FEBRUARY LUNCHEON MEETING MINUTES
taken by Holly Adamscheck, Secretary

Enclosed with your copy of this newsletter is a personalized letter from our Treasurer, Ken Jurgensen, letting you know your dues payment status, and your information on file. If you have any changes, please return this sheet, with your changes noted, and your dues payment if required.  We are asking that the text for "programs used" and "comments" be kept to 100 characters for each section.

Bring the check and information to the March meeting, or send the check and sheet to Ken at his home mailing address (he has included a return address sticker). If your dues are already paid, you may fax any information changes to Ken at 687-9443.

Remember:
The referral list goes out to local accounting professionals in June. (Normally it's May, but this year it will be June.)  In order to be included, you must be current on your dues. The dues must be in by March 31. If your update is received by April 30, and you have paid the full March-September dues, a draft of the referral list will be available at the May meeting for your review.

Notice to Bookkeepers
by Gale E. Gillies

For those of you who have small business clients, do you know about SCORE's services of offering free counseling. SCORE has experts in the areas of advertising and marketing, writing business plans, small business start-ups, etc. I joined the S. B. Chapter of the national SCORE association this past summer as a volunteer counselor during hours outside of my full-time employment as a Sr. Corporate Accountant. If you have clients that need assistance in business areas outside of bookkeeping and your areas of expertise, please consider referring them to SCORE's free counseling service.

See the following for more information on SCORE (also submitted by Gale-Ed.)

SCORE is a volunteer organization of working and retired executives dedicated to helping small Santa Barbara area businesses move to a new level of success.

Our business-savvy men and women provide FREE advice so your business has a solid foundation for growth and profit.

Greater business success can be a phone call away.

So call (805) 563-0084 and let us help.

SCORE is a Program of the United States Small Business Administration.

"A new congressional bill affects all Internet users. The government wants to charge you each time you access the Internet. Forward this to others so we can prevent it." Not true. This is a classic Internet hoax--bogus e-mail.

It comes in a number of flavors, but most of them have one thing in common: They urge you to forward the e-mail to all your friends. Where they vary is in the reasons they give you to forward the e-mail.

For example, one hoax making the rounds lately is a warning about the Sulfnbk virus. It says essentially that the Sulfnbk virus may have been planted on your computer. Sure enough, you find the Sulfnbk.exe file on your hard drive. "Delete the file to remove the virus," the e-mail says.

Here's the problem: There is no Sulfnbk.exe virus. Sulfnbk.exe is a legitimate Windows file used to restore long file names. It's a minor file, and if you delete it, you might never miss it. But why delete a perfectly good file?  

This hoax is more clever than most. Because recipients have the file on their hard drives, the warning carries a greater patina of truth.  

The WTC Survivor virus hoax is the more common type. The message warns that the virus can wipe out the recipient's data. The sender says his friend's hard drive was wiped clean.

That's typical--the stories are frightening, but never verifiable. Often, a prominent news organization is credited with a story "last year," or some other generalized date. Invariably, the recipients are asked to warn everyone they know.

Urban legends spread on the Internet require a similar level of ignorance and gullibility. One of my favorites concerns Bill Gates and a plan to give away money on the Internet.

"I have just written up e-mail tracing program that traces everyone to whom this message is forwarded. I am experimenting with this and I need your help. Forward this to everyone you know and if it reaches 1000 people, all on the list will receive $1000 at my expense. Enjoy."
An open-ended pass-around, at $1,000 per pop, could break even Gates. Do you suppose he became rich by being stupid? Of course, none of this was true. But it continues to grow, with new versions supposedly from Microsoft and Nike.

Maybe the most common story concerns Craig Shergold and various other children, all of whom are supposedly dying of cancer. According to the myth, the children are seeking
business cards in an effort to set a record before they die.

This one has a grain of truth. Craig Shergold, who is British, did have cancer. He did ask for the cards. He did set a record. In fact, he received millions of cards, and the Guinness Book of Records retired his record. But that was in 1991, for Pete's sake.

Today, most of the stories concern the Make-a-Wish Foundation of Phoenix. Supposedly, the foundation is seeking cards for a dying child. The foundation has been putting up with this
nonsense for more than 10 years. It even has an 800 number explaining that it doesn't want business cards.

Craig Shergold, meanwhile, survived his bout with cancer. He doesn't need any more cards, either, thanks.

Many of these hoaxes don't do much harm. But others apparently are intended to frighten. For instance, there's the one about the person who woke up in a hotel bathtub, packed in ice. Both of his kidneys were gone. (Sure!)

If you get a virus warning or an urban legend, check it out before you pass it along. If the message urges you to send it to everyone you know, you probably have a hoax. Credible-sounding but vague technical language ("nth-complexity infinite binary loop") is another tip-off.
It's easy to check these stories out. Hoaxbusters (http://hoaxbusters.ciac.org) which is run by the Computer Incident Advisory Capability at the U.S. Department of Energy, is a good place to start. Antivirus firms also maintain hoax listings. You can check weird stories at the Urban Legends Archive (http://www.urbanlegends.com) and ScamBusters (http://www.scambusters.org).

Source: The Kim Kommando Show Free Electronic Newsletter, March 2, 2002.

PHONY INVOICES

Phony invoices and solicitations disguised as invoices are a growing problem. Best defense: Knowing the three parts of these schemes:

1. An initial phone call in which the con artist obtains the names of key business contacts and key details about the business and its operations.
2. A phony invoice with names, figures, and other details that make it look valid, typically for an amount small enough not to raise suspicion so it will be paid routinely with other invoices.
3. Urgent wording, such as "past Due", "Pay This Bill Now" or "We Are About To Start Action" to intimidate the victim into hurrying payment before checking the bill's validity.

Other schemes: Ad solicitations, fax directories, bogus yellow page bills.

4 of 10 companies do not require a second employee to approve invoices for payment. Is your (client) one of them?

Source: Steven B. Davis, "Phony Invoices" October 2001, pp. 60-62. Nat'l Assn. Of Credit Management, 8815 Centre Park Drive, Columbia

If you want to copy or delete a whole bunch of files or folders, you don't have to work on them singly. A few keystrokes and you can do them all at once! Here's how:

1. Click the first item
2. Hold down the Shift key and click the last item.

This won't work if all the items aren't in order. If that's the case, pick and choose among various items by using the CTRL key. Just click on the first item you want, then hold down the CTRL key and click as many others as you like. This highlights the items. When you've made all your selections, you can copy them, delete them, or whatever.

Source: The Kim Kommando Show Free Electronic Newsletter, March 2, 2002.

Editor of this month’s Newsletter was Sandy Stites. Many thanks to Mary Cathcart for proofreading this issue. Monica Dittrich is next month's editor.