Free Republic

Don’t brush off this warning. As a flurry of holiday gifts arrive on people’s doorsteps this season, unsuspecting shoppers could also receive packages addressed to them that they never ordered. With a scam known as “brushing,” cybercriminals will ship packages with no return address that contain a QR code, prompting the confused recipient to scan the code to reveal who sent the package. Unbeknownst to the recipient, the code could expose sensitive information from their smartphones or download malicious software onto the devices. “A scammer’s QR code could take you to a spoofed site that looks real but isn’t. And...

Experts urge consumers to keep an eye on packages they never orderedThe U.S. Postal Service has warned about the scam in the past, which uses unexpected gifts delivered to a doorstep to lure victims. Brushing scams are an emerging threat to unsuspecting consumers as Black Friday shopping begins. The first type of the scam begins when fraudsters gain information such as a name and home address. From there, scammers will set up an Amazon account with the victim’s information and send a package to the targeted person’s home with no return address. “Once you have signed to confirm receipt of...

Epileptic seizures sparked by tooth brushing 09:00 06 March 2007 NewScientist.com news service Rachel Nowak “Brushing your teeth is very rhythmic. Our idea is that it causes a rhythmic over-activity in the brain, which feeds back on itself – similar to the effect of strobe lighting on people with photosensitive epilepsy,” says neurologist Wendyl D’Souza of St Vincent’s Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, one of the team reporting the cases. Epilepsy occurs when nerve cells in an area of the brain fire more rapidly than usual and in synchrony with one another. This causes seizures that range from “grand mal” seizures...

Women accused of hogging the mirror before a night out can finally silence their critics - they are quicker at getting ready than ever before. It takes an average of 23 minutes for the modern woman to put on her "face", compared with an average of 90 minutes a decade ago. Point of order. It may not take forever, but it certainly feels like forever - Ivan Furthermore, today's men are more patient than their counterparts of the early Nineties, and are prepared to wait for the results of the transformation. The survey of 1,000 men from across the UK,...

If you ever visit South Dakota, be sure to bring some breath mints -- it's the state where people go the longest between tooth brushings. According to a poll by Mentadent toothpaste, 67 percent of the folks in South Dakota admit they've gone up to three days without brushing their teeth. It isn't much better in Utah, where 66 percent confess to the same oral oversight. Other toothbrush-challenged states include: Oklahoma, where 60 percent of folks have gone without brushing for up to three days; and Indiana and Rhode Island, where 57 percent of the population admit they've kept their...