Cynja
The Cynja, Vol. 8: About to unleash perilous malware
What is this? Learn about the Cynja comic series here
Privacy
Historic: Fed hack puts 25 million at risk, including some outside government; fingerprints also stolen
Cybercriminals have stolen a staggering amount of information from government computers, a federal agency revealed Thursday. The total number of victims and the type of information gathered, taken together, make the hack historic. While researching an attack that saw the compromise of 4.5 million federal workers’ data, the Office of Personal [Keep reading]
Debt Collection Files
Time Warner ordered to pay $230k for 153 wrong-number robocalls
You might not be surprised to hear that Time Warner Cable mistreated a consumer; you might delight in hearing that a New York judge is making TWC pay $230,000 to an aggrieved consumer. But Judge Alvin Hellerstein’s ruling is particularly stern, and offers enough schadenfreude that it’s worth a quick scan. It’s also [Keep reading]
Cybercrime / Privacy
Please stand by: America is experiencing ‘technical difficulties’
Chaos was having a very good day and IT departments a very bad day on Wednesday. First, passengers around the country were stranded — many still are — after United Airlines issued a ground stop for all flights. Then, at nearly the same time United announced its systems had been fixed, [Keep reading]
Features
Where’d those annual Social Security statements go? They’re right here…click to verify earnings and benefits
Remember when you used to get statements from the Social Security Administration about your earnings credits and the estimated benefit you would receive at retirement? Those went away during a federal budget crisis back in 2011, only to be partially restored last fall. They are now sent every five years, when [Keep reading]
The Restless Project
Millennials the most restless; 1 in 4 work every day during vacations
It’s summer – Do you know where your vacation time is? Yet another study shows Americans leave a lot of their paid vacation time on the table, essentially giving free work to their employers. The average American donates $500 worth of labor, according to this study. You also know that [Keep reading]
How To Buy Anything
Buying furniture: Almost as hard as buying a car (four decorating gotchas)
Buying furniture has always been a perilous, complex affair. There are loads of places you can get your furniture from, for example, you can get your furniture from somewhere like furniture in fashion. You don’t buy a couch the way you buy a television or a laptop computer. You can’t [Keep reading]
The Restless Project
A sliver of good news for home shoppers — all-cash buyers retreat, finally
In many parts of the country, housing prices gave returned to pre-recession levels. That’s good news for sellers, bad news for buyers. But buried within the latest housing data is some good news for everyone — everyone on Main Street, anyway. All-cash buyers seem to be finally retreating. The percent [Keep reading]
Cynja
The Cynja, Vol. 7: People could lose their money, their data, even their lives
What is this? Learn about the Cynja comic series here
Gotchas / Consumer
Debt collector connected to huge hospital chain, Tenet, ignored billing dispute laws for years
It’s a basic tenet of billing practices, debt collection, and fairness — if someone sends you a bill, and you think it’s wrong, you have the right to dispute it and get a prompt response. It’s also federal law. Except Tenet Healthcare, through a firm that handles some of its [Keep reading]