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Month: February 2015

Gotchas / Consumer

The *real* secret to being sexy? Whispering sweet nothings….about money

February 16, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

“I’m kind of average-looking, but I have a great credit score!” Looking for love post Valentine’s Day? Maybe you should adjust your online personals ad. According to a new study of adults in relationships, having a partner who is good with money is more important than a lover who’s sexy. [Keep reading]

No Picture
Cybercrime / Privacy

A Valentine’s reminder: most dating apps are vulnerable to hackers, IBM says

February 13, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

Looking for love this Valentine’s Day? Remember: safe online dating requires good hygiene. Digital hygiene. A new study released this week by IBM found over 60 percent of leading dating Android mobile apps they studied are potentially vulnerable to a variety of cyber-attacks that put personal user information and corporate [Keep reading]

Privacy

New Facebook ‘legacy contact’ feature lets bequeath control of your account after you die

February 12, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

Facebook has added a thoughtful feature today that will make things easier for folks using social media to grieve the loss of a loved one. It’s called “Adding a Legacy Contact,” and it allows users to name a person who has can make limited adjustments to the deceased’s Facebook account [Keep reading]

The Restless Project

The economy is growing, but only for the rich; will robots finish off the middle class?

February 11, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

The U.S. economy has, like so many of life’s big issues, a blind man and the elephant problem.  If you have a good job or you just got a raise, you think America has rebounded nicely.  If you are still struggling to replace income you lost during the Great Recession, [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Annoying quiz might stand between you and your tax return, thanks to ID thieves

February 11, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

Just how bad is the tax ID theft problem?  About half of all filers seeking refunds in the state of Ohio now must answer a series of challenge questions just to prove they are who they say they are.  Ohio has already intercepted nearly 60,000 returns seeking an astonishing $250 [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Valentine’s flower ads full of gotchas; price can be 50% higher than advertised

February 10, 2015 Bob Sullivan 1

It’s that time of year again, when radio airwaves are full of ads telling men they can charm their significant others with Valentine’s Day flowers for just $30 on websites like ProFlowers.com.  I’m an investigative journalist, and I have 20 years’ experience hunting and pecking my way through the web, [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Smooching on your couch? SmartTV knows, and can tell anyone … but don’t blame Samsung!

February 9, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

As a leader of the oft-paranoid-sounding-privacy-sensitive crowd, let me be the first to congratulate Samsung for its honesty.  Plenty of my friends in paranoia have pointed out the language included in Samsung’s new SmartTV privacy policy. Because the gizmo uses voice recognition to let owners change the channel and do [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Tax ID theft crisis: TurboTax ‘pauses’ state returns over fraud concerns

February 6, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

Tax ID theft is reaching epidemic proportions. Well, it did last year when the IRS issued seemingly endless warnings about it. That wasn’t enough to get state taxation agencies to fix their systems, apparently, as TurboTax announced it has taken the extraordinary step of “pausing” state tax return filings for [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

VIDEO: The Anthem hack, China, encryption, and what you can(‘t) do to protect yourself

February 6, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

Day 2 of the Anthem hack, and we don’t know much more than we knew yesterday.  There are intriguing grain-of-salt reports that Chinese hackers stole the data as part of a never-ending quest to build intelligence on U.S. government agents.  There are plenty of reports — which must be true, [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

How do you teach kids about money when ‘money’ is disappearing? Other lessons from The Opposite of Spoiled

February 5, 2015 Bob Sullivan 0

This is part II of my interview with Ron Lieber, who’s new book The Opposite of Spoiled teaches parents how to teach their kids about money, and the other important life lessons that brings. You can read Part I here, where I ask about scam-proofing your children. Today, I ask [Keep reading]

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About me

BOB SULLIVAN is a veteran journalist and the author of four books, including the 2008 New York Times Best-Seller, Gotcha Capitalism, and the 2010 New York Times Best Seller, Stop Getting Ripped Off! His latest, The Plateau Effect, was published in 2013, and as a paperback, called Getting Unstuck in 2014. He has won the Society of Professional Journalists prestigious Public Service award, a Peabody award, and The Consumer Federation of America Betty Furness award, and been given Consumer Action’s Consumer Excellence Award.

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