The other day, my sister had almost $1500 taken out of her checking account because, as a brand new customer to Paypal she mistakenly responded to a fraudulent Paypal phish email and the scum bags tapped into her personal account.

Thankfully, she acted fast, and her financial institutions were on the ball and very helpful.  However, she had to change a zillion passwords, re-open new accounts and sweat quite a few bullets.

And remember to always report any fraudulent activity like this to Equifax if this happens to you, they will flag your name so all the credit reporting agencies can monitor your accounts.

Among the many lessons we all learned from this awful stunt, is that protecting our identity is more important than ever, and it doesn’t stop with online protection. Our offices – be they home or personal – in many ways need to be well oiled machines. We need secure wireless, reliable data back up, good shredders and maybe even some environmentally conscious attempts…if you’re not completely worn out from trying to keep all your personal information your own.

We are not even close to living in a paperless world, which means we have a lot of valuable information floating around. Personally, I like shredding documents about as much as I like cleaning the bathtub, but Home Improvement Ideas discovered two awesome shredders that might make the task a bit more enjoyable.

...continued: ID Security For Your Office

Doggerelblogger of Canada is a lover of widgets – little bits of downloadable code that can do cool things on your Mac OS X dashboard. You can get daily astronomical photographs, complete with notations by leading astronomers. You can get the entire upcoming NFL 2006 season with automatically updating results. You can even get your very own Chi Pet that grows its green fur every two days…but only if you remember to water it. Now that’s e-life.

Cathryn Symons is Camden Kiwi, a New Zealander living in the wilds of Camden in the UK who blogs about green living an life in general…and she’s found a new love.  “Okay,”  she admits, “I know I shouldn’t succumb to the joy of gadgets, but this one is very seductive. My new Vodafone 1605 (aka. HTC TyTN) phone / PDA / baby laptop / camera / dictaphone thingy arrived last Tuesday, and it is amazing. So far, I’ve used it to take photos, make a blog entry, scribble some notes, wake me up on time, send a few emails, keep my contacts and appointments and even to make phone calls. I haven’t yet figured out how to get it to feed the cat, but I’m sure that function is in there somewhere.”

For ThisNext, intelligent consumption means choosing products that help prevent potential problems — instead of waiting till the trouble starts. So we’re curious about the Smart Cat Touchpad, an ergonomic mouse alternative recommended by Paul Freibott at Lime’s Stuff We Like blog. Freibott, whose bout with repetitive strain injury once had him “laid up for nearly three weeks with inflammation, pain, muscle spasms, and numbness in my arms, wrists, and elsewhere,” suggests the Touchpad to any heavy clickers with sore index fingers. Compatible with both PCs and Macs, the device “works just like a laptop touchpad except that you can pick it up and use various fingers, including your thumb.” Freibott alternates the Touchpad with two other mouse alternatives to avoid repetitive movements and keep his hands healthy and happy.