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Month: August 2022

Cybercrime / Privacy

Retired couple who had $600k stolen in tech scam: ‘Some storms clear a path’

August 30, 2022 Bob Sullivan 5

“Not all storms come into your life to create chaos. Some storms come into your life to clear the path.” — Diane Clemens One of the great privileges of being a journalist is the opportunity to meet people at critical times in their lives — when there’s a terrible tragedy, [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

‘Data broker’ Oracle misleads billions of consumers, lawsuit alleges, enables privacy end-arounds

August 22, 2022 Bob Sullivan 0

At least one Big Tech firm has glided mostly under the radar during the recent techlash — Oracle — but that relative obscurity might be coming to an end. A class-action lawsuit filed against the data giant by some heavy-hitters in the privacy world alleges that Oracle combines some of [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Podcast: Pretending to be deadly ill can be profitable online

August 15, 2022 Bob Sullivan 1

‘We call that Munchausen by Animal Proxy, and for people who lack access to children, don’t want to harm themselves, lack access to elderly and dependent people, they may induce or lie about illness in their pets. And, I can think of one case where, and this sounds like I’m [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Is our ‘long’ national inflation nightmare over? Not so fast

August 10, 2022 Bob Sullivan 1

Is the long national inflation nightmare over? Well, that’s a $64 trillion question. Today brought news that the Consumer Price Index rate of increase was flat last month — the first pause in that measure of rising prices since 2020.  Wall Street reacted to the news with predictable restraint and [Keep reading]

Bob Sullivan's podcast projects

Cryptocurrency: The perfect tool for The Perfect Scam — a special two-part podcast

August 1, 2022 Bob Sullivan 12

“It’s just a perfect payment mechanism for people who want to do bad things.” — Lee Reiners, FinTech professor at Duke University . Mei Mei Soe was using LinkedIn to find a new job when a friendly, fellow Chinese-speaker asked to connect. Mei Mei, 42, has suffered with debilitating nerve [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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