have, at most, only a $50 liability if a credit card is fraudulently used, Schneier said, ''I don't have a lot a risk here.'' It would be more troublesome if someone stole his Social Security number and created a new account in his name, Schneier said; that kind of identity theft is much harder to correct.

WHAT'S YOUR NUMBER?

But overall, Schneier added, most people distribute their credit card number widely. ``I give it all the time to 7-Eleven store clerks every week.''

Dan Clements, head of the Internet security firm CardCops.com, however, calls the limited credit card liability ''an illusion.'' Clements said credit card numbers are sold and bartered all over the Internet and can be combined with other personal information easily available on the Web to create full-blown identity theft. Even so, Clements said, he doesn't use a virtual credit card number because ''it's a hassle.'' Yet his solution, he admitted, is equally time-consuming: He asks for a new credit card number every three months.

''For the consumer, it doesn't really buy that much except for peace of mind,'' said Richard M. Smith, an Internet security and privacy consultant based in Boston.

That was precisely why Roos signed up -- and also how Discover plans to promote its Deskshop this fall.

Furman said: ``Is it necessary? It's akin to any other security thing you're willing to do. You put on your seat belt; you install an alarm system in your home. It's one extra layer to protect yourself.''BY CAROLINE E. MAYERWashington Post Service

Creating a Template in Word

Source: Word for Dummies.com

It's easy to create a Word template. You just create the document as you would normally and then use a special procedure to save the document as a template. You can include any of the following in a template: any text that all documents should include (company name, document title, address, date code, and so on); any graphic image that all documents should include (company logo, for example); formatting for the existing text and other elements such as the page margins, layout, border, and so on; styles; macros; and other customized options.

To create a template, follow these steps:

Open a new, blank document.

Type the text you want and format the template document as you want.

Click File, Save As.

Display the "Save as type" drop-down list and click Document Template as the type.

Select the folder where you want to place this template.

Type a name for the template and click the Save button.

Wireless Home Networks

September 11, 2005
Playing All the Angles in a Wireless Home Network

By KATE MURPHY

JOSEPH M. GRANT, a lawyer in the Houston suburb of Clear Lake, had little trouble setting up a wireless computer network in his house, which has high ceilings and an open floor plan. "It took less than a day," he said.

Susan Chun, the general manager for information planning at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, spent several days trying to do the same thing in her less airy, more angular Manhattan brownstone before she hired a computer consultant to do it for her. "I kept thinking I could make it work," she said. "I was being stubborn."

Depending on a home's location and layout, not to mention the size and complexity of the network, going wireless can be easy or aggravating. But even if you have no problem getting the network up and running, you may not get the clearest reception over the widest possible area. And computer experts say security probably won't be adequate.

Creating a reliable, fast, private wireless network is a matter of choosing the right equipment, placing it efficiently and tweaking the settings to suit the situation.

Why would anyone want a wireless network? For one thing, it's cheaper and less cumbersome than snaking wire throughout the house - and it grants freedom of movement.

"I can work at my laptop anywhere - on my back porch, in the kitchen, in bed," Mr. Grant said. His network also links the seven computers in his 4,600-square-foot house so that he, his wife and three children can swap documents and share one Internet connection. "I can also transmit music to speakers throughout the house, including my woodworking studio in the garage," he said.

Such connectivity and convenience require that all your computers have wireless adapters, which are essentially radio wave transceivers. Most new computers have them built in. If you have an older model, you can pay about $100 for what is known as a N.I.C., for network interface card - also called a P.I.C., for peripheral interconnect card. It fits into a slot on the side of a laptop or snaps into place inside a PC. There are also options that plug into U.S.B. ports.

Another necessity is a central base station, the device that will transmit the Internet feed throughout the house. The options are an access point and a router. Access points, which cost $50 to $100, simply broadcast the signal as it comes in through a cable or digital subscriber line, while routers, at $50 to $200, can manipulate and distribute the signal so that multiple operators can use the same Internet connection simultaneously. Routers also let in only the traffic that users ask for and thus act as firewalls against hackers and worms.

All the components, of course, must operate according to the same standard.

"There are several flavors of wireless equipment," said Steve Blass, a computer manager at Arizona State University in Tempe, who writes the weekly "Ask Dr. Internet" column for Network World, an information technology trade publication. The flavors are 802.11a, 802.11.b, or 802.11g, and there is no mixing to taste because they are not compatible. There are hybrid components, however, that will work with both b and g.

Choosing the standard that is right for you depends on your circumstances. The 802.11b devices are the least expensive and have the widest signal range, but the transmission is the slowest and the standard supports the fewest simultaneous users. The 802.11g standard supports faster transmission and allows more users, but it is prone to interference from other radio waves that may buzz through the airspace. The 802.11a products cost twice as much as the others because they are the least likely to experience such interference, but the signal is also the most easily obstructed by heavy furniture and walls.

Regardless of the standard you choose, you will get the widest broadcast area if the base station is placed centrally on an upper floor, or atop furniture, because radio waves spread best laterally and down. Reception will also be better if the signal does not have to travel at steep angles and if it doesn't have to go through thick walls, mirrors, fish tanks or anything metal.

One reason Ms. Chun had so much trouble in her 1909 brownstone was that many of the walls were made of metal and concrete. "I needed to be more strategic in terms of placement of the equipment," she said. Her consultant moved her router from the floor to a higher location where it didn't have to transmit through as many walls.

To improve the signal range of the base station, you can use access points as boosters throughout the house. For example, you can hook one up in a hallway on the first floor, directly below the router upstairs. The access point would then rebroadcast the router's signal with renewed strength to rooms at opposite ends of the corridor. Ms. Chun has an access point in the back portion of her house to increase the signal coming from her router, which is in the front.

Experts recommend placing wireless network components far from other devices in the house that can cause interference, like cordless phones, microwave ovens, baby monitors or halogen lamps. Of course, people living in crowded urban areas face a greater risk of outside interference from neighbors' wireless networks and devices.

To reduce such disruptions, you can go into the base station's configuration interface - usually by typing a specified address into the Internet browser - and change the signal channel. The user's manual will tell you how to do it.

"Most are set to Channel 6 by default," said Joe Bardwell, president of Connect802 Inc., a wireless network design and equipment company in San Ramon, Calif. So he suggested trying Channels 1 or 11, which are the least likely to overlap with other signals.

ANOTHER base station configuration that needs attention is the security setting. "Most people do not realize that they have no security unless they turn it on," said Charles Stanton, president of Manhattan Home Networks, which helps people in New York and New Jersey set up wireless home networks. It can be a tedious process, because you have to enter a code of up to 26 digits in the base station, as well as in all the computers in the network. (Again, consult the user's manual.)

But if you don't enable the security feature - called W.P.A., for Wi-Fi protected access, in newer wireless products, or W.E.P., for wired equivalent privacy, in older ones - anyone within range can tap into your Internet connection and use it, slowing or interrupting your signal. Worse, by using free, easily downloadable software, hackers can read any e-mail message you send or receive and possibly even gain access to your files.

"Someone out in their car on the street can infiltrate your network," Mr. Bardwell said. "Going wireless is great, but you need to know what you're doing."

Otherwise, the data you transmit are like feathers floating in the air - unlikely to land where you want them to and easy for other people to grab.

Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company

Researching Your Doctor Online

September 22, 2005
To Find a Doctor, Mine the Data
By MILT FREUDENHEIM

Now that millions of consumers are surfing the Web to research their own medical symptoms, many are taking the next step: comparison-shopping online for hospitals and doctors.

When Kirk Emerich, a bank executive in West Bend, Wis., needed knee surgery for a volleyball injury earlier this year, for example, he researched the local doctors and hospitals, using a Web site provided by his employer's insurer, Humana. The comparative data included the number of patients that the hospitals treated annually and the complication rates after surgery.

"Both our hospitals were pretty good," said Mr. Emerich, a senior vice president for West Bend Savings Bank. "But the doctor I ended up with had an edge: she was more focused on sports injuries."

As their out-of-pocket health care expenses continue to grow - through rising medical costs, higher insurance premiums and heftier co-payments - many people are using consumer skills well honed by online research on everything from digital cameras to S.U.V.'s. And their employers and insurers, intent on getting the best value from their own health spending, are arming those consumers with increasingly detailed searchable databases.

The data come from medical records that insurers are pressing doctors and hospitals to provide, and in some cases from patient surveys.

"We believe American consumers should know as much about the medical care they receive as they do about the vehicles they purchase," said Sharon Baldwin, a spokeswoman for General Motors, the nation's largest private purchaser of health care. Next month, G.M. plans to brief its salaried employees about their health benefit options for 2006, and will provide online information to help them make choices.

So far, the various consumer databases, many available only to individuals enrolled in insurance plans, have some gaps.

"We've got terrific measurements information in some areas, but in other areas we don't have good measurements at all," said Dr. Carolyn Clancy, director of the federal Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, which is working to standardize the way health care data are reported.

At this point, there is much more quality-of-care information available about hospitals than about individual doctors, except in nine states including Florida, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin that make statistics available on the numbers of procedures that surgeons perform.

And pricing information still tends to be scarce. But the databases can grow only more robust, now that the full weight of the health insurance industry is behind the trend and the federal government is beginning to wield its influence.

Anyone, insured or not, can now log on to the federal Department of Health and Human Services' Web site called Hospital Compare (hospitalcompare.hhs.gov), which uses Medicare and Medicaid data to assess the track records of more than 4,000 hospitals around the country.

Want to know which hospitals in your city to go to for treating heart attacks or pneumonia? Log on to Hospital Compare, plug in the step-by-step particulars, and judge for yourself, based on criteria that include whether the hospitals provide appropriate medicines when patients are admitted and discharged.

The government also plans to begin reporting on complications after surgery and whether doctors and nurses make clear to patients how to take care of themselves after a hospital stay, said Dr. Mark B. McClellan, administrator of the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid.

Private health plans typically provide more comparative data than the federal Web site. Yesterday, Wellpoint, the nation's largest commercial health insurer, announced that its 28 million members would be able to log on to an expanded list of health care information services. The service is to include software to help members compare their own potential costs under various health plans. Wellpoint began providing consumer information for comparing hospitals several years ago.

Vivian Johnson is a Wellpoint enrollee who works for the Banta Corporation, a national printing company. When she transferred to Lancaster, Pa., from Utah earlier this year, Ms. Johnson used a Wellpoint system to research doctors for herself and pediatricians for her 2-year-old daughter, Averie.

"I relied heavily on certain statistics," Ms. Johnson said, like "how many patients the doctors treated, where they were located and in some cases feedback from consumers."

Besides Wellpoint and Humana, most of the big insurance companies - including United Healthcare, Aetna and Cigna, as well as many state and regional Blue Cross and Blue Shield insurers - provide this type of information. One of the most recent to join the wave was Michigan Blue Cross and Blue Shield, which on Sept. 1 started offering online hospital and doctor comparisons to its 4.7 million members.

"The insurance carriers are all headed in this direction," said Dale Whitney, corporate health and welfare manager for United Parcel Service, which offers plans from all the big national health insurers to its 328,000 employees across the country. "A lot of employers are trying to get people to say, 'Yes, I have some responsibility to take care of my health.' "

The raw material for the information on the Web systems is typically assembled from data that include medical payment claims, hospitals' reports to Medicare and health care information from employers who belong to an alliance known as the Leapfrog Group.

Companies that collect and organize the information include Subimo, a privately held company that supplies data for Wellpoint and Michigan Blue Cross, among other insurers; HealthShare Technology, which was recently acquired by WebMD; and Health Grades, based in Golden, Colo.

In May, Wellpoint bought Lumenos, a data compiler. And last year, UnitedHealth Group bought Definity Health, a company that, like Lumenos, operates high-deductible health savings plans and provides comparative data for consumers.

The ability to compare costs is especially important for a growing number of employers seeking to interest their workers in high-deductible health savings plans that offer lower premiums at the onset but require plan members to assume more of the financial burden when they need care.

The Detroit auto companies, which spend billions of dollars annually on employee health benefits, are among the large employers considering making such plans an option. DaimlerChrysler said last week that it would offer a high-deductible plan along with online information about the quality and costs of certain doctors.

Specialists say that, so far, the sources of information are far from perfect. Data based on medical claims payments can be particularly sketchy and unreliable, said R. Heather Palmer, a professor of health policy and management at the Harvard School of Public Health. "The hope," she said, "is that as we move toward electronic medical records, we will get data with more clinical detail."

The data collecting companies make no claim of perfection. "In the absence of perfect information, we help equip people so they know what questions to ask to be smarter consumers of health care," said Ann Mond Johnson, chief executive of Subimo, a five-year-old company based in Chicago.

Most specialists agree that improvements depend on achieving a standardized, computerized approach to collecting and assembling medical data at all levels, from big hospitals to small doctors' offices - a long-range goal of the Bush administration.

Until information technology is more widely available, "it is extremely difficult to collect this information, and it is expensive," said Charles N. Kahn III, president of the Federation of American Hospitals, a trade group of for-profit hospitals.

But others say that, technology questions aside, medical care providers need to be more forthcoming with information.

"For the last 15 years, the hospital industry has resisted public reporting," said Dr. Mark D. Smith, president of the California Health Care Foundation, a nonprofit research organization. Doctors and hospitals are still reluctant, he said, "but they are increasingly comfortable with the inevitability and desirability of public reporting on performance." He added, "It's a huge improvement."

The foundation has a Web site (calhospitals.org), which uses patient survey data to enable anyone to compare California hospitals within a county or metropolitan region on a wide range of performance criteria.

Margaret O'Kane, president of the National Committee for Quality Assurance, which certifies health plans, said the hospitals had a lot to answer for. "There are huge issues out there in the number of people being harmed by hospitals," she said, referring to statistics indicating that tens of thousands of hospital patients die each year from avoidable medical errors.

Publishing more quality data can help change that. "No hospital wants to have data out there that makes them look like poor performers," she said.

Mr. Kahn, of the hospitals federation, acknowledged that "consumer education is part of the future." But, he added, "we are only at the beginning of knowing what information to collect to get a meaningful reflection of the quality of specific institutions."

Even so, Mr. Emerich, who found his knee surgeon online, says the information already available is helpful. His operation turned out well. "I'm fully active, with no restrictions," he said. But, he conceded, at age 42 it might be time to think about giving up volleyball.

Display 2000 Census Data on Google Maps

http://65.39.85.13/google/

Lifehacker: Google Maps the Census report

A new Google Maps application displays 2000 Census data when you click on a location on the map, like total population, median age, and average income.

For example, New Yorkers like me might be interested to see how wildly average income varies - from around $20k to well over $100k - in very close areas. Great research tool for anyone looking to relocate.

Census Maps [AnalyGIS via Waxy]