Karen
Lee Bertiger
CRB, CRS, e-PRO, GRI, RECS
FLORIDA LIC. REAL ESTATE BROKER
ARIZONA LIC. REAL ESTATE BROKER
INVESTMENT/INCOME REAL ESTATE
SPECIALIST
One # Access
Toll Free: 1-888-768-4454
Florida License Registered Branch
Office:
901 SW Martin Downs Blvd, Ste 304A
Palm City, FL 34990
PLEASE DIRECT ALL FLORIDA BROKER
MAIL TO:
Florida Branch Office Mailing Address:
PO Box 2449
Palm City, FL 34991-2449
AZ Office Mailing Address:
PO Box 1747
Barrington, IL 60011-1747
We Do Not Currently Have an Office
Location in Arizona
Investment Real Estate Brokerage & Asset
Management (Not Property Mgmt)
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National Association of Realtors®
2008 Code of Ethics
Celebrating 25+ Years Career Experience in Investment Real Estate in 2008 With
30+ Years As An Investor
©2003-2008 Karen Lee Bertiger. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
WORLDWIDE.
Privacy Policy
This web & its information is a
service to Karen Lee Bertiger's prospects, customers and clients. While designed
to provide accurate and authoritative information, it is not meant as a
substitute for your own CPA, professional tax advisor, or attorney. Investment
real estate tax planning depends on your individual facts and circumstances. You
should always consult with your own tax advisor to determine if the ideas and
techniques discussed here apply to your situation. It is
offered with the understanding that Karen Lee Bertiger is not engaged in
rendering legal, tax or accounting service. If legal advice or other
expert tax or accounting assistance is required, the opinion or the services of
a competent professional person in those disciplines should be sought. The
information contained in this web is offered in good faith, developed from
sources deemed to be reliable, and believed to be accurate when prepared, but is
offered without warranty, express or implied, as to its merchantability, fitness
for a particular purpose, or any other matter. Karen Lee Bertiger disclaims all
responsibility for any loss or damage arising from reliance on such information
by any party.
I regularly receive unsolicited
e-mail purportedly showing the return path to be one of a number of domain names
of which I am the administrator. It gets returned
to me because of the return path, which was fraudulently used
on the e-mail. I do NOT send out
unsolicited e-mail, and do NOT solicit personal or financial information such as
credit card numbers through e-mail, or by requesting a click on an e-mail
to order something. I do not send out unsolicited e-mail advertising.
Please also be aware that the National
Association of Realtors has more than 1.3 million members, all of whom have
access to other members' e-mail addresses. If those other members send out bogus
e-mails using another member's legitimate e-mail address, or fail to
protect their own computers, including the local, state & national associations, there is no way that I
can prevent that. There is also no way that I or any other individual who has a
legitimate e-mail address can prevent someone else or even an identity thief
from using it to register at all sorts of different websites. Hence, if someone
uses YOUR legitimate e-mail address to register for access to websites that you
would never register for or even visit, YOU will then end up in other databases,
and on it goes.
It's a simple, yet stupid assumption, that is not based on reality, that a legitimate e-mail
address used with any registration means that the person whose e-mail address is
being used actually registered for access. Having been victimized by ID theft
already, I can tell you that NO information contained in any business, credit
card, bank, federal, state or local database is foolproof. It is my
opinion that there is no possible way for any citizen of this country to protect
their social security number for this reason. The best I can do is require verified e-mail
registration before I will set up a customer or client account for my website.
Beware of simple assumptions that aren't based on reality before you believe
anything contained in ANY database that relies on web registrations.
Since my web is hosted by servers not owned by this firm, all I can
personally do is keep pointing out to the shared services on their networks that
someone else's website or their own servers may be inadvertently sending spim,
spam & spit. If you don't know what those terms mean, please see the article on
http://www.pctoday.com under
"Advanced
Guide - Tired of Spam? Now There's Spim & Spit, Too" and then visit Gibson
Research at http://www.grc.com & get the "Kill
the Messenger" utility to protect your own Windows operating system from being
used to generate spim, spit & spam. If every one of the 1.3 million REALTORS®
were to check their machines & their office network
servers, they would not be a part of the problem, but rather a part of the
solution, at least in our industry. If we want to be able to continue to use
e-mail to market our properties, PLEASE take the proper precautions & request
that your hosting service or IT professional does the same. That doesn't mean it
won't get reset if a back-up tape is used by your host. If it continues I would
suggest either a breach of contract, modification of contract or other legal
action be taken.
I only send e-mail to members of the public who have given me permission to send them
prospect, customer or client information
about my services or my clients' properties. I do not advertise any
other type of merchandise or service for sale through e-mail. It is my advice that you do not
send personal identity information over the internet through unsolicited
e-mail, and that you do not send your credit card number or personal information
to any website that appears credible, but does not list a business address and
phone numbers. If a P.O. Box is listed without a business address and you have
submitted a credit card, contact the Federal Trade Commission and/or the Postal Inspector and give them the
e-mail scammer's P O Box
information with your complaint. NEW - I
do not send text messages from any cell phone number - there is no way to
determine where the message is coming from; i.e., I received a text message
purportedly coming from my own cell phone number - which is apparently condoned by
Verizon Wireless. Please be aware that this service can be used for nefarious
purposes including aggravated stalking and other criminal activities. There is
no way for me as a cell phone customer to prevent this type of text messaging.
Parents and young people need to be aware of this problem. Go to
http://www.verizonwireless.com and under "Get It Now" click on "send a text
message."
Don't let your children become victims. I don't know what the solution to this
type of stalking is, but you most probably need to have a special code message
that would only come from you, as their parent, and one from each of your
children to prevent them from being tracked by a criminal stalker.
My current view of e-mail is that's it's a great time saver for legitimate
non-confidential communications. However, I hate getting spam and would never
subject my prospects, customers and clients to it.
As a professional investment real estate broker, I belong to many professional
organizations which have included my e-mail addresses in their online
directories in a manner which has allowed spammers to harvest those addresses.
Generally, most really good brokers have extensive e-mail lists of other brokers
and current and past customers and clients. (My e-mail list is not kept within
my e-mail program, so it cannot be compromised by incoming e-mail). In addition,
many of the organizations I belong to do not take the precaution of "coding"
members' e-mail address on their directories so they cannot be harvested by
e-mail spammers and scammers. As previously stated, I do not send out bulk
e-mail that is unsolicited. In addition, it's difficult to say how many other
people may have acquired one of my e-mail addresses. Apparently it is quite a
few, since I have received more than 11,000 junk e-mails in less than 3 months
(some returned to me because a spammer was spoofing my domain) and many have
been virus infected. I have hired investigators and attorneys to prosecute the
matter of misappropriation of my domain names, but so far, many are originating
outside the US. We update our systems several times per day and ALL of my
legitimate e-mail is scanned for viruses BEFORE it leaves. I would suggest that
all real estate professionals do the same. If you receive spam or virus infected
e-mails purportedly from me, please know that it did NOT come from me.
There are currently at least two perpetrators who are using a domain name that I
control without permission from the company. They are currently utilizing
connections with ISPs/broadband providers both inside and outside the US. We have the IP
addresses for the machines that are being used, and intend to prosecute to the
fullest extent of the US, Canadian and/or international laws. None of the
originating IP
addresses are mine. Most of these messages have also been infected
with the latest viruses, in an obvious attempt to spread trojan horses and use a
legitimate business owner's identity to take the heat.
Personally, I'd like
to see these people go to jail for wire fraud and identity theft if this is anything other than stupidity. It is
more likely from someone who either downloaded my company information from an Earthlink server from within their company or bought a used server from Earthlink (who may have
neglected to totally erase all of my domain information, including e-mail
servers when I moved my hosting arrangements - it's not just your personal
computer that needs to be erased for complete privacy if you sell it or give it
away for ID theft prevention,
by the way) or from someone who has an infected computer with an e-mail list
containing one of my e-mail addresses. In either case, there is nothing I can do
about any of those situations. The other possibility is that cleaning crews or
others gaining access to my office space have committed commercial espionage by
illegally copying the hard disks on our office equipment. Unfortunately, I have
no control over whom a building owner or property manager gives access to if I
don't own the building. If law enforcement can't handle it, we're in big
trouble, in my opinion.
REPEAT: Since my web is hosted by servers not owned by this firm, all I can
personally do is keep pointing out to the shared services on their networks that
someone else's website or their own servers may be inadvertently sending spim,
spam & spit. If you don't know what those terms mean, please see the article on
http://www.pctoday.com under "Advanced
Guide - Tired of Spam? Now There's Spim & Spit, Too" and then visit Gibson
Research at http://www.grc.com & get the "Kill
the Messenger" utility to protect your own Windows operating system from being
used to generate spim, spit & spam. If every one of the 1.3 million REALTORS®
were to check their machines & their office network
servers, they would not be a part of the problem, but rather a part of the
solution, at least in our industry. If we want to be able to continue to use
e-mail to market our properties, PLEASE take the proper precautions & request
that your hosting service or IT professional does the same. That doesn't mean it
won't get reset if a back-up tape is used by your host. If it continues I would
suggest either a breach of contract, modification of contract or other legal
action be taken.
For further information, including possible additional legal ramifications for the perps, click on the link below:
www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110918,00.asp
For more information on various fraud scams being
perpetrated via e-mail, check out the
Secret
Service's website.
eBay's How to Spot Spoofed E-Mail Tutorial
More info on the latest internet & e-mail threats:
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/06/30/HNfinancialtrojan_1.html
http://www.infoworld.com/article/04/07/06/HNipodsrisk_1.html
http://www.symantec.com