MONEY & SOFTWARE

If you tried to scan and print a dollar note with Adobe Photoshop CS (up to CS 2) or any other image-editing application, you will get a dialogue box warning you your image is a currency, and then links you to a website.  This website will show you various country’s currency rules.

Okie, so you think you won’t be able to print your bank notes eh?  How do teachers, artists and designers who use images of bank notes to teach history of money to advertising campaigns GET THEIR CURRENCY IMAGE?

People can get their downloadable currency images from the US Treasury Department at http://www.moneyfactory.gov/newmoney instead of painstakingly drawing it by hand.

BUT…..

There is a problem though – with Adobe Photoshop CS 3 onwards and with Adobe Fireworks, you can print bank notes as long as you do not try to save the image as a .png file.

In 2005, a group of British counterfeiters’ notes were so realistic with watermarks and holograms, had they not tried to send large amounts of money via bank transfers, they could have gotten away scott-free.

INTERNET TECHNOLOGY & FAKE IDs

Visit Google and search for Computers Theft and Identity Theft, you’ll find a list of places where you can create your own fake diplomas and fake IDs.

Most of the websites that provide these “Re-invent Yourself Identification” services have legal addresses listed outside of the USA, just in case someone official decides to pay a call!

While these fake identities are fun for designers, they may pose a problem to those whose photographs have been mis-used.

And unlike counterfeit bank notes which are extremely complex and carries serious penalties if discovered, most fake IDs are often treated like college jokes.

FAKE DIETARY SUPPLEMENT & GREED

In 2004, Unilever, owner of the Slim-Fast line of diet products since 2000, bought the rights to develop the Hoodia extract from the prickly cactus.

With plans to build vast Hoodia farms, hundreds of Hoodia devotees’ websites sprung up online.   How did these people get their hands so quickly on Hoodia?

Well, most of them did not.  Their capsules were filled with bad cooks’ leftovers!  And the scam continues till today, unless someone takes the time to empty the capsules’ contents, analyse and test the ingredients one by one!  (This involves a lot of tracing work best left to private investigators!  lol )

Without lab training and without a doctorate (like me), how are people going to differentiate a real Hoodia product from a fake?

Genuine Hoodia products come with their genuine CITES document.  This document displays the name of the importer, the permit’s export expiration date, name of exporter and weight of the Hoodia product.  The legal text on a CITES document bleeds through from back to front.

BUT….

To adapt this CITES document, a scam artist would need to eliminate the text bleed-through.  Again, Adobe Photoshop is able to do just that!

Each time a scammer picks a JPEG file of a CITES document, re-scans and print with his own information etc, where solid colours are the jpeg file shows artifacts (dots, blur, etc).

Hoodia is expensive, but all you need is one import document from one real hoodia purchase, and you’re in business!   Scammers know that!  Crooks they are know that almost no one looks at the date of a CITES document – one of the most important pieces of information a customer should look at!  Because a posted CITES document should show a date within six months of the current date – anything older than 6 months of date of export implies that the Hoodia product isn’t real.

Fake medicine can kill too. In 2007,  journalists for the New York Times traced glycerin (a sweet syrup usually artificially made, commonly found in cough medicines) back to its origins.   They found that glycerin was unethically substituted with a poison known as diethylene glycol (an anti-freeze).  As a result, untold patients were either killed or permanently handicapped!

Also, colourants found unsafe in childrens’ cough medicines still exist in other medicinal and food preparations (find out which colourants and read labels!)

I looked at a famous Cocoa drink today and found sucrose, an artificial sugar in it.  And this cocoa powder has been around for ages!

Some “Health drinks” and “health bars” aren’t the only processed foods that make me shudder.  I shudder at the thought of “fake foods” too – those which are genetically modified by agricultural giants so they produce at faster rates (to make more money) but are almost devoid of any safe or natural nutrients for the human body and animals as well.

It just makes sense to want to plant your own garden of fruits and vegetables (if you can)!  It’s not only much safer, it’s also healthier to cook your own food!

Once in awhile, robe in partner or spouse for a fun cooking experience.   It’s been known that couples who do things together also remain loving each other, much longer than those who don’t.

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