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Year: 2019

Gotchas / Consumer

The scary rise of the four-income household; and why credit cards are to blame for stagnant wages

December 20, 2019 Bob Sullivan 5

Half of Americans didn’t get a raise last year, according to Bankrate.com. And that’s the good news (more people got raises this year than last year).  The bad news: The less you earn, the less likely you were to get a raise.  This reality leads to another: the gig economy [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Wawa gas/convenience store says credit card hack hit all locations

December 19, 2019 Bob Sullivan 0

Click to visit Wawa’s information page about the hackIf you used a credit or debit card at a Wawa convenience store or gas station between April 22 and December 12, your payment information has been compromised. The retail giant announced on Thursday that criminals managed to place malicious software on [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

NYT investigates location tracking; there really is No Place to Hide, and no time to waste

December 19, 2019 Bob Sullivan 1

A big takeaway from my experience with this reporting: This is the decade we were brainwashed into surveilling ourselves. In just over 10 years we were sold a future of personalization and convenience and paid for it with little pieces of ourselves that we can never get back. — Charlie [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

New Zelle fraud scheme ropes in Indeed job seeker as unwitting money mule

December 18, 2019 Bob Sullivan 3

Combine old-fashioned money-mule-job-listing fraud with Zelle fraud and there’s a big new headache that job seekers and bank consumers have to worry about. Ngoc Nguyen says she lost $999 this way recently, and an Indeed.com user was an unwitting accomplice to the crime. So far, Nguyen’s financial institution – Regions [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Ring camera hacking stories abound — and there’s one billion more cameras to go

December 12, 2019 Bob Sullivan 2

Parents in Tennessee say a hacker sang songs to their children in their bedroom through a Ring camera. A Texas Ring user says she was threatened with extortion through her front doorbell camera.  In Florida, another victim told local media that a hacker started screaming racial slurs at a child [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Announcing No Place to Hide, a 6-episode podcast on the state of privacy

November 22, 2019 Bob Sullivan 1

I’ve been working on a special project for six months, and I’m thrilled to let you know that it releases on Monday. It’s a 6-episode series on the state of privacy in America, and in the world.  Alia Tavakolian and I have been working since this spring, talking to dozens [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

‘First-person’ ID fraud spikes — sign of coming recession, firm claims

November 20, 2019 Bob Sullivan 6

Identity theft targeting family members is soaring, as is what I’ll call “desperation fraud” — opening credit accounts with no intention of paying, and little effort to disguise the fraud. These are two very bad signs for the economy, according to a firm that studies ID theft on a wide [Keep reading]

Cognitive bias

The hottest business idea you’ve never heard of — ‘nudge units’

November 19, 2019 Bob Sullivan 3

What’s a “nudge unit” and how might it help your company, your employes or yourself be better at whatever you do? The folks at PeopleScience.com asked me to look into that recently.  It’s pretty fascinating. I’ve been writing about cognitive biases and other human behavior research for some time now [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

So, Bob podcast: When we have a cashless society, who gets left behind?

November 18, 2019 Bob Sullivan 0

If I asked you to listen to a podcast about payments, you’d probably change the subject very quickly. But if I told you we were going to have a discussion about the future of money — and in turn, that discussion would really be about the future of freedom — [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Google whistleblower is a hero; big tech needs more of them

November 15, 2019 Bob Sullivan 2

Let’s hear it for the whistleblower! No, not that whistleblower. I mean the Google whistleblower, the brave programmer who stepped forward and alerted the world to Project Nightingale.  Google has secretly acquired medical data on 50 million Americans in a partnership with hospital chain Ascension. We wouldn’t know anything about it [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.

Bob Sullivan

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