A question is whether one can rent an apartment (without having a credit check run) in one's own name and have that info dissemenated. The simple act of a credit check itself doesn't communicate that you actually decided to accept the lease (make sure the apartment complex did not put a record of your lease on your credit reports). This might help you eliminate the apartment as the leak and direct you to look at the electricity.

Under section 163, which is entitled “Administrative Simplification,” the bill sets new “standards” for electronic transactions between individuals and their health-care providers.

According to section 163, the standards will “enable the real-time (or near real-time) determination of an individual’s financial responsibility at the point of service . . . ” In addition, they will “enable electronic funds transfers, in order to allow automated reconciliation with related health care payment and remittance advice.”

Submitted Link #1: http://article.nationalreview.com/?q=ODg4Y2FkYmFlZ...

I was unable to heed JJL's advice to deal with a postal clerk of the opposite sex. Instead, I dealt with the only clerk at the counter: an older gentleman who was being difficult with every request given to him by all the customers preceding me.

I told him that I would like to apply for a PO Box, and after he asked for ID, I put my passport and driver license on the table.

But then he asked me if I had "proof of your local address here in Ann Arbor." I replied that I did not have a local address here, that I was a college student and still looking for a place. Then I mentioned that my driver license had my "permanent address" on it, "where my parents live." He said, "As soon as you get a local address, you MUST [he emphasized "must"] come back here and update this form with your local address." But after that, it was smooth sailing and I quickly had the box keys. He did not again mention his command to later update my local address, and it did not seem he made any note anywhere of it. I will see if my box gets closed anytime in the future over the issue.

I relate this story in case anyone else comes up against a postal clerk who demands "a local address." If your ghost address is far away, as mine is, figure out a reason why it is so far away and you do not have a local address. For young people with out-of-state ghost addresses who attempt to get a PO Box in an area with a university, "I am a college student" (or "I am a grad student" if you are slightly older) may suffice. But if you are much older, perhaps you just moved to the area for a job, and do not have a local address yet? Perhaps you are opening up another office of your existing business in this region and found a great deal on office space but will not be able to move in for a few months? Do some thinking!

All that said, you may not experience a hassle with your clerk: the last time I got a PO Box, the female postal clerk took my IDs and my filled-out PS-1093 and gave me my box number and keys pretty much without any questions - perhaps this was because I was in the the Postal Service facility in downtown Detroit that processes and distributes all the mail for the metro area where they handle a lot of customers, and do not have the time or desire to scrutinize every PO Box applicant. Hopefully, it will be that easy for you!

This can be a private document, as it is only filed with the probate court after death. But don't keep the will in a bank safe deposit box, as these are sealed upon the death of the box holder, even if there is a co-renter who is still living. And, when it is opened, a person from the local auditor's office will be there to document the contents of the box.

Please post again with the answers they give you so we can all learn something!

Anyway, I started with a service that claimed they could decrypt the protected file without knowing the password. They would decrypt a small part of the file for fre as a demo. Following their instructions, about 2 minutes later I then had an accurately decrypted version of the first 5 or so lines of the file. For about $25 they would decrypt the whole file. Not entirely unreasonable, but I wanted to see what else was out there.

After that, I found various programs that would use various approaches to trying numerous passwords, one after the other, until the file password was found. I downloaded a demo version of one of these because I knew that if it found the password, it would show the first 2 characters. At first, I just let the program run to see what would happen. It tried about 400,000 passwords PER SECOND and estimated that at the worst case it would take 3 days to find the password. However, the program also had a feature where if you knew anything at all about the password, it would start with that and then move on. I was pretty sure that the password was all lower case, somewhere between 5 and 10 characters, and that part of it was probably a dictionary word. (Yeah, I know, not a great password.) I started the program up again. The password was found in - get this - 43 seconds.

My point is simple. No matter what password you choose, there's a tool out there that will bypass it for peanuts. I do realize that the Microsoft suite has never been considered paarticularly secure, but the fact that files can be read even without knowing the password is pretty scary. Encryption and physical separation will go a lot farther than a simple password any day.

And as for me, once I saw the 2 characters of the password, I knew what the full password was. I had chosen a password that no one would ever guess, but clearly that no longer matters!