bobsullivan.net

Consumer and cybercrime news

THE RED TAPE CHRONICLES

Technology has hidden side effects -- we reveal them here

  • About Bob
  • Gotchas / Consumer
  • Cybercrime / Privacy
  • “In Conversation”
  • Cognitive bias essays
  • Podcasts
Home2020July

Month: July 2020

Podcast: Why aren’t housing prices going down? Bargain hunters, beware

July 28, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

 It seems crazy, but housing prices have actually hit record highs in many places, and the housing market is sweltering.  If you thought you might find a bargain during the pandemic, you are out of luck. How can this be? I wrote about this for CNBC’s Grow website recently. [Keep reading]

Podcast: The birth of CNN and 24-hour news, with author Lisa Napoli

July 28, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

Once upon a time, Americans waited until dinnertime to find out what happened in the world that day. Then, Ted Turner had a crazy itch to scratch and everything changed. Not for the better, I’d argue. For starters, people now tune to TV news — and to the Internet — [Keep reading]

Loss aversion: Why we hate losing more than we like winning, and why that’s a trap

July 27, 2020 Bob Sullivan 1

I recently published a story about scarcity, and its powerful impact as a marketing tool. Order today! Only 3 remaining!  Today’s I’m sharing a piece I wrote for PeopleScience.com that describes the underlying principle/mental shortcut that empowers scarcity — loss aversion. Losses loom larger than gains. The pain of losing [Keep reading]

Is smartphone contact tracing doomed to be a privacy killer? Or can tech really help?

July 21, 2020 Bob Sullivan 5

An app that tells you if you were exposed to someone with Covid? Sounds great. But, as usual, tech-as-silver-bullet ideas come full of booby-traps. There’s been a lot of scattershot discussion around smartphone contact tracing during the past several months, with privacy advocates saying the harms far outweigh the benefits, [Keep reading]

The S&P 500 turned positive for 2020: Here’s what that means for you

July 16, 2020 Bob Sullivan 1

  I wrote a story for CNBC’s Grow site yesterday about the stock market’s remarkable turnaround.  Down more 30% in March, but now up almost 50% since then…a run that has put S&P 500 investors right back where they were on New Year’s Eve. What happens next? I sure don’t [Keep reading]

Time’s running out! You’d better read this — the scary power of scarcity

July 14, 2020 Bob Sullivan 4

It’s foundational to almost every scam you’ve ever read about. Act fast! Last chance! It’s also the force behind much unsavory human behavior.  Fighting over distribution of scarce resources brings out the worst in us.  It’s part of what makes racism so powerful (“They’re taking YOUR jobs!”). That’s why it’s [Keep reading]

Living a fragile, paycheck-to-paycheck life? New ‘FICO Resilience Index’ will tell on you

July 8, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

FICO admitted this week that its credit scores don’t do such a good job of predicting which consumers might not pay their bills someday soon.  The credit-scoring firm rolled out a new product called the FICO Resilience Index, which theoretically will tell banks which consumers will be able to weather [Keep reading]

Podcast: How to Lose the Information War (Hint: Start playing Whack-A-Troll)

July 1, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

The United States and many venerated European democracies are well on their way to becoming “a fact-free version of Democracy Lite,” warns today’s podcast guest, Nina Jankowicz. She’s the ‘disinformation fellow’ at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., and she has a new book out called How to Lose the [Keep reading]

Yoga app developer says Apple forces him to ‘steal’ from users through auto-payment gotcha

July 1, 2020 Bob Sullivan 0

The developer of a popular yoga iPhone app says Apple is forcing him to “steal” from users by requiring implementation of gotcha-style automated payments at the end of their free trial. The developer currently lets fans of the Down Dog app opt-in to monthly payments at the end of the [Keep reading]

Substack newsletter

Search

The Bob Sullivan Library

FEATURED: Click to buy

 

 

 

My newest book. Click to listen now.

Bob Sullivan