Comments on: Ben Stein’s sleazy paymasters

By: Brian

Brian — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 08:32:30 +0000

I just got taken by those guys too. They promise a free credit report, but charge $60 to the credit card anyway after seven days. Since Bank of America doesn’t consider them fraudulent, it refused to protect me against further charges. As a result, I was forced to cancel by Bank of America credit card to prevent future unwanted charges.

By: RJ

RJ — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 02:49:18 +0000

You are writing on a page advertising Michael Parness get rich quick products. Forgive me if I find your indignation a little suspect

By: David H.

David H. — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 20:10:05 +0000

Glad to see the puncturing of the Stein pinata. I wrote a blog entry once about how a desperate-to-please-evangelicals Stein equated scientists with genocidal Nazi figures.

Here’s my short post:

http://blog.davidhildebrand.org/2008/05/ ben-stein-and-new-york-times.html

By: Warren Terra

Warren Terra — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 08:19:01 +0000

Felix and others shouldn’t confuse “pseudonymity” and “anonymity”. From a polite behavior standpoint, not a legal one, I see nothing wrong with principled pseudonymity; anonymity is more troublesome.

By: Eric Kodjo Ralph

Eric Kodjo Ralph — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 16:53:15 +0000

Creepy!

Give me cockroaches any day.

By: James Howard

James Howard — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 23:10:50 +0000

“I just got taken by those guys. I had used intellius to background check myself. Got a worthless product from them and 3 days after started getting charged by ‘value max’. I didn’t notice for 6 months. Luckily I was able to challenge 4 months worth. Still they stole $40 from me.”

One way to avoid this is to get a credit card that allows you to generate on-demand sub-account numbers, and then limit the sub-account to the exact amount you’re charging for a one-time on-line use such as Intellus. You can also manually delete the sub-account once it’s been used. AT&T’s Universal MasterCard (via Chase) offers this feature, for example.

By: Unsympathetic

Unsympathetic — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 18:07:33 +0000

VS: Why should the court compel them to receive information regarding a blog post that was so inflammatory that they… didn’t bother to contact the author for over a month?

By: VS

VS — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:16:10 +0000

“If they had any problem with the blog entries, that was the time to say so — not now, when the whole episode is already half-forgotten.”

Which law compels them to contact you or the author of the comment first?

By: Paul

Paul — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:09:21 +0000

I’m very happy that you bring stuff like this out in the public’s view. Fraud is so widespread, we definitely need to do something about it. Great job!

By: Paul Alan Levy

Paul Alan Levy — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 14:09:41 +0000

Our brief makes the point that even thoughAdaptive had Flaneur’s email address — in fact, that is why Adaptive seeks discovery from Yahoo!, which does not host the blog, but provides the flaneur email address as noted on the blog — it did not make any effort to notify Flaneur of its attempt to take away her First Amendment right to speak anonymously. But your point that Adaptive has not objected to Flaneur (or to you — nice to know that fact) about the content of the posts may be even more important from a policy perspective, as well as providing a window into Adaptive’s motives here. Thanks for this observation.

By: HB

HB — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:01:03 +0000

Sadly, Connecticut seems to be home of a number of “hidden charge fee” sleazoids, based in the Norwalk – Stamford area. They specialize in getting people signed up [usually without their knowledge] for monthly service fees, for some vaguely-specified service … typically discount home, travel or automobile clubs.

The actual usefulness of these companies is virtually nil. Their business models are entirely based on scamming people who don’t check their credit card bills monthly. This is very similar to the telephone “cramming” schemes, which cause small charges to appear on your monthly phone bills.

When you see one of these unknown charges on your bills, dispute them early and often!

By: zach

zach — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:35:36 +0000

I just got taken by those guys. I had used intellius to background check myself. Got a worthless product from them and 3 days after started getting charged by ‘value max’. I didn’t notice for 6 months. Luckily I was able to challenge 4 months worth. Still they stole $40 from me.

Check your statements kids.

By: Jared Rice

Jared Rice — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 02:29:39 +0000

If possible, please let us in on how this case turns out!