Pretending to be someone else to obtain phone records or track someone’s activities has been hotly criticized in recent weeks after revelations that Hewlett Packard contractors used such methods to track down press leaks from the company’s board of directors.
A different view comes from Michael Lorrey of Grantham, N.H., writing for a Denver Web media company, www.associatedcontent.com.
“Despite the recent media hype surrounding the investigative practice of ‘pretexting,’ the fact is that it is a valid and legal technique to locate, catch and serve legal process on many people who break the law in avoiding their legal responsibilities,” Lorrey wrote in a posting titled “How Pretexting Helped Serve Divorce Papers on a Runaway Mother.”
Lorrey said he was once a branch manager for an online legal process service in Florida. That firm would phone targets under false pretenses and arrange to deliver a package. The company served legal papers when its prey opened the door.
Humor flies between airline, arts groups
Frontier Airlines spokesman Andrew Hudson got a big laugh last week when he poked fun at the airline industry at the Colorado Business Committee for the Arts breakfast.
“We have a lot in common with nonprofit arts organizations because we too are a nonprofit organization,” he joked.
The biennial CBCA breakfast highlighted the $1.4 billion in economic activity that local scientific and cultural groups generated in 2005.
Hudson used his few minutes with the mike to tout the fact that the Denver-based carrier annually gives away about 3,000 plane tickets through partnerships to local nonprofits.
So that’s why this party needs livening
How about happy hour at a funeral home?
While it might sound strange, that’s one of the venues used for networking events by the Pueblo Latino Chamber of Commerce.
The chamber has held its shindigs in several locales not typically associated with a good time, including a hospice, an assisted-living center and an insurance office.
Have any chamber members been discouraged from attending because of the peculiar venues?
“It’s possible,” said Tara Griffin, the chamber’s membership coordinator. “But at the same time, the point is networking, and the (host) businesses do take advantage of that.”
Missing someone? Check the health club
Fitness rules in Colorado – and Denver specifically, according to the International Health, Racquet & Sportsclub Association.
Nearly 22 percent of Colorado residents over the age of 6 belong to a health club or fitness center. That’s a higher rate than seen in any other state in the nation, according to an annual study conducted by the association. Utah is second with 20.8 percent.
Denver ranks as the top city in the country for health club memberships. A little more than 25 percent of residents have one. Columbus, Ohio, follows closely with 24.9 percent.
Whatever you do, don’t give socks
Nearly half of Americans say they will complete their holiday shopping by the second week in December, according to a poll conducted by the Consumer Reports National Research Center.
More than 71 percent of the 1,000 Americans surveyed said they intend to buy gifts from discount retailers, such as Target and Wal-Mart.
The No. 1 gift category for the upcoming holiday season is clothing (73 percent of shoppers said they’d give apparel), followed by gift cards (60 percent), toys (54 percent) and electronics (53 percent).
But buyers, beware. Last year, clothing was the most disappointing category of gifts received, according to 36 percent of survey respondents. The biggest offender? Socks.
FROM STAFF AND WIRE REPORTS
