Public Service Announcement

A way of stealing that I never thought of - Check Washing

How would you like to hand someone a blank check? Pretty dumb, right? Well check washing is a growing problem and it essentially puts a blank check in your name in the hands of criminals that are more than willing to fill out any dollar amount to their own bank accounts. Check washing is the process of taking a check that's already been filled out, removing the ink from a pen, then re-writing in a new dollar amount and recipient.

The purpose of this project is to show how easy it is to wash a check and to raise awareness of the best defenses against check washing. In the following pages you will see that I've written out eight checks out to myself and attempted to "wash" the checks in order to write in new dollar amounts. The main target of this experiment is to see what pen defends against check washing the best.

Basically, it's possible. The multitude of possibilities are endless. Fodder for the next novel, I say.

The other one that plagues me is all of those credit card offers that go to my address that aren't for me. I'm forced to assume that mine must go to my old addresses as well. One bad egg and my credit history is toast. Such has happened to Jory and caused endless trouble which she has shared with readers everywhere. One good thing to come of it is at the end of her latest post: where to go to prevent problems. One link is an opt out for the three major credit bureaus selling of your contact information. Your name and mailing information is removed from their lists. Go here to opt out.

The best thing is to check, not when making major purchases, but periodically. AnnualCreditReports.com is the place to go for that. No link provided as it won't load to the site anyway.