Cynja
The Cynja, Vol. 6: On the verge of letting the Internet slip into darkness
What is this? Learn about the Cynja comic series here
Gotchas / Consumer
Avoid sleepless nights when bed shopping; how the Web helps with mattress-buying gotchas
Buying a mattress fits somewhere in between buying a car and buying a home on the dreaded “babe in the woods” scale. As a big-ticket, infrequent purchase, consumers who go looking for a better night’s sleep find themselves navigating a hazy world full of intentional brand confusion and seemingly meaningless [Keep reading]
Cybercrime / Privacy
A new, improved Do Not Call list — FCC acts against robocalling, texting
Among all the things that Washington D.C. has done in the past few decades, you’d be hard pressed to find anything more popular than the Do Not Call List. It had a rocky beginning — birthing took about a decade — but it worked remarkably well, as federal programs go, and [Keep reading]
Cybercrime / Privacy
A lesson from that Cardinals-Astros hack: Don’t use old passwords at your new company
First of all, if you haven’t read it, you must: The FBI is investigating baseball’s St. Louis Cardinals for hacking the Houston Astros, according to the New York Times. Someone from the Cardinals allegedly stole data offering insight into the Astros player evaluation files, details on possible trades, and so on. This [Keep reading]
Cybercrime / Privacy
LastPass says accounts were compromised, but passwords not hacked
Consumers hate passwords, and they are notoriously bad at choosing good ones. Today, the only alternative to being a memorization genius or re-using passwords is to use password management software that remembers all your well-crafted logins for you. It has risks, too — putting all those keys in one place [Keep reading]
Gotchas / Consumer
Banking-by-phone more popular than banking in person, study says; remote check deposit now a killer app
It’s not just teenagers who’d rather look at their phones than talk to people. Bank account holders feel that way too, apparently. New research from Javelin Strategy & Research suggests that consumers now prefer mobile banking to in-person branch banking. Javelin’s survey found that 23% of consumers choose to use [Keep reading]
Cynja
The Cynja, Vol. 5: Not all worms live in the garden
What is this? Learn about the Cynja comic series here
The Restless Project
Renting: The new ‘American Dream?’
Is renting a home the new American dream? A report by the Urban Institute projects that even after the housing crash and the Great Recession are a distant memory, homeownership rates in America will continue to decline. The report estimates that between 2010 and 2030, the majority (59%) of the [Keep reading]
Cybercrime / Privacy
FCC to PayPal: Robocalling/texting fine print raises ‘serious concerns for the enforcement bureau’
The Federal Communications Commission sent a letter to PayPal on Thursday that was highly critical of the firm’s robocalling and robotexting fine print, which I first chronicled earlier this month. The letter says PayPal’s terms of service “raise serious concerns for the (FCC) enforcement bureau.” In a report for Credit.com last [Keep reading]
Credit cards
You (probably) have a chip credit card by now. Why can’t you use it anywhere?
Like a teacher dealing with a procrastinating student, it is tempting after all the delays with the implementation of new chip-enabled credit cards to say, “That’s it, no more extensions!” And that’s what it sounds like when the financial industry criticizes merchants for requesting yet another extension for them to [Keep reading]