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moominquartz · 6 years ago

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Humans are fascinating in that they are meant to change. Gems cannot. Their programming is irreversible and resolute.

A Rose Quartz character study. Contains spoilers through Steven Universe Future S01E04: Volleyball.

Rose Quartz has never loved anyone more than she has loved Greg Universe.

It almost hurts to admit. She loves Pearl, of course — and that, perhaps, is a fault; for Pearl adores her to the point of exaltation. But Pearl’s feelings for Rose are solely because she was programmed to adore her Diamond, and therefore Rose can never allow herself to reciprocate; the one thing she cannot allow her. That is a conversation she and Pearl will never have, because Rose is a coward.

But Rose is a hypocrite, because she adores Greg in much the same way.

“My Greg,” she murmurs between kisses, enjoying very much how Greg could never know the true connotation of that phrase. How beautiful, to promise oneself so wholly to another, not out of duty or propriety, but because one wanted to.

“My Rose,” Greg tries once, and Rose freezes.

No one has called her theirs in centuries. Pearl stopped once the rebellion began in true force, because it could ask some people to connect the dots — even in private, Rose had felt it was too risky, and it would reinforce a mindset Rose wanted to eradicate. (Not that she’d been successful at that.)

Rose had called Pearl “my Pearl” countless times; at first, it had made Pearl intensely uncomfortable, but over the years it had turned into a point of pride. She’d always meant it, every time. Rose had not used such a term of endearment with any of the men she’d dated — not before Greg. And even then, she hadn’t meant it any less.

But Greg whispering those words makes Rose remember every member of her court. She remembers the way Pearl had said those words shortly after assuming her new identity. She remembers every Jade, every Pebble, every Pearl —

I shouldn’t have been standing so close, my Diamond —

Greg’s hands curl around hers, begging her back to the present. “Hey, are you okay?” he asks, voice softer than she could ever deserve.

“Of course,” she murmurs, a lie they both recognize.

“You don’t have to talk about it,” Greg says. “Would you rather I not say that?”

She nods. It ends there.

Greg never pushes her for anything. Never asks her for details. Never questions the horrible, horrific past she hides from everyone.

She doesn’t deserve it. She deserves someone who demands explanation, who demands her to prostrate herself and accept judgment for all of the people she’s ever hurt. Someone who sees right through her and refuses to accept her.

But Rose Quartz is a coward in love, and Greg is a soft blanket; he is her shield from her own past, and she takes great pleasure in escaping in him.

When she accepted her colony, she left Spinel behind. Thousands of years later, she tends the garden surrounding her fountain and wonders where Spinel is now. Did she ever look for Pink Diamond? Did she ever find that Pink was shattered? Did she accept that answer, was she given another role on Homeworld?

Without Pink Diamond, Spinel had no purpose. Had White shattered her?

Rose considers the Garden. She considers making the trek to the desert alone, reactivating Pink Diamond’s ship, and returning to the Garden. Finding Spinel, if any pieces of her remain, and bringing her back to Earth.

But it was quite possible that the other Diamonds would be notified if the ship was used again. She couldn’t risk it. She couldn’t risk bringing the Diamonds’ attention back to Earth.

After all, after the Corruption, they had abandoned the place. Even with gems in such a maimed state, the planet itself was safer than it had ever been. She couldn’t risk all the life on Earth for just one gem.

Just another mistake she’d made, never rectified. Just another crime, never judged. Just another fear, never put to rest.

Bismuth proposes the Breaking Point with a gleam in her eye.

Rose doesn’t turn her down out of any sense of justice, out of any sense of morality. In all honesty, Bismuth brings up an argument that shouldn’t be ignored. In war, when the enemy is willing to shatter you, you cannot simply poof and bubble. It’s a time consuming, delicate way to eliminate them, and Homeworld has greater numbers, heavier artillery, and too many resources.

But Rose can’t allow Bismuth to shatter her. Even if Bismuth has no idea that she’s presenting this idea to her greatest enemy.

When Bismuth insists, when she points out the strategic benefits, Rose knows she’s right, and she knows she has no real argument against her.

“I’m sorry,” Rose says with finality, “but it isn’t right.”

“Isn’t right?!” Bismuth’s temper is flaring, spiking past just irritation and incomprehension. “What does that mean? This is a war, Rose! We don’t have the luxury of moralizing our actions! We need to prioritize our soldiers. Your soldiers!”

“Calm yourself.”

Bismuth’s fuse does not extinguish. She threatens her, says she’ll go to the others about this. And Rose cannot justify herself to the others, who will no doubt see that Bismuth’s weapon is exactly what they need. And if they question her, they’ll dig, and they’ll expose a truth Rose cannot possibly hope to explain. It terrifies her.

So Rose extinguishes Bismuth’s fuse for her, and pretends — for her own sake — that it never happened.

Pearl, broken beyond repair. Spinel, abandoned. Bismuth, bubbled and hidden. Pearl, enslaved and silenced. Lion, dead. All of the Rose Quartzes, bubbled and falsely judged. Hundreds and hundreds of Gems, corrupted. Amethyst, isolated. The Earth, permanently scarred.

At some point, all of her mistakes add up to a terrifying sum.

Humans are fascinating in that they are meant to change. Gems… Gems cannot. Their programming is irreversible and resolute.

Rose Quartz is Pink Diamond, and Pink Diamond is a monster.

After a particularly trying tour of the Prime Kindergarten, Rose asks Greg pointed questions about human reproduction. And, though red-faced and flustered, he explains it to her. He takes her to the Budwick Library, where they go through health textbooks and detailed diagrams, and Rose realizes something extraordinary.

“Do you think we could do that?” she asks, as the book shuts.

“Huh?” Greg blinks at her, confusion writ across his face. “You mean — have a baby together?”

“Do you think we could create life together, you and I?”

Rose thinks of the Kindergartens. She thinks of how much life she recklessly destroyed in order to create gems who only worked to destroy even more of it. But humans… Humans were designed to preserve life, gloriously, nothing being sacrificed for their survival except time and energy.

Greg’s eyes are on her, thoughtful and sensitive as always. “I… this is probably a weird question, but uh.” He blushes. “Do you even… do you even have that kind of… equipment?”

“I could shapeshift it,” she murmurs, enraptured. “I could give myself ovaries and eggs and a vagina and a cl—”

“I-I guess you could!” Greg squeaks out. She giggles; she can’t possibly begin to fathom why he’s so embarrassed about this when it’s such a gift. “I… could you… could you hold all of that? For months?”

“Sure.”

Most gems couldn’t, but she’d had plenty of practice shapeshifting. And on top of that, she was one of the most powerful gems in existence, though she would never tell Greg that. Not unless he asked.

“But I thought…” Greg runs a hand through the gorgeous mane of his hair. “I thought gems couldn’t… reproduce like that.”

“We can’t.”

He starts, turning quickly to stare at her in horror, all the adorable awkwardness and embarrassment vanishing. She understands, and she wants it anyway.

“You mean…”

“I don’t think I would ever be able to give birth in the way that humans can,” Rose admits as she stares at the cover of the textbook. She places her hand on the cover, caressing the image of the pregnant human. “Gems aren’t designed for it. But if I could give up my form to create another life…”

To allow a new life to form and to erase an irredeemable one in the same breath.

“I — Rose.” There’s something odd in his voice. “I don’t know. I… You’ve lived for eons. You would seriously give all that up? You wouldn’t — you would die for this?”

“Yes.”

The answer is easy. The loose ends that are left in her life aren’t within her reach. What better bow to tie on her existence than to make up for her mistakes? To create a being that not only is capable of change, but is designed to?

“I…” Greg’s voice shifts. He sets his hand over the one she’s placed on the book. “...Let’s talk about this later, okay?”

“Of course.”

When the test is positive, things change drastically.

Firstly, Garnet forbids Rose from accompanying them on any missions.

“My future vision is useless here,” Garnet explains as her gaze, though obscured behind her visor, lands on her still flat stomach. “And… from what you and Greg have explained to me about human pregnancies, it seems a fragile thing. Let’s not test fate.”

“I can take care of myself,” Rose insists. “I am not a human.”

“I know.” Garnet shrugs, a half-smile playing on her lips. “Heed it anyway.”

So even though Rose rolls her eyes and huffs and pouts, she does as Garnet asks. After all, Garnet has never steered her wrong before, and Rose doesn’t want a reason to fear for her child’s life before it’s even begun.

Not that she’ll be around to fear for it when it has.

Secondly, Amethyst starts avoiding her. It isn’t what Rose expected, but she isn’t surprised. Amethyst has never adapted very well to loss.

Thirdly, Pearl shatters.

Not literally, of course. But Pearl becomes fractured, pieces of her former self.

“I hadn’t realized it was actually possible,” Pearl whispers in horror.

The two of them stand on the cliff above the temple, watching the waves. Below them, Greg and Amethyst are jamming, and Amethyst hits the drums with more voracity than usual.

“Isn’t that the wonderful thing about humanity?” Rose replies, awe and love coloring her voice. “Nothing is predictable. It’s always changing. If Greg had been anyone else, I don’t think I could have done this.”

Pearl frowns. Tears are in her eyes, but she does not shed them. Rose wishes she would.

“You know, Rose, that I have followed you through the furthest reaches of space, and I would follow you to the very end.”

Pearl’s fists clench.

“But I don’t believe I can follow you in this. Rose, you… you will be gone. Dead, in the human sense. You’ll be shattered.”

“Shattering means I would be in pieces for the rest of my existence,” she corrects, calm, quiet, patient. “This is different. I would cease to be, and instead, a new life will sprout in my place. Isn’t that wonderful?”

“Of course it isn’t!” Pearl snaps, raising her voice at Rose for the first time in years. “You can’t keep using that word! You can’t — you can’t just abandon us like this!”

“We have nine months until the child is born. I won’t be leaving until then.”

Nine months is but a blink to the two of them, and Pearl’s hurt, defeated expression shows just what she thinks of that.

“In these nine months, I need you to come to terms with this decision I’ve made. I don’t need you to understand it, just accept it. And, my Pearl…”

Rose wraps both of her hands around one of Pearl’s, and her dearest friend freezes.

“I need you to promise me that you will not abandon my child as I am abandoning you.”

Pearl begins to shake as the tears, finally, slip from her cheeks. “Rose… Rose, this isn’t fair. You know this isn’t.”

“I know.”

Neither of them move. Rose waits as Pearl, trembling, terrified, wrestles with the ugly jealousy and pure adoration inside of her. The sun has set and the city quieted by the time Pearl finally meets her eyes again.

“... I promise.”

It is the cruelest thing Rose has ever asked of her.

Rose doesn’t technically need to eat, but after discussing it with Greg and Vidalia, it seems that energy is a thing babies need.

“All of my energy comes from my gem,” she tells them. “Surely the baby will simply take energy from there as well.”

“I dunno,” Vidalia mutters, eyes heavy with makeup as she looks to her own son. Rose remembers baby Sour Cream fondly, though he has grown exponentially since their adventure. “The babe doesn’t have your gem yet. Maybe you should be eating.”

“They’re part human too, after all,” Greg murmurs.

Rose doesn’t think it’s necessary, even still. But the idea of her eating, and that energy going to the life forming within her, seems to comfort Greg, so she agrees, however reluctantly.

And then she discovered that food seemed to directly correlate to the horrendous “morning sickness” that she’d heard so, so much about. They didn’t have a restroom within the temple, which meant a lot of unpleasant mornings were spent by the seaside.

It even interrupts peaceful sleep spent at Greg’s side in his cozy little van. It drives her absolutely crazy, and Greg frets, stumbling after her as she rushes to the ocean waves. Sometimes she actually pukes, sometimes she doesn’t, and she hates its lack of predictability.

“Garnet,” Rose whispers one morning as she collapses, somehow exhausted, onto the temple’s warp pad. “Can’t you just use your future vision to tell me when I’ll puke?”

Garnet chuckles. “Sorry.” She isn’t sorry. “I’ve told you before. You’re already an anomaly, hard to pin down with foresight. Throwing human pregnancy into the mix is… well. You’ll be fine, I’m sure.”

Rose groans. Garnet’s smile stays for only a moment more, before she sits next to her.

“Rose. You know that I will follow you, unerringly.”

“Of course.” Rose’s eyes close, though she knows Garnet’s remain open.

“I know that Pearl and Amethyst are struggling with the choice you’ve made, the choice you’re making, in their own ways. But I just can’t understand it.”

Rose gestures, without looking, toward everything. “You know how I feel about humans, don’t you? How could I possibly resist the decision to create one?”

“You’ve resisted before. None of the humans you’ve been with have spawned this desire in you. Except for this one.”

Garnet is clever and wise, and it isn’t just Sapphire that makes her that way. Though Sapphire has the gift of foresight and level-headedness, Ruby has always been the less naive of the two.

Still, Rose doubts she can ever properly explain this decision to any of them. Maybe Pearl could come the closest to true understanding, if she ever thought to put her (understandable, justified) emotions to the side for a moment.

“I’ve made a lot of mistakes in my life,” Rose says, opening her eyes and staring upwards. Stars are still visible, though the sun has already begun to warm the night sky. “Perhaps even too many mistakes. But this decision… doing this, with Greg. This isn’t one of them.”

They say nothing for a while. No doubt Garnet is waiting for Rose to say something clarifying and sensical. The fusion watches her expression while Rose watches the sky. The stars vanish, midnight blue becoming purples and pinks and reds and oranges, and when the sun is finally high enough for the sky to be its typical, baby blue self, Garnet sighs.

“I’ll never understand it,” she says at last. “But at the same time… I do.”

Rose is relieved, even though she almost wishes Garnet had taken that bait. ‘Elaborate, Rose. You said ‘too many mistakes.’ Enumerate them.’ But Garnet is too trusting, and Rose is too afraid, and so she lets the mystery die.

Whenever Rose happens to be in the same room as Amethyst, Amethyst immediately has something more important to do. Rose thought she’d be fine with it, but after a few months, it has become something that hurts.

She misses the starry-eyed little gem who would follow her around, hanging onto every word and imitating every action. Of course, that desire is too close to something she doesn’t want to be, but she cannot help her programming, faulty as it is.

She is over the morning sickness by now, and her pregnancy is beginning to show. Rose can’t help but be awestruck by it, because her body seems to be shapeshifting without her consciously willing it. Is this growth?

Pearl, bless her gem, is making an effort. Rose sees it, appreciates it; she sees the way Pearl flinches at the sight of her, at the reminder that Rose will be vanishing from her life, and appreciates that Pearl looks anyway. Garnet looks upon her and sees an even larger blind spot than usual, and accepts it, prepares for the worst case scenario as she knows she may not be able to avoid it.

But Amethyst? Amethyst refuses.

“I don’t think I can do this,” Rose confesses to Pearl and Garnet one night. “I can’t. I can’t spend these last few months without her.”

And it may be selfish, but Rose believes Amethyst will regret it if this continues on; if Amethyst doesn’t speak a single word to her until she’s giving birth. By then, it will be too late.

And she cannot allow another mistake.

Garnet decides to speak to Amethyst first. She says that will go over better than Rose trying to corner her, and Rose agrees. So, though she doesn’t hear the conversation, when Garnet brings Amethyst outside of her room, Rose feels fear strike her heart.

Amethyst looks… disgruntled, like she’s just been scolded. Her arms are crossed as she comes to Rose and Pearl.

“Pearl,” Garnet calls. “Let’s give them a moment.”

Pearl looks like she might roll her eyes, but she does as Garnet heeds, and a moment later the two of them have vanished into the warp pad. Now it is just Rose Quartz, alone with an Amethyst whose entire existence is built upon Rose’s mistakes.

“Amethyst,” Rose begins, quiet and gentle. She won’t startle this little one. “Let’s talk about this. You can’t keep avoiding me forever.”

“Yeah I can,” Amethyst snaps, shoulders tensing. “Just watch me. What will it matter when you’re gone, huh? If that’s what you want so bad?”

Rose blinks. “Uh… wait, that isn’t what I want. I’m going to have a child, remember? Just like humans do all the time.”

“Yeah, but humans don’t die when they do! Well — well, most of them don’t! But you found out you’d like, have to die, and you were just like, ‘all right, sure, sign me up!’”

“Am—”

“I just don’t get it!” Amethyst all but shouts, loud enough that she may have even been heard in Beach City. “You can’t just run away when you want to! But you’re gonna do it anyway! You’re running away and never coming back, and you don’t even care that everyone wants you to stay!”

“Is that not what you’re doing?” Rose challenges, and Amethyst’s eyes meet hers for the first time; wide, shocked, tearful. “Running away?”

“I…!”

“Maybe I am,” Rose admits. Amethyst blinks, frozen. “Maybe I am running away. But maybe that doesn’t matter. Maybe I’m hitting two birds with one stone: I’m hiding from my mistakes, but also, I’m creating new life from nothing. It’s… it’s almost like I’m human.”

Almost.

Amethyst sniffs before she plops down onto the ground next to her. They both stare out at the sea for a second, until Amethyst turns and places her hand on Rose’s growing belly.

“There’s someone in there, huh,” Amethyst says, not quite asking. Rose smiles and nods anyway.

“I… I just dunno what we’re all gonna do with you, Rose.” The little one leans against Rose, sighing as she drops her hand from her belly. “I felt like, if I didn’t acknowledge it, I could pretend it wasn’t happening. And… and you’re just getting more pregnant.”

“Maybe I should have talked to all of you more seriously about it,” Rose murmurs.

“I think I’d still be super mad,” Amethyst snorts. “But like… I dunno how humans work, but I promise, we’ll be super helpful to the baby. It’s gonna be like I was, right? With no memories and no idea what its purpose is?”

“Yeah.” It’s a melodic sigh, celebratory.

“Sweet.”

Isn’t it?

The very first time she feels the babe kick her from within, everything — not just in her pregnancy, not just the morning sickness and the craving human food and the aching back and feet, but in the entirety of her existence — everything has been worth it, for this one moment.

“Greg,” she whispers, stars in her eyes.

Greg lifts his head from the book he’s got in his hand. “Hmm?”

“Greg, come here — oh!”

He sits upright, stretching. The day has been a lazy one, and as enjoyable as it’s been, he’s moving too slow. “You’re going to miss it!” she insists, grabbing his hand and yanking it over.

“Whoa!”

She presses it to where the movement just was, waiting, on the edge of her seat, hopeful. Greg seems to stop breathing, eyes widening, as they both oggle her belly.

And then—

“There,” Rose whispers.

Life.

“Oh my god.” Greg’s eyes water. He laughs, slow and surprised, and then it evolves, changing into something ecstatic and joyous. Rose cannot help but join him, overtaken by emotion in a way she has never been before.

Then Greg begins to sob, and his arms wrap around her, holding her close.

As she embraces him in her warmth, she wonders if humans have been in her shoes before; if they have made loved ones grieve for them before they’ve passed, knowing they’ll be bringing new life with their passing.

A part of her aches. A part of her fears.

“They’re in there,” she murmurs, hoping to comfort him. “Kickin’ around. Probably gets that from you.”

Greg chuckles, though it’s tinged with tears. “Yeah, right, miss ‘rebel leader.’ They’re gonna get all of their feistiness from you, and you know it.”

She can’t help the smile. “Yes. I do.”

By the time they are recording the tapes — the only thing their child will ever have of her — Rose can’t help but think, for once without any fear at all, as she stares into the camera and speaks to someone she will never know:

Rose Quartz has never loved anyone more than she has loved Steven Universe.

#su #steven universe #rose quartz #rose quartz su #su fanfic #idk what tags ppl use. sob #stevie original #stevie writes #I JUST LOVE RQ A LOT AND HAVE A LOT OF EMOTIONS ABOUT HER #also if u liked pls leave a comment on ao3 thank u :3c

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woohooligancomics · 8 years ago

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Sam Roasts the AMA!

No, not the American Music Awards, they rock! Or don't... I think it depends on your category. Anyway, in case you don't know, AMA means "Ask Me Anything". It's a kind of group-interview where questions come from a peanut gallery instead of an individual interviewer. I created an AMA on AMAFeed.com today and then immediately after creating it, I needed help with it, which wasn't forthcoming. There's no help link on the site, no forum, just an FAQ and a contact form, which is kinda weird. (I did later discover a reference to a support email address.)

So since there wasn't any way to revise the details of my AMA or correct any of the mistakes I'd made, I submitted the following on their contact form:

Hey there. So, I signed up today and created my first AMA here:

https://comicsama.com/sam-dealey-roasts-himself-an-ama-on-comedy-comics-and-why-laughter-is-a-467977/

It's pretty obvious from the description of the AMA that mistakes were made! :P However, there appears to be no way for me to correct those mistakes, including even any way to cancel the AMA and start over. Does AMA Feed intend to cater to a group of perfect, error-proof extraterrestial supercomputers? Or perhaps to nihilistic philosophers who believe that the mistakes of our past must be preserved as a reminder of the meaninglessness of existence?

Thanks,

Sam "the Snark" Dealey

p.s. If the answer here is any of

silence

"we'll correct those mistakes for you this once"

just create a new one

then you don't know how to do your job and I'll just pass on having an AMA with you, including this one I've already created.

It wasn't until after I had sent this message to them that I noticed this ridiculousness in their terms of service.

License

Unless otherwise stated, AMAFEED LLC and/or it’s licensors own the intellectual property rights for all material on AMAFEED LLC All intellectual property rights are reserved. You may view and/or print pages from https://amafeed.com/ for your own personal use subject to restrictions set in these terms and conditions.

You want me to hold an AMA on your site, but you reserve exclusive copyright to all my answers? Right, because AMAFeed.com is a business and you're hoping that you can make money off of the AMAs you've hosted in the future. There aren't ads on the site... yet. But then you expressly state in your FAQ that we're not allowed to create AMAs that are "veiled attempts to solicit money." Mixed Messaged much? If you have no intention of making money from these, why try to claim exclusive copyright to the content? "We're just here for the sole benefit of the public, we have no concern for our personal interests. We just want total control over whatever you're going to say, without paying you for it, to make sure everyone else gets a chance to hear it!"

But it doesn't really matter that you've said we can't solicit money, because while your FAQ says we can't do that, your Terms of Service say nothing about it! Nor does your ToS say anything about you having the right to remove that content (although you do anyway). So technically, you've given us no legal obligation there, Sherlock.

Also... you know that facts can't be copyrighted, right? In all likelihood most of the answers I'm going to give you can't have any legal control over because they'll be facts. Like when someone asks "what's your favorite pie" and I answer "the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter." Or when I answer "nine inches" to "how big is... a personal pan pizza." There might be some flair in the way I express them, but they're still facts, they can't be copyrighted. Might not be a bad idea to keep an eye on Twitter's legal battle over content rights as well.

You must not:

Republish material from https://amafeed.com/

Sell, rent or sub-license material from https://amafeed.com/

Reproduce, duplicate or copy material from https://amafeed.com/

Ooops! Too late. Come and get me. I wish you luck in your futile attempts to sue.

Redistribute content from AMAFEED LLC (unless content is specifically made for redistribution).

Need I even mention that you didn't get this into your bullet list? If proofreading a legal document isn't high on the priorities list, was legal advice for a legal document on that list?

... <removed "User Comments" section> ...

Hyperlinking to our Content

The following organizations may link to our Web site without prior written approval:

Government agencies;

Search engines;

News organizations;

Online directory distributors when they list us in the directory may link to our Web site in the same manner as they hyperlink to the Web sites of other listed businesses; and

Systemwide Accredited Businesses except soliciting non-profit organizations, charity shopping malls, and charity fundraising groups which may not hyperlink to our Web site.

You forgot "private citizens" and "any other kind of organization". D'oh! What on earth makes you think you get to control who LINKS to you? Do you get that privilege offline? "No, sorry, only Jeff is allowed to tell people where our store is located. Isn't that right Jeff? He's good at keeping secrets, I'm sure our rocket-launcher store will be in business for a long time, as long as Jeff is in charge!"

These organizations may link to our home page, to publications or to other Web site information so long as the link: (a) is not in any way misleading; (b) does not falsely imply sponsorship, endorsement or approval of the linking party and its products or services; and (c) fits within the context of the linking party's site.

Whew! Well, I sure am glad these links fit within the context of my roast! Wait... why did we start over at 1 again? Did you forget how to internet or did you forget how to outline? If you have a 1, you have to have a 2 following it, that's how these things work.

We may consider and approve in our sole discretion other link requests from the following types of organizations:

commonly-known consumer and/or business information sources such as Chambers of Commerce, American Automobile Association, AARP and Consumers Union;

dot.com community sites;

associations or other groups representing charities, including charity giving sites, online directory distributors;

internet portals;

accounting, law and consulting firms whose primary clients are businesses; and

educational institutions and trade associations.

My site is educational, I should have no problem. ;) At least we finally got to 2.

We will approve link requests from these organizations if we determine that: (a) the link would not reflect unfavorably on us or our accredited businesses (for example, trade associations or other organizations representing inherently suspect types of business, such as work-at-home opportunities, shall not be allowed to link); (b)the organization does not have an unsatisfactory record with us; (c) the benefit to us from the visibility associated with the hyperlink outweighs the absence of AMAFEED LLC; and (d) where the link is in the context of general resource information or is otherwise consistent with editorial content in a newsletter or similar product furthering the mission of the organization.

Look, you can put whatever you want in a contract. Your contract can say that only people with blue skin are allowed to link to you if you want, but that's not going to make a court uphold your desire to only let Andorians, Na'vi, Smurfs and two characters from the X-Men movies link to you. Nor will it protect you from bad press like this. That's just fact. Sue me, I could use the publicity. Also, "the benefit to us from the visibility associated with the hyperlink outweighs the absence of AMAFEED LLC;" ... I dunno, I think the absence of sentence structure is more disturbing.

These organizations may link to our home page, to publications or to other Web site information so long as the link: (a) is not in any way misleading; (b) does not falsely imply sponsorship, endorsement or approval of the linking party and it products or services; and (c) fits within the context of the linking party's site.

Did you just stroke out in the middle of writing your ToS or did you intend to write two similar but subtly distinct versions of the this paragraph?

If you are among the organizations listed in paragraph 2 above and are interested in linking to our website, you must notify us by sending an e-mail to TOS. Please include your name, your organization name, contact information (such as a phone number and/or e-mail address) as well as the URL of your site, a list of any URLs from which you intend to link to our Web site, and a list of the URL(s) on our site to which you would like to link. Allow 2-3 weeks for a response.

Wait, are we talking about the actual paragraph 2 or the second paragraph 1?

Approved organizations may hyperlink to our Web site as follows:

By use of our corporate name; or

By use of the uniform resource locator (Web address) being linked to; or

By use of any other description of our Web site or material being linked to that makes sense within the context and format of content on the linking party's site.

Wait... using the name of someone's company counts as a link?! All this time, I thought it required use of HTML! Well... I guess 20 years in the software engineering industry can only get me so far.... Oh, wait, you meant the content WITHIN the link! Gotcha! Ah, well, I think in this context Truck Nuts might be the most appropriate label. That makes as much sense as this ToS.

Reservation of Rights

We reserve the right at any time and in its sole discretion to request that you remove all links or any particular link to our Web site. You agree to immediately remove all links to our Web site upon such request. We also reserve the right to amend these terms and conditions and its linking policy at any time. By continuing to link to our Web site, you agree to be bound to and abide by these linking terms and conditions.

"By continuing to link... you agree to be bound"... that's a little presumptuous. How do you know I'm into bondage?

Removal of links from our website

If you find any link on our Web site or any linked web site objectionable for any reason, you may contact us about this. We will consider requests to remove links but will have no obligation to do so or to respond directly to you.

Our demands for link removal must be met IMMEDIATELY and without question! Your demands for link removal will go on our pile for review. Don't be surprised if we tell you to talk to the hand because the face ain't listenin'.

Whilst we endeavour to ensure that the information on this website is correct, we do not warrant its completeness or accuracy; nor do we commit to ensuring that the website remains available or that the material on the website is kept up to date.

In particular, we do not warrant that this ToS will contain English sentence structures or bear any resemblance to any existing legal precedent. THE AMAFEED HAS SPOKEN!

Disclaimer

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, we exclude all representations, warranties and conditions relating to our website and the use of this website (including, without limitation, any warranties implied by law in respect of satisfactory quality, fitness for purpose and/or the use of reasonable care and skill).

... up to and including any reasonable care or skill not used in the creation of the legal document you're currently reading.

Nothing in this disclaimer will:

limit or exclude our or your liability for death or personal injury resulting from negligence;

limit or exclude our or your liability for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation;

limit any of our or your liabilities in any way that is not permitted under applicable law; or

exclude any of our or your liabilities that may not be excluded under applicable law.

Are you just stating the obvious, or did you think it was actually necessary to state that this contract can't break the law? "Be it known that this contract shall not permit extortion, robbery or murder! Furthermore, in the state of Alabama... do you have some place to be? This might take a while..."

To the extent that the website and the information and services on the website are provided free of charge, we will not be liable for any loss or damage of any nature.

Speaking of which, if you are planning to sue me for linking to you, I'd like to direct you to my site's Terms of Service, which plainly state that, since my roasting services here are provided free of charge, I will not be liable for any loss or damage of any nature.

So, given that I'm publishing this roast of their ToS which seems a bit hypocritical and overly handsy with their demands that we not speak negatively about the AMA Feed, it seems unlikely they'll let me host any AMAs with them now. Not that I'm complaining too much. I thought it could be a fun way to talk with some folks, but they're certainly not the only way to hold an AMA. If you have a recommendation for a place to hold an AMA (I know reddit is an option), leave a comment. Or if you think Reddit's the best place, leave that comment too.

I'll be publshing my Laughtifesto this week, explaining why I say Laughter is a Moral Imperative. :D If you'd like to keep up with my comedy, subscribe to the mailing list on our site or you can follow our Patreon, with or without pledging. Have a wonderful Thanksgiving! Don't let your racist uncles get you down. ;P

Update! Nov 21, 2017

So it turns out that the folks at AMA Feed are actually pretty nice people. They replied to me right away (though to be fair, I'm pretty sure they haven't seen this roast yet, and I haven't mentioned it to them). So we'll see. Maybe the'll have a good sense of humor about this too, or maybe they'll can my AMA before it starts in March. :P

Hello Samuel

Thank you for getting in touch and I am pleased to say there is a way to edit AMAs. When designing the UI we went for minimalistic and I guess one could argue we have gone over the top, hey. To edit your AMA https://comicsama.com/sam-dealey-roasts-himself-an-ama-on-comedy-comics-and-why-laughter-is-a-467977/ make sure you are logged in with the account you created it (it is a common mistake I've noticed to try edit an AMA when not logged in or logged into another account), then click the 3 dots next to the countdown and you will see a drop down with options, edit is there.

Hope that helps, let me know how you get on.

P.S. Maybe 100 days is a tad too long?:)

Best

Tatiana Bonneau

*Marketing Director*

*AMAfeed*

So props to Tatiana for being a good sport! I think she handled my snarky comment form beautifully, and fast.

I suspect they have some kind of bug in their software. And I told Tatiana, I had actually already tried those dots, immediately after creating the AMA, so I assume I was still logged in with the same account, given that only a second or two had elapsed. At the time, the only item in that menu was "report" (for content that violates their terms). That seemed a bit odd in itself that the menu ony had one entry.

Yes, the 100 days is a bit long. :P I set the date out a ways to get us past the holidays and to be about the time of our Kickstarter. I'm not certain actually if the date will stay on the 1st of March or if I'll change it to another day that week, but it gives me about a month after my first endocrinologist appointment. I'm hoping that by then the blood-sugar roller coaster I've been on will be a little better as it's been draining a lot of my time in recent months and a lot of my work has been behind schedule due to that and other errands and doctor appointments. Plus, we've got holidays between now and then.

#Roast

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sherristockman · 7 years ago

Link

My Personal Journey on How I Went From Sick to Healthy Dr. Mercola By Dr. Mercola This website was created 21 years ago, in 1997, when I combined my two primary passions in life — health and technology — and made it my mission to share exciting new developments in natural health with a wider audience. Thanks to you, this site has become one of the most visited natural health websites in the world for the last 12 years, with more than 10 million unique visitors each month and more than 80 million unique visitors annually. Because of your loyal support, we've slowly but surely awakened the world to the false promises of the fatally flawed conventional medical view, which claims disease is best treated with drugs, and that the government knows what's best for your health and should be allowed to dictate your health options. In the video above, I discuss my own journey toward health, which ultimately led me to my present-day philosophies and recommendations. This video and article were initially published during three years ago during anniversary week. It was a big hit, and since we've had a significant influx of new subscribers since then, I'm rerunning it for those who missed it. Learning Through Experience Experience is a formidable teacher, and much of what I'm teaching today grew out of the lessons I learned as I tried to get healthier. I made plenty of mistakes, and fell for many of the lies, deceptions and confusion of conventional medicine. Like so many others, I grew up eating cereal for breakfast, and I fully believed margarine was healthy. My diet was high in carbs and sugars and low in fat, and there's little doubt this played a significant role in dental decay, which I struggled with throughout a large portion of my life. By the time I was an adult, I had a mouth full of amalgam fillings. Eventually, I discovered the truth about amalgam — that it's actually 50 percent mercury — and in 2009 I approached Charlie Brown (president of the Alliance for Mercury Free Dentistry) at a Health Freedom Expo in Chicago. At that event, I offered to partner with him to raise awareness about mercury in dentistry and to help get this toxin out of dentistry for good. It's been a highly successful partnership, and on October 10, 2013, a legally binding international treaty to control the use of this toxic metal was signed into action, thanks largely to the work of the Campaign for Mercury-Free Dentistry, the project organized and led by Charlie Brown. The treaty, named the United Nations Minamata Convention on Mercury, requires the phasing out of many mercury-containing products by 2020. Importantly, the treaty marks the beginning of the end for dental amalgam around the world, as it mandates each nation phase down amalgam use, effective immediately. Since then, I've partnered with a number of select health and research organizations that are true health advocates and educators, including GrassrootsHealth, Fluoride Action Network (FAN), National Vaccine Information Center (NVIC), Institute for Responsible Technology (IRT), and the Organic Consumers Association (OCA). Together, we've formed a nonprofit coalition known as Health Liberty, dedicated to improving fundamental education to all on important health, food safety, and informed consent issues. A Lifelong Passion for Exercise Got Me Into Medicine My mother instilled in me a passion for reading. In 1968 I picked up Dr. Ken Cooper's book, "Aerobics," which sparked a lifelong passion for exercise as I have been exercising regularly for the last 48 years, never taking more than a few days off at any one time. Cooper actually designed the exercise program for the NASA astronauts, but aside from keeping astronauts fit in an antigravity environment, exercise wasn't viewed very favorably down here on Earth. When I first took up running, people would throw things at me because they thought I was some kind of hooligan or criminal running from the scene of a crime! People simply did not run "for no reason" back in the '60s. I was a freshman in high school when the first man landed on the moon. Along with the rest of the nation, this event captured my attention and I decided I wanted to be an astronaut. The quickest way to do that was to join the Air Force Academy. Unfortunately, it was tough getting a congressional appointment to get in, so in the meantime, I continued my education, focusing on engineering. I later switched to pre-med — in large part because I was so excited about exercise and health. At the very beginning of med school, one of my professors told our class that by the time we graduated, most of what we were being taught would be outdated or obsolete. The key element of our education was really teaching us how to learn, and that has stuck with me ever since. I never reached a point where I thought I know it all and don't need to learn any more. In essence, med school taught me how to become a perpetual student, and that attitude has served me well. Unfortunately, most doctors ignore that message and get stuck practicing what in essence is outdated medicine. Nutrition as Medicine Conventional medicine is excellent at diagnosing disease, but where it fails miserably is in the treatment approaches. It typically focuses on treating the symptoms, not the root cause, and it does so using toxic drugs that frequently cause problems that are more dangerous than the original complaint. The discovery of nutrition as a method of healing was nothing short of revolutionary for me. It really opened my eyes and gave me a whole different perspective on health and healing. I began scouring the medical and lay literature on nutrition, and started attending conferences on alternative healing modalities, typically every month, to acquire the knowledge and skills to help people heal. I would then apply what I'd learned in my medical practice and get tremendous results — so much so I finally reached the point where I said, "This stuff really works!" and with that, I made a commitment to practice medicine without drugs. When I notified my patients of this new direction, 70 percent of them left. They were unwilling to quit using the drugs they were on and to address their health problems with nutrition and other lifestyle changes. This turned out to be a blessing, as the patients I had left really wanted to get better and were willing to do the work. Eventually, word spread about their healing successes, and over the years I ended up treating patients from all over the world. Staying Ahead of the Curve Over the past 21 years, I've often been among the first in the media to communicate commonsense strategies of healing and staying well naturally to the wider audience. The truth is your body has an innate ability to heal. It is designed to move toward health and away from disease, provided you give it the basic support it needs in terms of nutrition, physical movement, exposure to sunlight and myriad other natural health strategies. For example, I began talking about the importance of vitamin D for health beyond rickets back in 2000, and have warned people about the adverse effects of shunning sun exposure for over 18 years. Thankfully, the medical literature has now firmly established that vitamin D is essential for health, and that deficiency plays a role in dozens of chronic diseases. Eighteen years ago I also began blowing the whistle on genetically engineered (GE) foods, warning people to avoid them in order to protect their health. Now, the public discussion about GE foods has finally been brought to the fore, and grassroots efforts have led to ballot initiatives to label genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in dozens of states, with major media outlets like National Geographic reporting that genetically engineered foods are a dangerous fraud. Fight Against Mercury and Fluoride Continues In 1998, I warned my readers to avoid dentists who still use mercury amalgams in their practice, having learned that painful lesson myself. Amalgams really have no place in modern dentistry. It's an antiquated practice, and it simply makes no sense to place a known neurotoxin inches away from your brain. As noted earlier, the international treaty on mercury now heralds the beginning of the end of mercury in dentistry. Also in 1998, I began writing about the hazards of water fluoridation, pointing out that fluoride is a toxic drug that accumulates in your body and can destroy human enzymes. Since then, the evidence against fluoride as a panacea for dental caries has only gotten stronger, and the fight to get fluoride out of municipal water supplies continues. Here, we're partnered with FAN, which is intent (as am I) to eliminate fluoride from drinking water not just in the U.S., but around the world. As all of these examples show, it usually takes a decade or more to reverse deeply ingrained medical myths, no matter how unscientific their basis. But eventually, the truth does tend to prevail, and I believe it's only a matter of time before water fluoridation is seen for what it really is — one of the biggest public health blunders in U.S. history, opposed to being one of the greatest public health achievements of the 20th century. Last year, the U.S. government finally admitted Americans have been overexposed to fluoride, and for the first time since 1962 lowered the recommended level of fluoride in drinking water. It's not enough, but it's a move in the right direction. I've also begun working with an organization in Mexico that is developing a low-tech fluoride removal system that even poorer rural communities will be able to use to make their drinking water safer. Early Warnings Issued — Years in Advance In 2006, I began warning about the artificial sweetener aspartame, convinced it was one of the most dangerous additives in the food supply. Since then, the medical literature has become filled with studies demonstrating its harmful effects. Not only do artificial sweeteners actually promote obesity, they also worsen diabetes, and it's fraught with side effects. In fact, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has received more health complaints stemming from aspartame than ALL other food additives combined. I was the first in the media to issue a stern warning against Vioxx. In 1999 I uncovered a study that showed people taking this drug were at massively increased risk of dying from heart disease and stroke, and I published this information in my newsletter. I actually issued the first public warning about Vioxx while it was still in clinical trials — a year before it became available by prescription. I predicted Vioxx would be pulled from the market once the increased cardiac deaths were finally recognized and, indeed, that's exactly what happened — but not before more than 60,000 people had died from taking the blockbuster drug. Take Control of Your Health, for Life! I would encourage anyone who feels skeptical to really evaluate the evidence and put some of these healthy lifestyle principles to the test, because the ultimate proof for most people is their own experience. It either works or it doesn't. You feel better and get healthier, or you don't. My mantra is "Take Control of Your Health," and my goal is to teach you how to get off the merry-go-round of drugs, which typically treat only the symptoms while actually deteriorating your health. Drugs can also be lethal, and even when properly prescribed and administered they kill hundreds of thousands of people each year. My message is: There are safer, less expensive alternatives that can truly address the root cause of your disease. Invariably, reclaiming health and treating disease involves addressing your diet, exercise and other lifestyle factors, most of which cost little or nothing.

#VitalityPath

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frankgiunta · 7 years ago

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Is Telling the Truth Good for Patient Safety? Will It Reduce Errors?

https://frankgiunta.com/is-telling-the-truth-good-for-patient-safety-will-it-reduce-errors/

Is Telling the Truth Good for Patient Safety? Will It Reduce Errors?

Preventable medical errors are routinely covered up by health care professionals who do not always put the truth in the medical records or address poor medical care in the context of peer review. In Pennsylvania, as in most states, peer review cannot be disclosed even in litigation.

By Cliff Rieders | July 19, 2018 at 11:49 AM | The Legal Intelligencer

Cliff Rieders

For years I have been critical about the secretiveness which pervades the medical system. In spite of laws assuring patient access to their own medical records, it is still extremely difficult and expensive for patients to get their own medical records and test results. Preventable medical errors are routinely covered up by health care professionals who do not always put the truth in the medical records or address poor medical care in the context of peer review. In Pennsylvania, as in most states, peer review cannot be disclosed even in litigation.

It is the view of many academics that telling the patients the truth about their medical care would be good for patient safety because it would reduce the number of medical errors. Currently, there are as many preventable errors in U.S. hospitals as the number of deaths that would occur if two 747’s crashed per month, killing all aboard. The catastrophe of preventable medical errors has driven health care costs through the roof.

Many people falsely believe that medical errors result in medical malpractice lawsuits and enormous payouts. The statistics and the records show quite the opposite. There has been much dispute over the years as to what percentage of the total national health care bill goes to litigation or payouts, but even the most medical-friendly studies show that that figure is around 1 percent, some perhaps as high as 3 percent, and some as low as less than 1 percent of the national total health care bill.

Defensive medicine is another canard. It is claimed that doctors send patients for unnecessary tests or provide unnecessary pharmaceuticals because of fear of being sued. The statistics and great analyses that have been done on the subject are actually quite to the contrary. The reason why there are so many medical tests and pharmaceuticals prescribed in this country is because doctors, hospitals and pharmaceuticals make money by selling their products. It is that simple. In countries where there is a clear disconnect between the providing of medical care and the earnings of the medical industry, there is a lower cost to the healthcare system. It is true that there is legislation in this country that prevents doctors from having a direct investment in diagnostic facilities where they send patients, but the exceptions to the rule make the law porous. Many studies have explored the absolutely phenomenal benefits received by doctors and pharmaceutical companies for prescribing all kinds of garbage products that the doctors know very little about. The FDA and the regulatory authorities are a turnstile through which the regulators pass before they go off to work for industry.

Recently, a peer review article was published titled “Do Written Disclosures of Serious Events Increase Risk of Malpractice Claims? One Healthcare System’s Experience.”

When I was president of the trial lawyers, I argued vociferously for a patient safety authority, as recommended by the National Institute of Medicine. I argued that there should be no tort reform without the creation of a patient safety authority. The Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority was created and I served on it for 15 years as a Senate appointee.

One way in which the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority and the 2002 Mcare Act were ignored was in the requirement to notify patients or their families of serious events that take place in hospitals. That notice requirement is ignored much more often than it is followed. When hospitals do send the notices, they usually do not even use the term serious event. The reason for that is that the serious event notices required by the law come from a template prepared by the Hospital Association of Pennsylvania. Their agenda to protect the medical industry is transparent.

Some serious event notices do go out, although they are nebulous and normally do not explain what the event was. Serious event notices tend to be more reliable in the case of hospital-acquired infections.

In spite of the fact that the law is breached more than it is followed, doctors and hospitals frequently carry on loudly that notifying patients and their families of serious events will encourage injured patients to sue. In Pennsylvania, where the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority receives approximately one-third of a million reports per year of serious events and incidents, there are only approximately 1,400 medical malpractice cases filed. This in a state with more than 12 million people.

The health care system’s experience that was reviewed by the article on serious event notices was the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center (UPMC Pittsburgh). In sum, there were 15,028 serious event disclosures and 1,302 total malpractice claims among more than 1.5 million patients admitted to UPMC hospitals from May 17, 2002 to June 30, 2011. We know that serious event reporting is a problem because healthcare professionals frequently do not report the serious events at all. “As the number of serious event disclosures increase, the number of malpractice claims per 1,000 admissions remains between .02 and 1.03. The conclusion by a health care system which has an interest in not reporting serious events but rather claiming that serious event reporting encourages litigation was as follows: “Implementation of a mandated serious event disclosure law in Pennsylvania was not associated with an overall increase in malpractice claims filed. Among events of similar degree of harm, disclosed events at higher compensation paid compared with those that had not been disclosed.”

In other words, telling patients the truth did not increase malpractice claims but telling the patients the truth did result in their receiving the compensation they should.

How is it best to enhance patient safety and lower the cost of health care in Pennsylvania and the United States? The answer is to tell the patients the truth and empower them to be able to shop for good medical care by giving patients information about safety in hospitals and doctors’ offices. A patient now can go on the website of Leapfrog to find out about hospital safety, but Leapfrog only prints the information they are given by the hospitals to whom they send surveys. Information gathered by the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority can only be released on a regional basis and hospital names cannot be given out. This is a serious flaw in Pennsylvania’s Patient Safety Act legislation.

In America, you cannot buy a car without getting information about the safety and gas mileage. It has to be stamped on a sheet of paper that is taped to the window of the car. Yet, patients go into hospitals all the time and know nothing about the safety record of that hospital and cannot get reliable information. If patients went to hospitals that had the greatest safety records in terms of the least number of infections, for example, there would be some competition concerning safety. The medical health care field in the United States is big business. Hospitals regularly pay for newspaper supplements about health care. Hospitals sponsor events in the community and have an enormous number of employees. In many counties in Pennsylvania, hospitals and pharmaceutical companies are the largest employers who pay the greatest salaries.

Isn’t it time we demanded that peer review and safety information about hospitals be transparent? Why is it that consumer rights have been enhanced in many areas in the United States, but when it comes to healthcare, disclosure has been shut down?

The CEO of UPMC and the Jefferson Healthcare System have both told me directly that they repeat one of my oft-stated mantras: “We lawyers do the root cause analysis that you should be doing. Patients come to us all the time to get answers that you should be giving them.” These two thoughtful hospital heads have said to me, “We have now come to understand that patient safety is just good business.” The problem is that even the CEOs live within a structure where disclosure is considered to be a dance with the devil. Doctors and hospitals love their patients and want to show them compassion but at the same time do not trust them, especially if the hospital or doctor has made a big-time mistake.

It is time for the public to appreciate that health care costs are highly dependent on decreasing preventable medical errors. As a trial lawyer once said to me, “Cliff, if you get your way you will put us all out of business.” The best way to cut down on litigation, as the UPMC study shows, is to enhance safety in hospitals and doctors’ offices.

Cliff Rieders, of Rieders, Travis, Humphrey, Waters, & Dorhmann, is a board certified trial advocate in Williamsport, is past president of the Pennsylvania Trial Lawyers Association and a past member of the Pennsylvania Patient Safety Authority. Contact him at [email protected].

Medical Malpractice Lawyer Texas

Doctor & Hospital Negligence

When we seek medical assistance for ourselves or a family member, we expect the doctor, nurse or other medical professional to take the best reasonable precautions to protect our health and our lives. When medical professionals fail to exercise reasonable care in the performance of their duties, people get hurt and even die.

No person should be harmed as a result of medical negligence or professional negligence by hospital clinics, doctors, nurses, dentists, and other medical professionals. If you or a family member or a loved one has been injured as a result of medical malpractice or medical negligence, our team can help. Having an experienced medical malpractice lawyer who knows how to best discover evidence and ask the right questions is essential to recovery in any medical malpractice case.

If you believe you have been the victim of medical malpractice, contact Giunta Law today!

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amberdscott2 · 8 years ago

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Fraudsters Exploited Lax Security at Equifax’s TALX Payroll Division

Identity thieves who specialize in tax refund fraud had big help this past tax year from Equifax, one of the nation’s largest consumer data brokers and credit bureaus. The trouble stems from TALX, an Equifax subsidiary that provides online payroll, HR and tax services. Equifax says crooks were able to reset the 4-digit PIN given to customer employees as a password and then steal W-2 tax data after successfully answering personal questions about those employees.

In a boilerplate text sent to several affected customers, Equifax said the unauthorized access to customers’ employee tax records happened between April 17, 2016 and March 29, 2017.

Beyond that, the extent of the fraud perpetrated with the help of hacked TALX accounts is unclear, and Equifax refused requests to say how many consumers or payroll service customers may have been impacted by the authentication weaknesses.

Equifax’s subsidiary TALX — now called Equifax Workforce Solutions — aided tax thieves by relying on outdated and insufficient consumer authentication methods.

Thanks to data breach notification laws in nearly all U.S. states now, we know that so far at least five organizations have received letters from Equifax about a series of incidents over the past year, including defense contractor giant Northrop Grumman; staffing firm Allegis Group; Saint-Gobain Corp.; Erickson Living; and the University of Louisville.

A snippet from TALX’s letter to the New Hampshire attorney general (PDF) offers some insight into the level of security offered by this wholly-owned subsidiary of Equifax. In it, lawyers for TALX downplay the scope of the breach even as they admit the company wasn’t able to tell exactly how much unauthorized access to tax records may have occurred.

“TALX believes that the unauthorized third-party(ies) gained access to the accounts primarily by successfully answering personal questions about the affected employees in order to reset the employees’ pins (the password to the online account portal),” wrote Nicholas A. Oldham, an attorney representing TALX. “Because the accesses generally appear legitimate (e.g., successful use of login credentials), TALX cannot confirm forensically exactly which accounts were, in fact, accessed without authorization, although TALX believes that only a small percentage of these potentially affected accounts were actually affected.”

ANALYSIS

Generally. Forensically. Exactly. Potentially. Actually. Lots of hand-waiving from the TALX/Equifax suits. But Equifax should have known better than to rely on a simple PIN for a password, says Avivah Litan, a fraud analyst with Gartner Inc.

“That’s so 1990s,” Litan said. “It’s pretty unbelievable that a company like Equifax would only protect such sensitive data with just a PIN.”

Litan said TALX should have required customers to use stronger two-factor authentication options, such as one-time tokens sent to an email address or mobile device (as Equifax now says TALX is doing — at least with those we know were notified about possible employee account abuse).

The big consumer credit bureaus like Equifax, Experian, Innovis and Trans Union are all regulated by the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), which strives to promote accuracy, fairness and privacy for data used by consumer reporting agencies. But Litan said there are no federal requirements that credit bureaus use stronger authentication for access to consumer data — such as two-factor authentication.

“There’s about 500 percent more protection for credit card data right now than there is for identity data,” Litan said. “And yet I don’t know of one document from the federal government that spells out how these credit bureaus and other companies have to protect PII (personally identifiable information).”

Then there is the small matter of the questions that ID thieves were able to successfully answer about their victims via TALX’s online portal. Security experts have been warning for years about the waning effectiveness of using so-called “knowledge-based authentication questions” (KBA) — such as details about the consumer’s historic location and financial activity — for online authentication.

The problem with relying on KBA questions to authenticate consumers online is that so much of the information needed to successfully guess the answers to those multiple-choice questions is now indexed or exposed by search engines, social networks and third-party services online — both criminal and commercial.

What’s more, many of the companies that provide and resell these types of KBA challenge/response questions have been hacked in the past by criminals that run their own identity theft services.

“Whenever I’m faced with KBA-type questions I find that database tools like Spokeo, Zillow, etc are my friend because they are more likely to know the answers for me than I am,” said Nicholas Weaver, a senior researcher in networking and security for the International Computer Science Institute (ICSI).

In short: The crooks broadly have access to the data needed to reliably answer KBA questions on most consumers.

Litan said the key is reducing reliance on static data – much of which is PII data that has been compromised by the crooks – and increasing reliance on dynamic data, like reputation, behavior and relationships between non-PII data elements.

Identity thieves prize the W-2 and payroll data held by companies like TALX because they can use it to file fraudulent tax refund requests with the IRS and the states on behalf of victim consumers. According to the Internal Revenue Service, some 787,000 Americans reported being victimized by tax refund fraud last year.

Extra security and screening precautions by the states and the IRS brought last year’s victim numbers down 50 percent from 2015. But even the IRS has struggled with its own tax fraud-related security foibles tied to weak consumer authentication. In 2015, it issued more than $40 million in fraudulent refunds requested on behalf of hundreds of thousands of Americans who were victimized by data stolen directly from the “Get Transcript” feature of the IRS’s own Web site.

It’s worth noting that – as with the TALX incidents — the IRS’s Get Transcript fiasco also failed because it relied primarily on KBA questions asked by Equifax.

Tax-related identity theft occurs when someone uses a Social Security number (SSN) — either a client’s, a spouse’s, or dependent’s — to file a tax return claiming a fraudulent refund. Thieves may also use a stolen Employer Identification Number (EIN) from a business client to create false Forms W-2 to support refund fraud schemes. Increasingly, fraudsters are simply phishing W-2 data in large quantities from human resource professionals at a variety of organizations.

Victims usually first learn of the crime after having their returns rejected because scammers beat them to it. Even those who are not required to file a return can be victims of refund fraud, as can those who are not actually due a refund from the IRS.

“If the federal government is smart, they will consider suing Equifax for false returns filed using W2 information stolen from TALX customers, since this is exactly the sort of mass scale attack that even the most basic SMS-based 2-factor would block,” the ICSI’s Weaver said.

It’s high time for consumers to come face-to-face with the reality that the basic data needed to open new lines of credit on them or file taxes in their name is broadly available for sale in the cybercrime underground. What little consumer data that cannot be found in the bowels of the Dark Web can be coaxed out of countless poorly-secured and automated services like TALX that hold extremely sensitive consumer data and yet safeguard it with antiquated and insufficient authentication measures.

In light of the above, the sobering reality is that we have no business using these static identifiers (SSN, DOB, address, previous address, income, mother’s maiden name) for authentication, and yet this practice remains rampant across vast sectors of the American economy today, including consumer banking, higher education and government services.

Predictably, Equifax is offering identity theft detection services (for two years) to employees of TALX customers. Loyal readers here know where I come down on these credit monitoring services, because nobody should confuse these services with a reliable method to block identity theft. The most consumers can hope for out of a credit monitoring service is that it alerts you when ID thieves hijack your data; these services generally don’t prevent ID theft. Also, they can be useful for helping to clean up after a confirmed ID theft incident.

The consumer’s best weapon against new account fraud and other forms of identity theft is the security freeze, also known as a credit freeze. I explain more about the benefits of the freeze as well as other options in multiple posts on this blog. I should note, however, that a security freeze will do nothing to stop fraudsters from filing phony tax refunds in your name with the IRS. For tips on avoiding tax refund fraud, check out this post.

from Amber Scott Technology News https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/05/fraudsters-exploited-lax-security-at-equifaxs-talx-payroll-division/

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jennifersnyderca90 · 8 years ago

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Fraudsters Exploited Lax Security at Equifax’s TALX Payroll Division

In a boilerplate text sent to several affected customers, Equifax said the unauthorized access to customers’ employee tax records happened between April 17, 2016 and March 29, 2017.

Equifax’s subsidiary TALX — now called Equifax Workforce Solutions — aided tax thieves by relying on outdated and insufficient consumer authentication methods.

ANALYSIS

“That’s so 1990s,” Litan said. “It’s pretty unbelievable that a company like Equifax would only protect such sensitive data with just a PIN.”

What’s more, many of the companies that provide and resell these types of KBA challenge/response questions have been hacked in the past by criminals that run their own identity theft services.

In short: The crooks broadly have access to the data needed to reliably answer KBA questions on most consumers.

It’s worth noting that – as with the TALX incidents — the IRS’s Get Transcript fiasco also failed because it relied primarily on KBA questions asked by Equifax.

from https://krebsonsecurity.com/2017/05/fraudsters-exploited-lax-security-at-equifaxs-talx-payroll-division/

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