It’s Time to Cancel Your Forgotten Internet Accounts

From the Wall Street Journal:

Yahoo Inc.’s revelation of a massive 2014 security breach might have reminded you of an old account or two you haven’t logged into for years.

No good comes from leaving details of your identity—alternate email addresses, date of birth and, yes, passwords—floating around the backwaters of the internet. Hackers who find their way into one account, dormant or still in use, can exploit details such as PINs or security-question answers to get into other accounts. That’s right, your old AOL Instant Messenger account could compromise your Facebook account.

It’s best to reduce your overall exposure. Think of it as a pruning exercise.

Before you start shuttering accounts, consider a few things. You might lose access to services you never knew were related. Your Yahoo account, for example, gets you into the popular photo site Flickr. Your Hotmail email address could be your login for Xbox Live, Office 365 or Skype.

Respect the finality of your decision—when you’re out, you’re out. But canceling isn’t always easy.

Corporate Crime Database

[As shared on the BUSLIB business librarian listserv]

Since the beginning of 2010, drug manufacturers, hospital systems, insurers and other healthcare companies have paid nearly $7 billion in fines and settlements to resolve cases in which they were accused of defrauding the federal government. Banks, led by Wells Fargo, account for the second largest portion of False Claims Act penalties, with more than $3 billion in payments. More than one-third of the 100 largest federal contractors have been defendants in such cases during the seven-year period.

These are some of the key findings that emerge from an expansion of Violation Tracker, a database of corporate crime and misconduct produced by the Corporate Research Project of Good Jobs First. It is available to the public for free at http://www.goodjobsfirst.org/violation-tracker.

With the addition of more than 750 cases relating to the 150-year-old False Claims Act and similar laws, Violation Tracker now contains a total of 112,000 entries from 30 federal regulatory agencies and all divisions of the Justice Department.

HP printers stop accepting third party ink en masse

From BoingBoing

On September 13, owners of HP OfficeJet, OfficeJet Pro and OfficeJet Pro X began contacting third-party ink vendors by the thousand, reporting that their HP printers no longer accepted third-party ink.

The last HP printer firmware update was pushed in March 2016, and it appears that with that update (or possibly an earlier one), HP had set a time-bomb ticking in its customers' printers counting down to the date when they'd begin refusing to follow their owners' orders.

HP says that the March update's purpose was "to protect HP's innovations and intellectual property."

See also HP printers start rejecting budget ink cartridges

Eggo Nutri-Grain Whole Wheat Waffles Recall

The Kellogg Company is voluntarily recalling its Eggo Nutri-Grain Whole Wheat Waffles after routine tests by the company found potential contamination for Listeria. At this time, Kellogg is recalling 10,000 cases of the product distributed in 25 states (CO, CT, DE, GA, IA, IL, IN, KS, MA, MD, ME, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, VA, VT, WI, WY). 

Listeria can cause serious and sometimes fatal infections in various age groups. Learn more about the product recall, and package UPC Code. Consumers can discard the product and contact the company for a full refund by email or by calling 1-800-962-1413.

Learn more about food safety and recalls by visting us at USA.gov. 

Unmarried and Single Americans Week: Sept. 18-24, 2016

The Buckeye Singles Council started “National Singles Week” in Ohio in the 1980s to celebrate single life and recognize singles and their contributions to society. The week is now widely observed during the third full week of September (Sept. 18-24 in 2016) as “Unmarried and Single Americans Week,” an acknowledgment that many unmarried Americans do not identify with the word “single” because they are parents, have partners or are widowed. In this edition of Facts for Features, unmarried people include those who were never married, widowed or divorced, unless otherwise noted. Single Life 109 million The number of unmarried people in America 18 and older in 2015. This group made up 45 percent of all U.S. residents 18 and older. Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015, Table A1www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2015A.html 53% The percentage of unmarried U.S. residents 18 and older who were women in 2015; 47 percent were men. Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015, Table A1www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2015A.html 63% The percentage of unmarried U.S. residents 18 and older in 2015 who had never been married. Another 24 percent were divorced and 13 percent were widowed. Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015, Table A1 www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2015A.html 19 million The number of unmarried U.S. residents 65 and older in 2015. These seniors made up 18 percent of all unmarried people 18 and older. Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015, Table A1 www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2015A.html 88 The number of unmarried men 18 and older for every 100 unmarried women in the United States in 2015. Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015, Table A1www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2015A.html 59 million The number of households maintained by unmarried men and women in 2015. These households comprised 47 percent of households nationwide. Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015, Table H1 www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2015A.html 35 million The number of people who lived alone in 2015. They comprised 28 percent of all households, up from 17 percent in 1970. Source: America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 2015, Table H-1, America’s Families and Living Arrangements: 1960 to Present, Table HH-4 www.census.gov/hhes/families/data/cps2015H.html

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2015

The U.S. Census Bureau announced today that real median household income increased by 5.2 percent between 2014 and 2015 while the official poverty rate decreased 1.2 percentage points. At the same time, the percentage of people without health insurance coverage decreased.

Median household income in the United States in 2015 was $56,516, an increase in real terms of 5.2 percent from the 2014 median income of $53,718. This is the first annual increase in median household income since 2007, the year before the most recent recession.

The nation’s official poverty rate in 2015 was 13.5 percent, with 43.1 million people in poverty, 3.5 million fewer than in 2014. The 1.2 percentage point decrease in the poverty rate from 2014 to 2015 represents the largest annual percentage point drop in poverty since 1999.

The percentage of people without health insurance coverage for the entire 2015 calendar year was 9.1 percent, down from 10.4 percent in 2014. The number of people without health insurance declined to 29.0 million from 33.0 million over the period.

These findings are contained in two reports: Income and Poverty in the United States: 2015 and Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2015. The Current Population Survey Annual Social and Economic Supplement was conducted nationwide and collected information about income and health insurance coverage during the 2015 calendar year. The Current Population Survey, sponsored jointly by the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, is conducted every month and is the primary source of labor force statistics for the U.S. population; it is used to calculate the monthly unemployment rate estimates. Supplements are added in most months; the Annual Social and Economic Supplement questionnaire is designed to give annual, national estimates of income, poverty and health insurance numbers and rates.

Empire Center Ranks Local Government Pay

This month, the Empire Center released the newest edition of What They Make, its annual examination of local government payrolls.

Using data from the New York State and Local Retirement System, the report includes the number and average pay of county, village, city and town government employees during the fiscal year ending March 31.

“What They Make lets taxpayers see how their local governments’ payrolls stack up,” said Tim Hoefer, executive director of the Empire Center. “Big differences exist, even between neighboring communities, and taxpayers have a right to ask their elected officials why.”

The report lists the 50 highest-paid local government employees in New York (page 5) and the 10 highest-paid employees in each region (pages 6 and 7). The 175,262 records, totaling $9.5 billion in pay, that were analyzed for the report are searchable at SeeThroughNY, the Empire Center’s transparency website.

The Empire Center, based in Albany, is an independent, non-profit, non-partisan think tank dedicated to promoting policies to make New York a better place to live, work and do business.

What is the ‘Real’ Unemployment Rate?

From the US Department of Labor:

At the Department of Labor we regularly get questions about what the “real” unemployment rate is. Another way to state these questions might be “What is the measure that truly captures the state of job opportunities?” The answer, it turns out, is there isn’t just one. There is no way to capture the state of something as complex as the U.S. labor market with one number. That is why the department’s Bureau of Labor Statistics publishes a huge array of measures, which together provide a comprehensive picture of the state of job opportunities.

The “official” unemployment rate is the most well-known. BLS defines a worker as unemployed if they are jobless but actively seeking work. The official unemployment rate is the number of workers who are unemployed divided by the number of workers who are either employed or unemployed. At its peak in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the official unemployment rate reached 10 percent; as of August 2016, it is now down to 4.9.

In BLS publications, the official unemployment rate is referred to as the U-3. Though the U-3 gets the most attention, BLS also publishes five other measures of labor underutilization (U-1, U-2, U-4, U-5, and U-6), each of which measure labor underutilization in a different way. The broadest measure – the U-6 (sometimes referred to in the press as the “underemployment rate”) – includes not just the officially unemployed, but also the “marginally attached” (those who are neither working nor looking for work but who want and are available to work and have looked for work in the past year), and people who are working part-time but want a full-time job. At its peak in the aftermath of the Great Recession, the U-6 was 17.1 percent; it is now down to 9.7 percent.

Census Retiring EasyStats

The Census is Retiring EasyStats. Below is information that maybe helpful for you as Census prepares to retire EasyStats.

• EasyStats will no longer be available on 9/30/16. http://www.census.gov/easystats/
• A notice to users was deployed on 8/16 as a pop-up. The notice states the retirement date and offers QuickFacts and AFF as alternatives.
• The notice on the application also features a feedback form for users to leave comments.
• The retirement of the application is a result of a CEDSCI data tools assessment from earlier this year. The assessment looked at consolidating data tools to eliminate redundancy and also streamline our data dissemination offerings on Census.gov.