Honeysuckle and security

The honeysuckle Maria planted on the far side of our backyard chain link fence to enhance our privacy is thriving and in bloom.

About the only thing our yard lacks, now that we’ve planted seven new trees this spring, is peonies. The peony is the state flower of Indiana and I’ve loved them since I was a kid. The house where I lived from birth through my third grade year had a row of peony plants separating our backyard from the neighbors’ property. They bloom in May in Indiana and my mother would put bunches of them into water-filled coffee cans on Memorial Day to place on the far-flung ancestral graves.

Since Northeast Arkansas averages 10 degrees warmer than our Indiana home year round, I wasn’t surprised to see a peony bush exploding with white blossoms last week across the street from the Brookland Post Office.

So maybe we can have some peonies next spring.

On a completely different matter, the discovery yesterday that any number of our critical documents valuable to identity thieves are out there in the wild on photocopier hard drives drove home the point that we are very vulnerable. No matter how diligent we are about shredding mail and other sensitive documents, securing our computers and being careful in what web sites we visit and what email attachments we open, the security hole represented by copier hard drives makes all our other efforts pointless.

Our sensitive information is out there in the hard drives of copiers at various businesses, governmental agencies, banks, realty offices, medical practices, insurance agencies, and even the pay-as-you go copiers at libraries and post offices. And in most cases, the people owning or leasing those copiers have no idea there are hard drives inside that save a digital copy of every document that gets scanned. So when they sell or return those copiers, all of that personal information goes out the door with them. There are warehouses full of used copiers with hard drives holding hundreds of thousands of personal documents just waiting for someone to download and use or sell. CBS News bought three such used copiers for $300 each and found sensitive information on all three – one from a police department’s drug branch, one from a police department’s sex crimes division and another from a private business.

I was sufficiently alarmed that I signed us up this morning for Lifelock identity theft protection. Using a promo code, I got coverage for myself and Maria for $27 a month. They say they’ll protect you up to $1 million, which is plenty for us. The use of a promo code saved us $36 a year, so before you sign up, Google “lifelock promo code” and use a resulting site as your entrance to the Lifelock site.

I feel better already.