JUlrich

November 15, 2016

Room Q80

10:00 a.m. Social Time 9:30 a.m.

Please bring books to share. Leave clean clothing and bedding and canned food for Sacred Heart on the bench outside. Please do not bring garage sale type items for Sacred Heart. Put new and used greeting cards in the box on the troop table. Bring your items for the GI’s into the meeting area.

Lunch after meeting:

Effie’s Restaurant,

331 Hacienda Ave, Campbell 374 3400

Program: Sal Pizarro, Mercury News Columnist

“The Future of Print Media in the 21st Century”

Earlier this year I did a presentation at our Campbell AARP chapter. The presentation was fun for everyone and there was useful knowledge shared. Many people were not in the room that could use the information. I have written about protecting your online information, including passwords. In my preparation for presenting at AARP I attended several cyber security presentations. I read several articles and reflected on my own personal plan for protecting my accounts. At the various training sessions I attended there was a common theme, if your identity has not been stolen, just wait, it will happen.

Today, Monday, October 31, 2016 my Netflix account was hijacked! Within 30 minutes I had it back. There was a huge lesson for me, which I will share with you. For some reason Netflix on an Amazon Fire TV stick keeps resetting or losing my password. In my being frustrated with this I set a very simple password. In hindsight this was a super bad idea. I strongly recommend that you use cypher for all passwords. What this means is to replace letters with non-letter characters. For example an ‘a’ becomes ‘^’ and ‘v’ can become ‘\’ & ‘/’. The key is NOT to have a unique password for every website. I use three basic password patterns:

Banking – anything that takes a credit card

Email – I have a few of these

Non-credit card holding sites

Here is a sample for non-credit card holding sites: I’ll pick a word, say “keyhole”. For starters, “keyhole” is too short. Most sites require 6-8 characters. Let’s see what we can do here. For a cypher I would do something like, “!k3yH0l3flix” Where ‘e’ became ‘3’ and ‘o’ became ‘0’ (zero). My website sample passwords:

!k3yH0l3flix – for Netflix.com

!k3yH0l3aarp – for my AARP login

!k3yH0l3text – for textmessaging.com

Next month I will cover what happens to a loved ones accounts when they die. Look at http:// CampbellAARP.org for more useful posts and resources.

If you have any children’s wrapping paper and are not going to use it, please bring it to the November meeting. We can use it when we wrap presents In December. The police furnish the wrapping paper, but it would be nice to wrap the presents for the little ones. Gift bags for the oddly shaped gifts would be welcome too. Bring it to the Treasure Chest table. I will have a bag to put them in. Thank you.

STILL needing names of any overseas military!! Please ask at your church or other clubs.

Just a quick California Legislature update: You will be happy to know that bills SB1150 (Mortgages and Deeds of Trust, Leno) and SB1234 (Secure Choice Retirement Savings Plan, DeLeon) have passed both houses and have been chaptered, that is, made into statutes. Our writing campaign has paid off! And we can breathe a little easier, knowing that a) our houses can’t be sold out from under our surviving spouse, and b) our money is just a little safer.

And now for the bad news: Congress is only giving us a 0.3% increase in our Social Security benefits next year. The announcement came in September from the Social Security Administration. This is the smallest cost-of-living adjustment (COLA) since automatic raises began in the mid-1970s. And it comes after recipients received no bump up in benefits for 2016 because inflation was so low. For retired workers the average monthly benefit in January will go up $5 to $1,360. But beneficiaries will likely find this small sum eaten up by higher premiums for Medicare Part B, which covers doctor and outpatient hospital visits, experts say.

Social Security announced other changes. Beginning next year, the amount of earnings subject to Social Security tax will go up from $118,500 to $127,200. This change will affect about 12 million of the 173 million workers who pay into the system.

The COLA also will have an impact on Medicare Part B premiums. Premiums for 2017 haven’t been announced yet, but the Social Security Administration warned: “For some beneficiaries, their Social Security increase may be partially or completely offset by increases in Medicare premiums.” AARP and other groups last month wrote to lawmakers asking them to protect Medicare beneficiaries from potentially steep premium increases again next year. Let’s hope it works. You can help too, by writing your Congressman.

And on that note, all I have left to say at this point is: Please Vote!! If you don’t like the current lineup in Congress, change it! Remember: November 8th is Election Day. Make a difference! (And if you don’t vote, you can’t complain!)

Have you looked at your Red AARP National Membership Card to check on its expiration date? As you know, Membership in the National organization of AARP is required for all of our members. So, check the date on your card to make sure your membership has not expired. If you need to update your National Membership, make sure you let me know your new expiration date when your new card arrives. You can update by: 1)Going online at www.aarp.org 2)Calling 1-888-687-2277 or 3)Pick up a renewal form from me at the meeting. There was no room for the renewal form in this Dispatch; however e-mail recipients will receive one.

Election of the new officers will take place this month: President Ken Schiek; Vice President Gene Lennon; Treasurer Rick Loek; Assistant Treasurer Sue McMillan; Secretary Fannie Young. The new nominating committee consists of Karen Sanfillipo, Jan Delucchi, Shelly Swartz, Thelma Bridges; Chris Hejmanowski; Angie Jaggars, and Marlene Hruby.