Ira Wilsker's archive

Get your real credit report and score for free

You have undoubtedly seen countless TV and print ads for a service that promises to give you a “free credit report” but requires a monthly or annual membership for credit monitoring in order to get your “free” credit report. According to the Federal Trade Commission, many people did not realize that in order to get their “free” credit report, they were committing to a $79.95 annual fee for credit monitoring.

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Yahoo! Axis

Despite the term “Google” becoming somewhat synonymous with the term “search,” where people say “Go Google this” meaning to do an Internet search, Google is far from a monopoly. I sometimes have a hard time convincing others that Google is not the only search engine available, and that Yahoo!, Bing, and others are highly competitive and in some cases superior to the ubiquitous Google. Of the major search engines today, Yahoo! is the oldest, starting operations in early 1994, when the World Wide Web was in its infancy.

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Free apps for the iPhone and iPad

A few weeks ago, I wrote about some Web sites that evaluate and rate free Android apps (tinyurl.com/d9mjm6j). Since that column was published in The Examiner, I have received numerous requests from readers asking for a similar column on iPhone apps. This is my response to those requests.

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