How to Protect Yourself From Social Engineering

Social engineering (also known as pretexting) is playing on human nature to trick someone into giving you information. Wired has up an old, but still useful article on how to protect yourself. Another good resource is Kevin Mitnick's book The Art of Deception. It provides information, but using situations so as to make it an easier read.

eHarmony forced to support same-sex matching services

I have used eHarmony a few times over the years, without great success. I like their "compatibility-matching" business model, and the fact that they allow you to build intimacy over time, rather than being designed to get couples to "hook up" (with its myriad meanings) in the shortest time possible. I even know a few married couples, and long-term daters who met thru the service. It has always been focussed on bringing its services to single, non-divorced, heterosexual people seeking long-term relationships. And it has worked well to differentiate them in a crowded marketplace.

Somehow I missed that the NJ attorney-general had successfully forced eHarmony to begin supporting same-sex couples, as well as their traditional model. The AG has not gotten a court to force the issue, but instead bullied eHarmony into capitulating rather than face an uncertain court case and/or negative publicity.

Since there are plenty of competitors offering same-sex matching (Match.Com comes to mind immediately), this seems like less a case of "fighting discrimination" than making a point that same-sex unions are (or should be) normative. I am interested in someone from the other side presenting an argument that eHarmony's previous practices were illegal or harmful to society. But as of now, this all seems like the wrong move by all involved.