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Identity thieves steal identities by retrieving credit card offers from trash cans and the filling sending them in using their own addresses. Law professor Jeff Sovern reports that
he told his class the Fair Credit Reporting Act requires the credit card issuers to allow consumers to opt out of the applications (15 U.S.C. § 1681b(e)), thus reducing the likelihood that an identity thief will steal their identity.

But most people don’t opt out and instead tear up the applications and his students brought up a MSNBC story about how a consumer tore an application up, then taped it back together, and sent it in using a different address. Chase sent him the credit card anyway.

Prof Sovern recommends that consumers should opt-out of credit card solicitations. For the FTC’s advice on how to do so, go here.

Education Realty Trust has had its contract renewed for five years to manage Granville Towers, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s large housingmunity, the Memphis-basedpany said today.

The 1,328-bed, 363-unit housingplex sits on the edge of campus.

Education Realty Trust is one of the nation’s largest developers, owners and managers of collegiate housing.

At nearly 50 years old, Granville Towers is believed to be the first purpose-built, privatized collegiate housing in the United States.

EDR (as Allen and O’Hara) developed and built Granville Towers, and has managed the facilities ever since.

Chapel Hill Foundation Real Estate Holdings, an entity of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Foundation, bought Granville Towers in 2009.

Some of the most interesting data to be added to the recent edition of the Internet Statistics Compendium includes fresh research from IAB on how Europeans use mobile internet at the same time as other media. 

‘Media meshing’ is evident across the continent, but some countries are more keen to mix the mobile web with traditional information sources than others.

The latest white paper from IAB Europe offers a comprehensive look at the state of mobile internet across the continent. But it is the way Europeans are surfing the mobile web at the same time as watching TV, listening to the radio, using desktops and laptops, and reading the printed word, behaviour which IAB is calling ‘media meshing’, which is of particular interest. 

In short, Europeans are first rate ‘media meshers,’ but from country to country the degree to which mobile internet is used at the same time as other media can vary greatly.

Somewhat surprisingly, here in the UK we are fairly conservative with how we mix mobile internet and other media. While nearly

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Cloud file storage and syncing service Dropbox is arguably one of the hottest startups in Silicon Valley. It recently hit two big milestones: 25m users, and 200m files saved each day, and appears to have a very bright future.

But it also has a bit of explaining to do following a change to its Terms of Service.

The change: a clause indicating that Dropbox will “[cooperate] with United States law enforcement when it receives valid legal process, which may require Dropbox to provide the contents of your private Dropbox“.

As part of this, the company “will remove Dropbox’s encryption from the files before providing them to law enforcement.” Standard fare legal terms typical for such a service, right?

Yes, but there’s just one problem: Dropbox isn’t supposed to be able to do this. As noted by software developer Miguel de Icaza, who started the GNOME project, Dropbox has previously created the impression that it can’t access user files even if it wants to. <

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Rebounding from its performance slide in the fourth quarter, Memphis-based First Horizon National Corp. on Thursday reported first-quarter net ie of $40.1 million available tomon shareholders, or 15 cents per diluted share.

The turnaround was a wee contrast to a loss of $27.6 million, or 12 cents, in the same period from a year ago, the bank said.

In January, the Memphis-based parentpany of First Tennessee Bank reported a loss for the fourth quarter of 2010 after it repaid nearly $867 million in Troubled Asset Relief Program funds it received in October 2008 as part of the federal bailout plan.

On Thursday, bank officials viewed the first-quarter results with cautious optimism, underscored in part by an announcement earlier this week that thepany approved a quarterly cash dividend of $.01 a share onmon stock.

And thepany’s regional banking through First Tennessee and capital markets through FTN Financial remained solid, reporting improved credit quality and strong capital ratios.

Pretax ie in the regional bank increased 4 percent from the fourth quarter of 2010.

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I recently embarked on fixing up the old house. I have blogged a bit about it. The one thing I found that I was and am constantly going back and forth to a couple of different hardware store picking up big items and little items. All sorts of items I think I need. Like any hack handyman I end buying lots of things I just dont need and have to return.

What I have done is taken a larger size plastic freezer baggie, put it in a drawer that I walk by every time I come home and put my receipts in it. I probably have a entire receipt printer spool saved up in my bag from all of the trips I have been making lately.

 Now when I have to return something I just sort through the bag and find the receipt I need and off the hardware store I go. This method has saved my bacon and saved me money a couple of times already this month.

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