Grandpa,
I got a phone call a few minutes ago from someone claiming to be from the county telling me that my voter registration has expired. They offered to re-register me over the phone. I needed to answer just a few questions to verify my identity. I said I do not believe her. She told me that if I try to vote in the primary, I will be arrested. I hung up. I thought you might like to spread the word about this scam. I plan to vote in the primary.
Grandpa says: Thank you for that information! Dear readers, please take note. The county does not call you on the phone to re-register you to vote. If someone tries, just hang up. The same scam is being perpetrated by E-mail. Delete it.
Grandpa,
I work in the personal-security field. My specialty is identity theft. One area I have never seen you cover is shredded documents. Many own personal shredders and do a good job of shredding papers that have sensitive information. That is fine as far as it goes. Now look at the issue from the criminal’s point of view. If one is going through your trash and finds a small wad of shredded paper, that is a dead give away that it has usable information. It can be pieced back together and read. I recommend that one shred all of one’s discarded paper. It will stymie and frustrate the perp. Who wants to spend that much time sorting out and taping back junk mail? When shopping for a shredder, do not go cheap. Spend the extra few dollars to get a cross-cutting shredder. It produces confetti like paper as opposed to strands. Much harder to sort out.
Grandpa says: Thank you for that timely bit of good advice. I had never considered that angle.
Grandpa,
My brother and I were in foster care from the time we were in grade school until we reached adulthood. We were with the same family our entire lives. While we were in foster care, our birth mother died and we have no idea who is our father or fathers. As an adult, I chose to respect our foster parents, the people I grew to love as my “Dad” and “Mom”, by adopting their last name. My brother will not do the same. He wants to research our, or at least his, birth father, if we have different birth fathers. I say that is disrespectful to the individuals who raised us. We are no longer speaking over this issue.
Grandpa says: How sad that two of you have lost your birth parents and now choose to lose each other. You did what was right for you. Let him do what is right for him. No one is being disrespectful to either birth or foster parents by the name each chooses to use. Both are being disrespectful to your foster parents by bickering over such a trivial issue. They took you both in to raise you as a family and you stopped being a family over a name?
Got something stuck in your craw? Ask Grandpa. Address your letters to Ask Grandpa c/o The Voice, PO Box 123, Aurora, IL 60507 or send an E-mail to askgrandpa@thevoice.us.