Whitney Drake

I think that the internet has been a good thing for news. Instead of having to wait until the next airing of the local news, you can get access to what’s going on in your area right now. Very useful.

However, there are a couple of problems with internet news. Big ones, too. The first problem is the human tendency to want to be… first! Look at any comment thread on a site, and you’ll find the person who feels the need to post “first” even though they have nothing else to say. What does this have to do with news? It seems more and more often that in the rush to be first, a lot of news desks will put up incomplete stories, often with unverified information. A good example of this was the story that broke nationally from rural Texas, where police were searching a property after getting a tip from a psychic that there were bodies buried there. No bodies were found, but by then nearly every major media outlet was throwing out headlines about remains being found. Corrections were issued, but not until everyone looked a little silly.

It was clear that news agencies were getting their information from other news agencies, playing telephone. Had anyone called the law enforcement agency in question, they would have said that it was merely a tip.

Which leads to the second problem, which is that news sites are also driven by page views. Headlines are written to entice people to click on the story. Which is how you wind up with stories like last nights’ “Glee’s Lea Michele, Chris Colfer and Cory Monteith not returning next season”. It reads as though they won’t be coming back for Season Three, but instead all the stories were about an interview that Ryan Murphy gave where he confirmed that Season Three would be their last seasons- since they’d be graduating. Which is nothing new for anyone who watched Glee. Each season has been a school year, it’d be a little silly if the majority of the seniors didn’t graduate.

Even when the headlines weren’t ambiguous, they were trying to push an idea that anyone who was a fan of the show already knew. After all, you can’t exactly call it “Glee” if the show is about the same kids after they’ve graduated.

Is it too much to ask to actually get something that’s been researched and proof-read, and have headlines that are less tabloid, more news?

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore have become involved in the fight to end child slavery. They released a series of “Real Men” PSAs that end with the phrase Real Men Don’t Buy Girls. I’ll discuss the ads later on since I used to work in advertising.

The Village Voice ran a piece criticizing some of the statistics that Kutcher’s thrown out while promoting his charity work. Namely that 100,000 to 300,000 children are involved in prostitution each year. Which came from a study that says that number of children are at risk, not involved.

Kutcher then declared a Twitter war on them, pointing out that their Backpage ads site has been accused of allowing underaged girls to be sold for sex. And it went back and forth, and now Kutcher’s focused on their advertisers.

Obviously, I applaud Kutcher for bringing this subject to light. A lot of people are unaware that here in the US, child prostitution does occur. However, I implore him to get his statistics right. If what the Village Voice says is true, then he and Moore (and others involved) have been overstating the number of girls taken into sex slavery annually.

I honestly don’t want to take sides. I really don’t. Yes, child slavery is horrible. But giving faulty statistics doesn’t help anyone. Before anyone thinks I’m heartless, consider this example. Charity A has blanketed TV/internet with statistics of how horrible something is. Someone points out, citing studies, that Charity A’s statistics are overblown. The majority of people will wonder what else Charity A has exaggerated and stop listening. However, I do agree that the Village Voice should be making sure that they crack down on their Backpage ads to make sure that sex trafficking isn’t occurring. So really, I think everyone’s a little right and a little wrong. (I will point out that while the VV points out that arrests for child prositution are low, those figures can’t be used to determine how many children are being trafficked annually)

Now, the ads. I’m sure you’ve seen them. They feature a male celebrity doing something stupid. Kutcher’s ad shows him peeling off dirty socks and throwing them away, then opening a package of socks and putting on a brand new pair. “Real Men Do Their Own Laundry.” Sean Penn makes a grilled cheese sandwich with an iron. In other words, they’re completely useless unless you already know what they’re referring to. Not only that, it makes all men out to be completely useless schmucks who happen to not resort to child slavery to do their laundry or make a sandwich. I’m sure they think they’re clever and will make people want to learn more- but frankly, every time I see those ads anywhere… I just want to change the channel because they’re insulting to any enlightened man out there who is trying to fight against child slavery. Or really, any man who is capable of taking care of himself.

So yes, folks, real men don’t buy girls. However, real men know how to do their own laundry. They know how to fix themselves a sandwich, and can shave with a razor. They also know that Twitter isn’t always the place to wage battles. Kutcher was trying to mock the Village Voice for not being on Twitter 24/7, which just made him look silly. Honestly, had Kutcher done as other celebrities have done, and written a piece for the Huffington Post to publish – it might have gone a long way. He could have articulated his point in more than 140 characters.

Instead, we have a petty war over a very serious issue. A war that’s had little to do with pushing people towards organizations that help children that are sold into slavery, or children that are being trafficked- but mostly to do with trying to smear the other person/paper involved. In which ultimately one will be the victor, but children will ultimately be the losers.

(TL:DR summary: Guys, stop fighting. Figure out the right statistics, push some charities and make sure that this is about the children affected… not your egos. And honestly, making fun of a serious subject isn’t the way to get people to take it seriously.)

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

I am a connoisseur of all things piratey, and have been since I was a kid. Nothing new to readers of this blog. Of course, pirates weren’t trendy, so I had to work extra hard to get my hands on books about pirates. Nowawdays, pirates are everywhere- even in kid’s television.

The boys love Disney Junior’s Jake and the Neverland Pirates, which is a fun kid’s show building on the world from Peter Pan. Captain Hook’s the bad guy (but a bit more of a buffoon than in the movie). There’s a girl pirate, and I haven’t had a single problem with how they portray her. She and the boys search for treasures while doing the right thing, and more often than not, she’s the one who comes up with the plan. It’s a good message for everyone.

Enter the Pirate Princess, who had been put under a spell by an evil sea witch. Izzy (the girl pirate) saves her, and her ship is magically restored. It’s gold, with a rainbow wave around it, and she has a heart shaped anchor. Oh and it has pink sails. In the second episode, she has her own island with a castle on it, that is (you guessed it) pink. She also has a magic wand that lets her make rainbows, instead of a sword. It actually has a guard over the grip, making it look just like a sword. Oh – I found a picture.

I probably wouldn’t have cared about the rainbow wand if she didn’t live in a pink palace and have the girliest ship that ever sailed the Never Seas. (Her palace looks like it was designed by Mermaid Barbie)

Of course, I’m not surprised by this one bit. Since the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, Disney has sold a “Pirate Princess” line of merchandise at their theme parks. Crossed scepters with hearts at the end! Pink skulls! I’d hoped that they would have gone with the accepted term for a successful female pirate, pirate queen, but with their world build around princesses it did make sense. I do have a pair of earrings from one of their lines, which featured a couple of cartoon female pirates – a redhead and a brunette with a bob (wonder why I liked her so much). But at the end of the day, I can forgive all that pink and whatnot at Disneyland. It’s just silly little merchandise.

Jake’s Pirate Princess on the other hand? She has a ridiculous ship. When trouble arrives, it’s the kids who save the day- she does absolutely nothing but stand there. What sort of a message does that send to little girls? Disney’s actual princesses might be pretty darn plucky and capable these days, but this Pirate Princess needs to lose her crown. She might say she’s smart, strong and brave- but in both parts of the episode, she did nothing to show that she was.

I grew up knowing that real women took to the seas, that some sailed openly as merchant sailors, but that some women from the Elizabethan era onward were notable pirates. Women who carved out their own futures, and did most of the saving themselves. Mary Read and Anne Bonney? When Jack Rackham’s ship was being attacked by a privateer ship, it was Bonney and Read (and another man) who did most of the defending- the rest of the ship, including the captain were too drunk to do much. Bonney’s last words to Jack Rackham were said to have been that she was “sorry to see him there, but if he had fought like a Man, he need not have been hang’d like a Dog.”

Grace O’ Malley was a chieftain of an Irish clan, led raids against the English in an attempt to secure Irish independence. While she wasn’t successful in securing that, her raids were successful enough that she secured a meeting with Queen Elizabeth in which they discussed terms. Some were met, at least temporarily- and when things went back to the way they’d been returned, O’Malley returned to piracy.

If you start to look up known pirates, you’ll find a lot more female names, too. They weren’t extremely well known, but they were there. Women who found life at sea much more liberating. Who were referred to as Pirate Queens, because they ruled the seas.

Obviously I’m not suggesting that a kids show have a pirate do anything in the way of what a real pirate would do- but it would have been nice to see that the Pirate Princess could actually do something. Especially since my kids love the show, and I’ve already seen this episode four times. (Besides, who wants to be a princess? They have no power. Queen is definitely the title to have)

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

SoCal restaurant Gjelina in Venice has a no substitutions policy, which they state on their menu. There are a number of small places that do this, but for the most part nobody talks about them. Except that they refused to make a change to a dish for Victoria Beckham who was dining with Gordon Ramsey.

As Ramsey tells it, the very pregnant Beckham asked for the dressing on the side. The restaurant refused. (You can read more about the account here, as well as Gjelina’s response to the LA Times when asked about it)

In reading the comments, there were a couple of things that genuinely bothered me and made me wonder about how the kitchen at Gjelina is run. There were a couple of commenters who had asked for dressings to be included on the side, or items removed due to food allergies. In each of their cases, Gjelina refused to accommodate them, citing their policy.

I’m not sure if this is an instance where the food is essentially pre-prepared, so that alterations to dishes are impossible (though it seems odd to pre-dress salad), or if it’s an instance where the executive chef is of the breed that believe that food allergies are rubbish and they won’t compromise the taste of their dish for anything and anyone.

If it’s the latter, that is frustrating. While I can understand that substitutions take up time in the kitchen – it’s often difficult for people with varied diets (from vegetarians to those with allergies) to find meals that are satisfying. Time and time again, I’ve gone to lunch with my mom where we discovered that all the salads a restaurant offered had bacon or chicken in them. She even once ordered a vegetable minestrone soup to discover that it was made with a beef broth!

For me, it all comes down to customer service. Yes, it might be a pain to accommodate some requests, but it’s just good business to at least understand that there’s a difference between food allergies and a picky eater. And for chefs to understand that yes, pregnant women do interpret flavors separately. I feel for Victoria Beckham- when I was pregnant with the Little Kidlet, I was extremely sensitive to vinegar. What used to be dressed perfectly, salad-wise, often seemed overwhelming flavor-wise.

So for me, I think that the restaurant is being ridiculous. What do you say? Is their policy over-kill or is it ridiculous for people to think they should be accommodated? And let’s ignore the fact that this story involves celebrities… imagine it was a story told to you about friends. Would that change your opinion?

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

For any of these pictures, click on them and you can see them full-sized.

I’ve tweeted about the DC Reboot, which for those non-comic types was the recent announcement that DC will be restarting all of its major series numerically and content-wise. Origin stories, and chances for fresh starts for characters.

I will say this here, I think this is a great idea. The problem with having extremely long continuities is that it makes it hard for new fans to step in- which is what the comics industry is in dire need of. Also, I do like the idea that you can get it digitally on release day. The only way for the comics industry to stay relevant is to keep adapting with new technology.

I was unsure of a couple things when they announced the reboot and the first few titles. And yesterday, I saw something that made me down right furious.

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

With the internet abuzz over Rihanna’s music video for “Man Down” I thought that I’d check it out and see if it really is suggesting that rape victims kill their attackers. As I expected, it wasn’t. I’ll say right away that in order to come to that conclusion, critics had to have read a summary of the video/song without actually watching it or listening to the song.

The video begins with Rihanna shooting a man in a train station before the song begins. As the song plays, it cuts between the day before and after the shooting. Rihanna’s happy and carefree. Playing with kids, enjoying some coconut water (both VitaCoco and from an actual coconut). She rides her bike! She goes to a party, where she meets a man who she says no to, who later tracks her down and rapes her. Cut through this, post-shooting Rihanna broods, mopes… and basically sings about how she rushed into action and now realizes how wrong she was.

Right. That’s telling every victim to go out and shoot the person responsible.

It’s clear that she wrote this song while working through the aftermath of her relationship with Chris Brown. Artists using music for catharsis is hardly new. Frankly, I applaud her for exploring the desire for revenge, and admitting that murdering someone out of revenge would have a cost. Because as much as we try as a society to stop domestic violence and sexual assault, we still don’t know how to treat someone who is a victim.

After the Chris Brown / Rihanna story came out, it wasn’t uncommon to see reader comments on news stories break into two camps. Those who refused to believe that Brown did it (or who made sure to say that Rihanna must have provoked him) and those who said that no matter what happened, violence is never the answer. The number of women who stood behind Brown and tried to blame Rihanna was sadly much higher than I had expected. And it was about the same ratio on any news story about it- no matter how many pictures or witness accounts were included.

I bring up the Brown/Rihanna incident because as much as people would like to say it wasn’t representative of our views… it is. While the law is set up to try to protect victims, it’s all too common to see rape victims blamed for what happened because of their manner of dress or where they happened to be (google SlutWalk if you don’t believe me). Or accused rapists claiming that the victims aren’t really victims, just vindictive women who are trying to get revenge for something. And sadly, people believe these outrageous notions.

So kudos to you Rihanna for getting people talking about sexual assault/sexual violence. Thank you for not being afraid to share your pain or the thoughts you had to have explored. And to the people who want to judge the content of TV shows, music and videos? It helps if you actually watch or listen to what you’re condemning.

In case you haven’t seen the video yourself, check it out:

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

This Crew is Full. A couple months back, we decided we aren’t going to have any more kids. I’d wanted to wait to write about it until after certain things were past, but now it feels like talking about the reasons why are the blogging equivalent of the LeBron Decision special. (However, I did want to touch on the subject – so I thought I’d pull out a pirate metaphor and see where that went)

I’ll say this. When I was a kid, I always said I’d have two kids. After I had the Little Kidlet, I thought about a third, mostly because I wanted to try for a girl. But honestly, these two keep my hands full. Not to mention they’ve given me plenty of gray hair. If I had a third, I’d wind up looking like Storm. Which actually, might be awesome.

TheBoy and I had both secretly been thinking about whether or not we should stop at two, so at least there were no disagreements there. He had a vasectomy. I was there for it, and I’m proud of him for not being knocked out – I know that he’s had issues with blood and such in the past. (No, he didn’t watch it, but I did. It was cool, but keep in mind, I used to want to be a coroner… so don’t go looking up videos based on my word alone) He did his research, and followed the doctor’s directions to the letter, as well as took the advice posted from men who’d already had the procedure. Which were essentially, ice often, wear an athletic supporter and don’t exercise. He followed that advice, and there were no complications.

The strangest part was him having to wait to go give a specimen for them to test so that they could certify that he was indeed sterile (I honestly think this is the first time I’ve written the word). Mostly because it’s not like that’s anything he’s done before, so it was odd. And the doctor’s office forgot to check the box that said it was a post-vasectomy testing, so he had to check that box himself. Then we waited a week, and he got the call from the doctor… and here we are. (He made a certificate saying he was sterile that I wish I could have shown here, but it wasn’t letting him save it as an image – it also certified that the procedure gave TheBoy ninja powers. Go him)

I salute everyone who can handle more than two kids. I just know TheBoy and I just aren’t in that group. So, sorry to all those who’ve commented that I need to have more kids (and there have been plenty in the last year). You’ll just have to be satisfied with these two quirky kidlets.

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

Dear Mom,

You’ve given me so much over the years, and especially since I left home, I’ve come to appreciate just how much of my being I can attribute to the way you’ve raised me. This is just a small token of appreciation for one of the many gifts you’ve given me.

-W

The lemon tart to the right was made by my mom for Christmas (obviously). I’m sharing my horrible picture of it because it was a great example of how brilliant she is in the kitchen- she combined a few recipes on the spot to make this, and you’d never know. It was so good!

I love food. If you didn’t know that, you’ve probably just stumbled across this blog. I pick vacations not just for the experience, but where to eat. I go to Vegas yearly, and it isn’t for the gambling. I stopped going to concerts, and started splurging on nice restaurants.

This is something I got from my parents, who also both love to eat. But mostly, this is something I learned from my mom. The more I look at my current view of food, the more I realize that I got here because of her.

I suppose you could have called me a foodie even as a child, looking back . I was passionate about the foods I ate. The only way to make a good tuna salad was with whole albacore that was packed in water (never in oil), Best Foods Mayo, dill pickle chips (preferably Arnold’s from Arizona) and seasoned with a touch of salt, lots of garlic powder and white pepper. I believed, and still do, that it’s the white pepper and the quality of the pickle that sets my tuna apart from everyone else’s. And I learned this recipe from my mom. (I also learned that you never use Miracle Whip or sweet pickles. That’s tuna sacrilege.) I could also spend an hour explaining why certain potato chips were better than others- and I’m pretty sure I did.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

As a kid, I would come home from school and start working on my homework in the dining room. Up until I was in middle school, I did my homework at the dining room table, so that my mom could help me if I needed it. (After that, it wasn’t so much that I didn’t need my mom’s help, but I could work on my own) It meant that more often than not, I had a front row seat for watching my mom make meals.

The layout of our kitchen was a half moon shape (as is her current kitchen, now that I think about it) – with one long countertop interrupted by a stove in the middle. The pantry and fridge were to one side, the sink was on the other.

She’s a graceful woman. She took ballet as a girl, and you can see it still in the way she carries herself. There she’d be, moving back and forth through the kitchen, preparing dinner. She’d chop and shift, go to the pantry to get ingredients. It was always fun to watch.

We were heavily involved in the menus. She asked us what we wanted to eat when we all went to the grocery store together. If it was something we wanted in our lunches, it was something that we had to tell her to get. She had strict rules about what we could and couldn’t eat. Candy wasn’t something that we regularly ate, but it wasn’t uncommon for us to have ice cream in our freezer- for those special occasions. During long power outages, it was the first thing she broke from our fridge. We knew it wouldn’t really melt before the power came back, but it was always that soothing touch needed to take away the fear of not knowing how long we’d be without power.

She showed me that there was no shame in making food from scratch. She explained that when my friends thought they were cool by bringing Lunchables, that the only thing cool about it was the divided tray – they were paying a lot of money for a piece of plastic that was just being thrown away. We talked a lot about nutrition and making sure you had enough vegetables and proteins. I learned a lot. She also showed me helpful shortcuts. A well stocked pantry and freezer meant that you could always find something to eat. We weren’t the sort to make our own stocks, but our freezer always had vegetable mixes that could easily be thrown in with some stock to make soup. Even with those canned stocks (which at the time weren’t that great), it still tasted better than anything else that Campbell’s could make. Or the vegetables made a quick stir fry, or where steamed for a quick side.

She taught me that with a few easy recipes, you always have something to fall back on when you aren’t sure what you want to eat. Lunch was always as easy as shredding cheese, putting it on a flour tortilla and letting it crisp up in the oven (we weren’t quesadilla people). If it was dinner, and we were all exhausted from a long day, she’d heat up a couple cans of refried beans and we’d have bean burros. Or toss some corn tortillas in the oven to crisp and have some tostadas.

My mom was the person who showed me that you should know where your food comes from. When I was 13, she had seen a video about how most meat is produced, and it sickened her. We became pescetarians. Eventually, I began to add meat back in during college. Mostly because it seemed like being a pescetarian was expensive, and I was suddenly falling in love with fast food (and falling in love with TheBoy, who would have fast food with me after our shifts). In came beef. Eventually, I came to my senses and found a balance- I simply found people who produced meat in a way that I was comfortable with. And fast food chains that I felt comfortable eating at.

If it weren’t for her, I wouldn’t try to shop for vegetables and fruits in season. I wouldn’t care as much as I do about supporting restaurants that source local foods and sustainable seafood.

My mom is an excellent cook (heck, my dad is too, even if he denies it), and I’ve often written about her brilliance with combining flavors. But more important than either is her love of food. I’ve known from an early age that food can be something special and that if you make a dish with care and love, that it’ll be evident to the people who enjoy it. She taught me that recipes are wonderful things, not just a path to a specific dish, but the springboard to find any number of new and unexpected dishes.

But most importantly, she showed me that there’s no shame in being a woman that loves to cook. That you can be an activist, a feminist and cook for your family- that there’s nothing contradictory about it. It isn’t about happening to fit into what’s expected- it’s about surpassing those expectations, and being true to yourself.

She taught me that it’s perfectly fine to serve a fancy meal to family, and eat it in your pajamas. That Christmas dinner can be a bunch of side dishes if that’s what you want, or even a bunch of delicious appetizers. That it’s okay to have your dessert first just so you won’t fill up. That any reason is a good reason to break out the good china- and that you should never drink water before or during your meal. (You’ll only fill up faster, and take away room from a delicious meal.) And that one of the things you don’t skimp on at your wedding is the wedding cake.

I could go on and on and on, but ultimately it comes back to one thing. Food and love go hand in hand, for her and for me.

Love you Mom.

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

Mariah Carey announced the names of her children. Moroccan Scott (for the boy) and Monroe (for the girl).

Their logic? Moroccan Scott was named after the Moroccan Room in her NY apartment, which is where Nick Cannon proposed. Monroe is after Marilyn Monroe- an icon who inspired Mariah. (Apparently Marilyn was just too obvious)

Please tell me that people will stop making fun of Coco and Apple now. Because these are infinitely worse.

Before I knew that Moroccan was after the name of the room (and the decor style), I thought she was simply going with using the term to describe someone from Morocco. Which led to the following conversation with my mother.

MyMom: Would you name someone The Virginian?
Me: Now I want to. (That would be the most rugged baby ever, I imagine)

Then after we realized it was after the decor style, I named my super-imaginary next child French Colonial (My mom suggested Hollywood Regency). But because Moroccan Scott just seemed like it’s describing someone, I am now partial to Jamaican Bob. Welsh Rhys is also in the running.

But ultimately, Mariah Carey has created the ultimate baby naming meme. If it’s a boy, you name it after the location your proposal took place. If it’s a girl, you use the last name of someone you admired – bonus points if it’s used as a male first name.

So if I were having a boy and girl, they would be… Autopia Y-Position and Peron. Oh super-ultra-imaginary children, I do apologize. But Autopia Y-Position, it could be worse. It’s currently the Offroading/Backbridge area of the ride… which would make you Autopia Backbridge or Autopia Offroading. It’s also the Fantasyland Smoking Area, which just doesn’t help matters much does it? And Peron, I couldn’t resist picking the most bizarre role-model of all my childhood role models. Because ultimately, Hepburn actually is a kinda cool name. (But for a boy)

Sorry Mariah. I’m sure you think these are wonderful names. But you’ve definitely raised the bar when it comes to crazy names. Because there’s no way that anyone can use Moroccan for a first name.

Share your imaginary babies’ names, or if you aren’t engaged or married… just come up with the most ridiculous thing possible. Because after awhile, it’s just sort of fun. Sorry Mariah. I don’t normally like mocking people’s name choices… but these are just bad.

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.

Sony’s PlayStation Network has been down for days now. Days and days with Sony essentially saying that they were looking into the problem and it’d be up soon.

Now it’s come out that the PlayStation Network has been down because they were hacked – they had mentioned an intrusion, but never the scope of it. Personal information was accessed from accounts, which ranged from addresses to credit card numbers. I admit, I don’t have an account (my PS3 is pretty much only used for my BluRay and for folding). My brother in law does, but all they could have stolen was his address – he uses prepaid cards to buy anything.

While I’m glad that my in-laws are probably going to be fine (since if he’d used a card, it would have been theirs)… there’s a bigger problem to this. Sony knew that personal information had been accessed and waited nearly a week before admitting that consumer data was stolen. A week in which the stolen data could have been sold and used for who knows what.

I have been the victim of identity theft. I had a woman get my bank account and try to pass bad checks through it. I’ve had my credit card stolen and someone ring up fraudulent charges (thank you Chase for realizing that I probably wasn’t going to be buying jeans from Europe). In the first case, it took me a couple weeks to feel relatively normal. Days on the phone with the branch I’d opened up my account, and them on the phone with the local branches to make sure that nobody could cash a check that wasn’t me. Closing all my accounts, my credit card numbers, putting a fraud flag on my credit reports – and having to wait for new checks, new credit cards and updating any saved card information on the internet.

In this day and age – where identity theft is rampant and considerable damage can be done to someone’s life within 24 hours… it’s unconscionable for Sony to wait so long to disclose the full extent of the hacking. Sony spokesman Patrick Seybold said that because of the scope of the problem they didn’t realize that the theft had occurred until Monday (the 25th), and that they had informed customers. I’m still not sure how in this day and age, it took them several days to discover that personal data was stolen.

I am disappointed in Sony. For any company with e-commerce, the first thing you should check after being hacked isn’t the structural integrity, it’s whether or not personal information was stolen. Ultimately though, it’s a good reminder that you get what you pay for. Sony offered access to their PlayStation Network for free (even if the games on it weren’t). Microsoft charges for XBox Live, but I’m fairly certain that they would have responded differently.

So what can you do to protect yourself? Like my brother-in-law, you can purchase points cards for online currency purchases (whether it’s for gaming networks or Facebook games). Most credit cards also offer temporary credit card numbers. Which might not be useful for a gaming network, but for most regular purchases can be helpful to protect your actual credit card information.

But most importantly, what you can do is order your annual credit reports from the three credit agencies, and make sure that accounts haven’t been opened that you’re unaware of. (If you’re going to go to FreeCreditReport.Com, be careful. In order for it to be free, you have to sign up for their credit monitoring service – which has a monthly fee. You can cancel it after the initial purchase… but just make sure you do so you don’t keep getting charged. However, if you do a lot of online purchases, it might not be a bad investment – since you’ll be able to see your credit score change on a regular basis) As silly as it seems, do regular checks of your bank accounts online- and credit cards, too. Don’t wait until you get your monthly statements, make sure you check on a weekly basis – since the earlier you notice an irregularity, the earlier you’ll be able to put a stop to it if someone has stolen your identity. (I should note, that you probably should wait a bit to order your credit reports – just to make sure that any opened accounts are reflected)

While most banks and credit cards will reverse fraudulent charges, it can take days to get the money back into bank accounts, or for charges to be reduced on cards.

It should go without saying, but if you have an account on the PlayStation Network – you should change the password for any login that you have associated with the email address you used.

Originally published at American Whitney. You can comment here or there.