We’ve come a long way since Mark Zuckerberg famously said that it was “crazy” to think fake news on Facebook influenced the 2016 election. How far? Not long ago, Facebook said it had identified only a few thousands suspicious accounts on its service that might have been linked to Russia. [Keep reading]
Consumerist.com (2005-2017) — an obituary. From the start, Consumerist.com was different. Very different. From my perch writing a consumer column called The Red Tape Chronicles for MSNBC.com, I watched in shock (and a little jealousy) as the site boldly went where other journalists feared to go. A few consumers would [Keep reading]
The most important thing about today’s Russia probe news is this: Former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser George Papadopoulos tested out every defense you’ve been hearing from those involved in the campaign: It’s a nothing….it happened before he was part of the campaign…it was just chatter. And none of those defenses [Keep reading]
He is a master of the simplest “hack” of all — impersonation. In recent months, he has pretended to be White House officials like Jared Kushner and Reince Preibus or even Eric Trump. And it worked. He fooled plenty of people who should have known better, including Anthony Scaramucci, former Utah [Keep reading]
While you were busy worrying about health insurance premiums and perhaps Donald Trump’s latest Tweet, the U.S. Senate spat in the face of American consumers this week. In a 50-50 vote that required Vice President Mike Pence to break the tie, the Senate voted to nullify a pro-consumer rule that [Keep reading]
It’s the letter more Americans are dreading this fall: How much will your health insurance premiums go up for next year? The frightening renewal notice. Most consumers will get the bad news on or around Nov. 1. After more than a year of political maneuvering, posturing, name-calling, finger-pointing, misleading, and [Keep reading]
Click here if the embedded video doesn’t work for you.Some days as a journalist, you find yourself bouncing around in a pickup truck with your dog, riding through 20 acres of pumpkins learning about cover crops on a farm that can trace its origins to the American Revolution. Those are [Keep reading]
The folks at Grow asked me to take a look at what the latest actions from the administration will mean for your health care premiums. Not an easy question to answer. Some of what I found is below, but you can read the full story at Grow. Mainly, my concern [Keep reading]
NOTE: I’m doing an ongoing series of stories on elder scams, a “tsunami” of crimes hitting the most vulnerable Americans, according to the FBI’s Debbie Deem. Recently, I wrote about the tragic story of a California teacher found murdered in Jamaica. I also wrote about Deem for CNBC.com recently (Click [Keep reading]
Belgian researcher Mathy Vanhoef announced some rather brilliant research on Monday which demonstrates that nearly all Wi-Fi in use today can be hacked. The tool for scrambling data as it’s transmitted wirelessly between your gadgets and routers, called WPA2, can be tricked into coughing up the secrets needed to unscramble [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan