For those of you who are not yet aware of this, you probably should be as it potentially impacts very heavily on all of us.

If you applied for, took out or had basically any dealings with student loans between 2000 and 2006, the Federal Gov't has "lost" a USB stick and an external hard drive containing the names, SIN #, contact information including phone #, credit information, birth date etc. (basically anything that was on the application form) for 583,000 people.

This is enough information to both steal your identity, and seriously defraud you by taking credit out under your name. According to the gov't they are contacting everyone, but since a lot of you may not be using the same mailing address, you may never see the letter informing you of the loss of this information.

There is a phone number (1-866-885-1866) you can call to see if you had your information "lost".

If you are one of those unfortunate people, I recommend the following:

1) go in to your bank and tell them you want to be informed ANY time that they are contacted with respect to your credit information. Any attempt to use the information to take credit out under you or to steal your identity will usually involve your bank being contacted in some manner.

2) have your account flagged by the larger credit ratings companies, Equifax or TransUnion come to mind. It is up you if you choose to have credit reports run by them as this costs money. At this point, the Feds are pretty much refusing to cover any costs associated with covering your back-sides.

3) Optional, but depending on how angry you are, there are several major class-action lawsuits being launched over this. You may wish to join one.

4) Inform EVERYONE who may also be affected by this. There have been reports of people on the list being victims of identity theft already though no direct link to the information from the lists being used in those thefts has yet been established. Honestly one person suffering because of this is too many.

I will be following this closely and I know a lot of people who will be doing the same. Keep an eye on your information please.

This is what I'm about to send off. Should I tweak anything? Be totally deadpan and to the point, or add a little more flair? Input is welcome.

Wow, that is quite the story Frank! I hope you and your wife have a fruitful life in West Africa. Sorry for the late response, though I am still interested in the apartment. I'll fill out your form as best I can. I am very clean and punctual. I will take care of your property as if it were my own.God will guide us through this.
My name is Jesse Taylor Hitchen.
I am a bricklayer.
I was born June 19th 1988
My phone # is 4168824747
I am unmarried and Celibate.
I have no children.
33 gerrard st w
Toronto
Ontario
M5G1Z4.
4 years
I am leaving because my lease is ending and the space is not right for me anymore.
rent is $1200/ month
I have two cars
There are 5 of us that will be living together. We are celibate together.
I would like to rent from you for 12 months
February 1st is my desired occupancy date

I hope this covers what you need to know. If you have any other questions, please do not hesitate to contact me

Regards,
Jesse

Via Exp.lore.com:

Alan Watt’s famous, recently resurfaced lecture on what you would do if money were no object from the golden age of popularizing Eastern philosophy in the West, adapted as a comic by ZenPencils, who have previously given us Neil deGrasse Tyson’s brilliant monologue about the universe.

.

Complement with how to find your purpose and do what you love and 5½ timeless commencement speeches that teach you to define your own success.

... I wish I knew how to make the image fit the space... sorry gang.
(PM: Done.)

That actually made me think of a fun end-of-class game for my ESL kids. I say a word and they write as many meanings as they can think of.

Sweet.

Another one for you, Jess

O.M.G. you can move the search results around, too. Beck, this is the coolest thing ever. It's made me lose all sense of reality, AND use horrendous internet acronyms.

hahaha! Beck! That is the most hilarious thing ever. It actually messes with me enough that I can't think straight when I'm on the site... wow.

maybe that says something about how I relate to reality. ... meh!


Also, Jesse, PLEASE fill in the form! and report back, too. A friend of mine almost got scammed like that in e-town recently. (or perhaps not, but it was hard to tell "Am in England at the moment. Would love to rent place to you. Please let me know if you're still interested.") I think I'll be launching into a similar search soon, too. ... I'm just not sure which city it'll be in.

The scam can be twofold -
1) get enough personal info from you for some regular old identity theft
2) get you to pony up a damage deposit and a couple of months advanced rent and they'll mail you the key that they took to africa with them (hint: the key never arrives, and the apartment probably isn't even a rental - the owners are just on vacation or something)

In other news, this is now the coolest way to google

Yeah Jesse I'm curious too! Nadeesha ended up getting something crazy like that when looking for places in Victoria. I don't get the scam though. Maybe the ask comes later...

@Jesse - you can't not do it. Please, please fill that out with some fake information and let us know what the next response is!