I am constantly receiving offers in the mail or attached to my credit card bill to consolidate my debt or a check to spend on whatever I want. It is tempting, but there is always a cost. Have you seen the ads on TV or heard them on the radio? If you are considering debt consolidation, this article has some great information on options available and defines the different options.
With in the last six months, two of my credit cards were replaced with capital one cards. The company had sold to Capital One. Shortly after I heard of the credit breach at Capital One. I had already put a freeze on my credit, but monitoring is still an important step to making sure my credit is safe. Here is a summary of an article by Seena Gressi, Attorney, Division of Consumer and Business Educatio.
Capital One has delivered it with its announcement that a data breach has exposed the personal information of 106 million of its credit card customers and credit card applicants in the United States and Canada.
In the Capital One breach, 100 million people in the United States and 6 million in Canada were affected. According to the bank, most of the stolen information came from the credit card applications of consumers and small businesses. The information includes names, dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers, and more, all from applications filed between 2005 and early 2019.
For credit card holders, the stolen information includes credit scores, credit limits, balances, payment history, contact information and some transaction data. The bank says the hacker also stole about 140,000 Social Security numbers, 80,000 linked bank account numbers of secured credit card holders, as well as the Social Insurance Numbers of about one million Canadians.
Capital One has posted information about the breach and says it will notify the people affected and offer them free credit monitoring and identity protection services. However, whether or not you were affected, there is no time like the present to check your free credit report and take other steps to protect against identity theft.
A data breach is a magnet for scammers. Be alert to emails and calls pretending to be from Capital One or the government. Neither the bank nor the government will send an email or call you to ask for credit card or account information or your Social Security number.
I read this article from the FTC and decided to click on the link and found out that my information had been compromised, so I filed a claim and it only took a few minutes and was easy. Think about checking your information. Here is a summary of the article.
byRobert Schoshinski
Assistant Director, Division of Privacy and Identity Protection
The FTC and others reached a settlement with Equifax about its September 2017 data breach that exposed personal information of 147 million people. Everyone should go to ftc.gov/Equifax, where you can find out if your information was exposed and learn how to file a claim with the company in charge of the claims process.
The public response to the settlement has been overwhelming, and millions of people have visited ftc.gov/Equifax and gone on to the settlement website’s claims form.
But there’s a downside to this unexpected number of claims. First, though, the good: all 147 million people can ask for and get free credit monitoring. There’s also the option for people who certify that they already have credit monitoring to claim up to $125 instead. But the pot of money that pays for that part of the settlement is $31 million. A large number of claims for cash instead of credit monitoring means only one thing: each person who takes the money option will wind up only getting a small amount of money. Nowhere near the $125 they could have gotten if there hadn’t been such an enormous number of claims filed.
So, if you haven’t submitted your claim yet, think about opting for the free credit monitoring instead. The free credit monitoring is worth a lot more – the market value would be hundreds of dollars a year. And this monitoring service is probably stronger and more helpful than any you may have already, because it monitors your credit report at all three nationwide credit reporting agencies, and it comes with up to $1 million in identity theft insurance and individualized identity restoration services.
For those who have already submitted claims for this cash payment, look for an email from the settlement administrator. They’ll be asking you for the name of the credit monitoring service you already have. Or, if you want to change your mind, you’ll have a chance to switch to the free credit monitoring. The email from the settlement administrator will tell you what to do next, in either case. And the settlement administrator has said that the claims website will soon be updated with that information, too.
Please also note that there is still money available under the settlement to reimburse people for what they paid out of their pocket to recover from the breach. Say you had to pay for your own credit freezes after the breach, or you hired someone to help you deal with identity theft. The settlement has a larger pool of money for just those people. If you’re one of them, use your documents to submit your claim.
I have and many of the people that I have talked to have. Don't get taken, Here is an article from the FTC Blog
By Jim Kreidler
Consumer Education Specialist, FTC
We’ve seen a new twist on the Social Security Administration (SSA) scam recently. Check out this SSA imposter robocall, which says your benefits will end. (That’s not true, by the way.)
If you get a call like this, do not press 1. Instead, just hang up and remember:
Your Social Security number is not about to be suspended.
The real Social Security Administration will never call to threaten your benefits.
The real SSA will never tell you to wire money, send cash, or put money on a gift card.
The Social Security Administration scam is the number one scam reported to the FTC right now. People filed nearly 73,000 reports about Social Security imposters in the first six months of 2019, with reported losses of $17 million. (You can explore the data about imposter scams and losses at ftc.gov/exploredata.)
So if you’re getting these calls, you’re not alone. Tell your friends and neighbors about this scam. Tell them to hang up the phone. And then to report it to the Federal Trade Commission.
Vitamin K is an essential fat-soluble nutrient found in leafy green
vegetables, broccoli and Brussels sprouts. It plays a key role in the
body’s system for controlling bleeding. Now, Tufts’ HNRCA scientists are
exploring vitamin K’s potential role in keeping joint cartilage
healthy.
Preliminary studies in humans and animals suggest that getting
adequate amounts of vitamin K might help to slow the progression of
osteoarthritis—a common condition marked by breakdown of joint cartilage
and associated inflammation and disability. An estimated 30 million
Americans have osteoarthritis.
Right now, it’s known that maintaining a healthy weight and being
physically active can slow down osteoarthritis, but doctors don’t have
other ways to prevent or treat it beyond symptom control. That could
change if vitamin K research pans out.
“What’s really compelling about the osteoarthritis story is that
there is no medical treatment for it, even though osteoarthritis the
most common disabling disease in the lower extremities in older adults,”
says Sarah Booth, PhD, senior scientist and director of the Tufts’
HNRCA Vitamin K Laboratory. “People are looking for dietary
interventions, and vitamin K has promise.”
Vitamin K basics: Vitamin K was originally
discovered because of its role in blood clotting, which protects you
from excessive bleeding after an injury. Not coincidentally, the “K” in
vitamin K comes from the German word for “coagulation.” People who take
the blood thinner warfarin (Coumadin) have to make sure to keep their
dietary intake of vitamin K steady. Changes in vitamin K can alter
Coumadin’s effects.
Protecting joints: Booth has been involved in
research on vitamin K and arthritis for more than a decade. She and
colleagues at Boston University were actually the first scientists to
explore the vitamin K-osteoarthritis connection.
Currently, Booth is working with Tufts’ HNRCA colleague Kyla Shea,
PhD, to better understand the role of vitamin K in osteoarthritis.
Vitamin K is present in multiple organs and tissues, including the
liver, heart and pancreas. Booth and Shea are focusing on the nutrient’s
role in helping the body thwart a damaging build up of calcium in joint
cartilage, called calcification.
With funding from the National Institutes of Health, Shea has published a study in Arthritis Care & Research
that suggests vitamin K may work with vitamin D to prevent
calcification. If so, it implies that an overall healthy diet may help
people with knee arthritis to experience less pain and disability.
Vitamins and Daily Function: The study involved two
different groups of older adults, average age 60 to 75. In one study,
Shea and her colleagues evaluated the participants’ daily intakes of
vitamins K and D based on food questionnaires and assessed their walking
speed and ability to perform chair stands, a test of leg function,
every year for 4 years. In the other study, Researchers measured blood
levels of vitamin K and D levels and lower-extremity function three
times over 4 to 5 years. In both studies, the people who had adequate
levels of vitamin K and D were able to walk usual distances faster and
rise from a chair or sit back down again more easily.
It’s not entirely understood why people with knee arthritis appear to
benefit from having adequate levels of vitamins K and D. Subject to
confirmation in further research, Booth and Shea suspect it’s because
both K and D are required to insure the proper functioning of the
matrix-Gla protein (MGP), a protein that appears to help prevent
calcification. Joint tissue needs vitamin D to manufacture MGP; then,
vitamin K triggers a biochemical change that makes MGP fully functional.
Vitamin K Shortfall: There may be a substantial
number of people not getting the recommended adequate intake of vitamin
K. Two graduate students in Booth’s lab, Stephanie Harshman and Emily
Finnan, recently completed a study based on data from the National
Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Their analysis covered the
period before 1997—when the recommended daily intake of vitamin K was
set—to the present.
“In the late 1990s, older men and women were consuming below the
adequate intake of vitamin K,” Booth says. “Older women now meet the
adequate intake, but we estimate about 65 percent of men are not meeting
the current adequate intake.”
According to guidelines, the adequate daily intake of vitamin K for
adults aged 19 years and older is 120 micrograms (mcg) for men and 90
mcg for women.
“We believe that vitamin deficiency isn’t what causes the start of
calcification,” Booth says. “Something else will start the process, such
as injury or inflammation. Then, if there’s not enough vitamin K, MGP
doesn’t function, and it can’t stop the calcification from spreading.”
Some
studies suggest that for those with mild osteoarthritis, regular
walking, or even light jogging, can slow disease progression.
What Should You Do?
Booth does not recommend that people with arthritis start taking more
than the recommended amounts of vitamin K and D (in the form of
supplements) in hopes of enhancing MGP’s protective powers. “You would
only see a change in people who are very low in vitamin K and vitamin
D,” Booth says. “We are not promoting supplementation of these vitamins.
We are targeting people who are not getting enough.”
So, in addition to supporting blood clotting, vitamin K may help to
slow the progression of joint damage from arthritis—but it will take a
clinical trial to establish that definitively. For now, just get the
recommended amounts of vitamin K and D from your diet recommended by the
National Academy of Medicine. Eat green leafy vegetables, which provide
phylloquinone, the main form of vitamin K obtained from plant foods.
You see the ads on TV, hear them on the radio, or read them in print and online: attorneys telling you about the dangers of certain prescription drugs. Many of these ads open with “medical alert,” “health alert” or “consumer alert” to get your attention. The ads generally say that if you or a loved one has been injured by a certain prescription medication, you may be entitled to compensation, and to contact the law firm for more information.
The FTC, the nation’s consumer protection agency, says that if you’re thinking about stopping your prescription medications for any reason, talk with your doctor first. Some attorney ads may overstate the risks of the drugs they talk about. But even when they don’t, the benefits of the drugs at issue may outweigh the risks. In fact, the FTC is aware of reports of serious and tragic consequences — including death — that happened when people stopped taking their medications without first talking with their health care professionals.
Just because a lawyer talks about the dangers of a drug doesn’t mean you should stop taking it. In fact, it might be more dangerous if you stop taking it. Check with your doctor before you stop taking any prescription medication.
