This week at Frequent Miler we looked back at 2018 — from our top posts and top deals to how you should respond in light of repeated data hacks that have made your information accessible to cyber criminals. All that and more in today’s Frequent Miler week in review.
How to protect yourself from data breaches
At this point, it is safe to assume that your data is out there and has probably been bought and resold two or three times…this morning. So what can you do about it? You could hoot and holler and stomp your feet and cry like a petulant child, but the hackers probably won’t take note. You’re better off reading this post and taking notes of your own — and then locking down your digital kingdom so you don’t find yourself cloned in 12 different states with 19 new accounts.
The top deals of 2018
In this post, we took a look back at some of the best deals of 2018 with an eye toward remembering our wins so that we can try to repeat those successes next year. Readers pointed out a couple that I’d missed. If I had it to do again, I’d have to add in those $600 round trip Hong Kong Airlines business class fares and the opportunity to buy Swagbucks and make money. What was your top deal of 2018?
Frequent Miler’s 10 Greatest Hits of 2018
When you think back on 2018, which post really resonates with you? Which one did you find most interesting, helpful, or otherwise appealing? In this post, take a look at the 10 most widely-read posts on Frequent Miler and see how they match up with the posts you had in mind. The most popular post of the year might be a surprise, but it’s a fun read that I just now re-read as I prep to (hopefully) replicate it next week.
Why Gary is nuts not to even consider Hilton
Gary Leff at View from the Wing says you’re nuts to consider leaving Marriott for Hilton. I think Gary is nuts not to consider it. If you spend 75 nights a year in hotels, what matters more to you: getting a suite upgrade now and then, or getting customer service you can rely on? Do you use strategic credit card spend to augment your balance for big redemptions? While there are a lot more reasons I disagree with Gary than what I laid out in this post (and his subsequent rebuttal didn’t convince me I’m wrong, but you may be interested in reading it), here I explain why I think it’s crazy to be blindly loyal to Marriott in the face of its mediocrity.
My 2018 predictions were spot on… except for that one wish…
See Greg’s prediction scorecard for 2018. I’ve followed Greg’s predictions for the past few years and he’s right more often than he’s wrong. I won’t count that one wish against him as he clearly knew it was wishful thinking — and I’ll carry that wish with me into 2019. See how he did and maybe it’ll inspire you to make predictions of your own for 2019.
That’s it for this week at Frequent Miler. Check back soon for this week around the web and our weekly last chance deals, which will have quite a few deals with the year ending this week.
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Companies ask for information they don’t need. Dentists office using your ssn to index your files. The most egregious example. My credit union used to give the checking account number same as ssn. And you write checks so the whole world knows what your ssn is. Things have changed in the last 20 years but still… hard to imagine they even came up with these ideas.
Americans are dumb as rocks. And they don’t care about others inconvenience. We need something similar to GDPR here but congressional representatives are whores who will do what the biggest bidder asks them to do. People need to take their own data protection more seriously and push for legislation.