I stayed at a three star hotel this week on the west coast. As I was checking in I noticed a user at the computer doing exactly what I was going to do next: check in for his next flight. The hotel computer was situated where I could even see the website which he was logged in on: Delta, the same one I was fixing to visit. I heard the printer and watched the user retrieve his boarding pass. What convenience. The travel-powers-that-be have actually done something helpful for us. There he goes; now it’s my turn.

Within five seconds I was at the Delta website and the first thing I noticed was the previous user – the guy who just left with his boarding pass in hand – had not logged out. Wow, it’s all right here staring me in the face: his name Roger – I’ll leave out the last name, his sky miles number 203… and the miles in his account with more than 628,000. Roger hasn’t got a clue that he’s left me, a total stranger, access to his flyer account. What did I do? I logged out of the airline website for Roger and signed out of the session.

But here’s is what could have happened:

With these miles a person could book a flight to Hawaii, stay on Waikiki, get a rent car, tour the island and go whale watching all on Roger. While still in his account they may even send flowers to Aunt Martha who is in the hospital recuperating from surgery. Don’t want a vacation? No problem, with just a few clicks they could stoke up on gift cards to your favorite restaurant, movie theatre or retail store. It’s all right there on Delta.com you can find some way to spend the miles you have earned. Some vendors have no conversion fees, you just pay with miles and give them an address where to send the cards – or better yet go to the vendor’s website, download the gift card and print it. Either way in a few clicks of the mouse all of the miles Roger is saving to surprise his wife with a European vacation for their anniversary are gone.

Chances are good that Roger’s not going to even go to the airline website until he’s ready to check in for his next flight – which may be days, or weeks away. By then when he actually notices his flyer miles account is empty there is not much that can be done.

If you’re thinking: that can’t happen because when it comes time to present a credit card to pay for the junk fees the card won’t match Roger and the transaction won’t go through. Wrong. Believe it or not some airlines allow you to store your credit card information on their website for your convenience. If no credit card data is stored, the airlines only ask for: the credit card number, a billing address and the security code that match the card you have presented. From there the vacation is on Roger.

So why did this happen?

More than likely Roger just went up to the box in the top right corner of the window and clicked the X. This only closed the window – his personal session on Delta.com remained active until it timed out. It takes approximately twelve minutes of inactivity for the average airline, banking or retail website to automatically log out due to inactivity. In the mean time, when Delta.com was pulled up from the same computer before the automatic log out was activated Rogers session reappeared.

Still don’t get it?

It’s about internet security. Most people do not realize that when you log in to a website your personal session remains active until you log out or until the website times you out. If you X out of your session you are relying on the website to automatically time you out before a thief finds your unprotected, active session. That’s right, the thief does not have to be at the hotel using the same computer you were.

Roger did not log out, and he, like many of you, did not even consider that someone could come along before the website automatically times out your session and actively use your account. Thieves have computer programs that search cyberspace for unprotected active sessions on random websites; often times that is how internet accounts become compromised. Once they have stolen your active session it’s only a matter of time before they decode your password, enter your account at their leisure and wreak what ever kind of havoc they desire.

So what do you do, quit using the hotel computers?

Using the hotel computer is fine as long as you are smart about it. The most important thing to remember when you are using any public computer is to:
1.   Log out of your personal session from which ever website you are visiting;
2.   Sign Out from your session on the public computer; and
3.   Reverse the process to check and make certain your session is not still active.

Roger? You are welcome.

Don't kid yourself - drug smugglers, slave traffickers and international terrorists are all pouring over the border like flood waters over a collapsed dam…and they look like everyone else. They're hiding inside the wave of illegal alien workers seeking jobs, American dollars to send home to Mexico and the freebies we as a nation give them – from free healthcare to automatic citizenship for their babies born on American soil – delivered by that free healthcare.  And while the hemorrhage of "giveaways" is bad enough, the growing threat of criminal activity and terrorist sleeper cells is worse.  Remember, many of these people aren't from Mexico – they're from other parts of the world that we are fighting against in the war on terror.

Border security is a serious unilateral problem – our problem – but one the U.S. Government is too busy posturing over while the Mexican Government fuels it like gasoline on a bonfire.  Democrats and Republicans alike see the 25-million illegal aliens now in the U.S. as potential new voters, while American Business salivates at the hand-wringing thought of cheap labor.  All the while, criminals from third world countries are operating freely in the U.S.  At the same time, Mexican President Felipe Calderón visits the U.S. and thumbs his nose at U.S. citizens by addressing groups of Mexicans living here and telling them that they are helping the U.S. economy.

During his April 2008 visit to Dallas, Calderón told about 125 advisers to the Institute for Mexicans Abroad, an advisory board to the Mexican government, "The American economy cannot run without Mexican labor, which contributes to the prosperity of this country.  Then he added, "It's not my dream to spend the rest of my life seeing how Mexicans risk their lives crossing the river or the desert to find opportunities."

The Mexican president also talked about how sad it is back in Mexico to talk with so many Mexican citizens about their family members who are in the U.S., illegally of course, and not at home in Mexico with their families.  In fact, during the Dallas visit, Calderón admitted he had family members living and working illegally in the U.S., then had the audacity to joke that he would not reveal their whereabouts until after the U.S. overhauls its immigration laws. 

The way I see it – when a head of state has people, family or not, in a foreign country illegally – those people are often called “spies” and are arrested, tried and convicted of espionage.  Besides, if they miss Mexico and their families so much, why not go back? 

As easy as it is to get here it’s even easier to go back.  All one need do is turn one’s self into the nearest U.S. Immigration or Border Patrol official and one would get a free ride back home to Mexico at the expense of the U.S. taxpayer.

Keep this in mind; brutal drug related crimes continue on both sides of the border – deep into the U.S., as well as in Mexico – as illicit drugs and smuggled slaves flow into the United States side by side with a steadily growing number of illegal aliens and terrorists – and the toll in lives and money spent to combat this problem is incredible.  Last year alone, more than 300 Mexican law enforcement officials died in the line of duty in the war on drugs in Mexico, while, throughout Mexico, over 3,500 civilians have been murdered as a result of drug related activity – an average of 200 per month in the border town of Jaurez alone. 

In response, Mexican President Calderón  has mobilized more than 30,000 Mexican troops to hot spots across Mexico, including border towns like Juarez, to stem the tide of what the Mexican government calls “drug gang” violence.  But there are a couple problems with this; first, these aren't "gangs", these are organized crime operators – highly skilled and ruthless and without regard for borders – and, second, often the very military that has been sent to defend the people of Mexico against this activity is, in fact, working with the drug lords and smugglers.  In fact, over the past two years, the Mexican military has actually crossed into the U.S. – invaded sovereign U.S. Territory – over 200 times and even engaged in gun battles with U.S. Law enforcement as the Mexican soldiers aided smugglers into the U.S. with drugs and slaves.  Want more? How about this – Right now the CIA estimates 50,000 slaves are being moved into, out of or simply being forced to work within the U.S. at any one moment…in jobs ranging from farm labor to prostitution – often using under age girls.  Sound like the warring factions and corruption we see in places like Iraq and Afghanistan? 

Now, if those countries bordered our country how tight do you think our border security would be?  And if those people were kidnapping our innocent girls and forcing them into prostitution rings while recruiting our young men into their organized crime cells do you think we would stand for it?  So why do we tolerate it when it comes to Mexico?

Of course, Congress is funneling $1.4 billion to Mexico as part of an anti-drug assistance package to help in the fight.  But is it enough?

In a recent article in The Dallas Morning News, reporter Alfredo Corchado revealed no less than six military style training camps set up and run by Mexican drug cartels, most within a few miles of the Texas border.  The camps, often temporary by nature or set up on private land, train cartel recruits made up of Mexican army deserters and, shocking as it may sound, American teenagers.  These camps teach commando style attack tactics similar to what we've seen in confiscated footage of Al Qaeda terrorist training camps.  These Mexican drug cartel terrorists operate freely on both sides of the border, like a bad “B” Western movie, killing civilians and law enforcement agents at the rate of thousands per year. 

In fact, if you were to extrapolate the statistics with regard to murders in Mexico at the hands of the Mexican drug cartels it would dwarf the number of American soldiers killed in the Middle East since 2001 – as I said, just in the past year or so, over 3,500 civilians have been murdered in drug related crimes. 

Make no mistake, this is a real war with real consequences and to allow the 2,000 mile border between the U.S. and Mexico to operate like a sieve is placing countless American lives in danger and the American way of life at risk. But we’re supposed to turn a blind eye?

You might open that "blind eye" with a simply criminal background check.

Why is she spending so much time with a new best friend?

Why are his business trips suddenly so frequent?

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