Scams, Swamps and Sinkholes

Update 03/05/2018: A more official study suggesting that my calculations regarding how much a Lyft driver actually makes were correct: http://start.att.net/news/read/article/fortune-heres_how_much_uber_and_lyft_drivers_make_per_hour-rtime/category/finance Sad that the people at Lyft and Uber are able to get away with this.The rates they advertise to attract drivers are at the very least "flawed if not outright dishonest!" With all the bad publicity Uber has received recently, Lyft  is trying to position themselves with the public as a better option and a good citizen in the techie community. They claim all over the internet that a driver can make up to $35 an hour/$1500 a week, which sounds great, but is it too good to be true? I decided to find out! To begin my adventure, I signed up and ultimately chose to use their new "Express Drive program." where a rental car is provided for a fee. To calculate what the costs would be if I used my own vehicle, I...

The BBB Scam Tracker is a robust interactive tool to track fraudulent activity in throughout North America. The data I viewed from Mexico seems to be minimal at this point, although this might be because Mexico was added after the United States and Canada. The site collects data from users, who were the victims of a scam, or from smart people who figured out someone was trying to scam them. The tool enables the user to search potential fraudulent activity by keyword, type of scam, location, and time frame. Please note that scams are most successful when they hit a new geographical area because the "word is not out yet." Because of this, scammers frequently travel and even rotate the particular scam in order to catch innocent people/businesses off guard. Just because the particular scam is not showing up in your geographical area doesn't mean it isn't a scam. The scam activities tracked include home repair, tree trimming, tax, advance fee, job, lottery, collectio...