Websites that offer short-term, high-interest loans to consumers continue to draw the attention of regulators, with New York state authorities issuing 16 subpoenas to lead generation websites recently, according to the New York Times. The relatively new practice of offering payday loans online through websites involves a thicket of complicated [Keep reading]
Here’s the first of several stories I expect to see like this. A security researcher claims he can hack his way into commercial drones and make them take instructions from him. Think of it as a flying botnet. Now there’s an appetizing idea! (H/T to Threatpost and Dennis Fisher for [Keep reading]
Nearly one-quarter of young Americans bank primarily by smartphone, claims a new survey released by Ally Bank. In a telephone poll taken in September, 23 percent of Americans aged 18-34 said they were “primarily using mobile devices” to do their banking, up from 15 percent last year. Add in other [Keep reading]
The U.K. is aflutter with talk that smartphones might be the reason Britons are having 20 percent less sex than they did a decade ago. The research isn’t as tidy as all that — the 20 percent part is sound, the smartphone part is largely a guess. But then, I’ll [Keep reading]
Could a hip 20-something Chicagoan limit her weekly spending to $100 a week for an entire month? Nicole DiVito set out to find out last month, trying what she called “No-Spend November.” The results were…mixed. “No Spend November… Good in theory; Mediocre in practice,” DiVito says. I think she’s being [Keep reading]
Jeff Bezos is a lot of things, but when I see him talk, I feel the same way I do about a charming magician. Now I know why. He’s convinced some very important people that drones will soon be dropping Amazon packages out of the sky, only 30 minutes after [Keep reading]
Brazil is considering a law that would force U.S. companies like Google to store and keep data on its citizens only within Brazil’s borders – not at Google’s U.S. servers. Let’s call that data protectionism. Pandora, meet the NSA. This isn’t a story about Brazil. It’s a story about the [Keep reading]
Corporations use Big Data to get the upper hand on consumers; it’s time for consumers to strike back. A host of online calculators makes it easier for you to compare prices across a wide variety of industries, and learn quickly if you’re about to be ripped off — or at [Keep reading]
To Black Friday or not to Black Friday? Perhaps you haven’t made up your mind yet. Dueling polls seem to suggest Americans are torn on the issue. The National Retail Federation says 140 million Americans will go shopping this weekend, and 23.5 percent of them will start as soon as [Keep reading]
The Utah Couple who were “fined” $3,500 for writing a negative comment online about a small online merchant named KlearGear.com has formally threatened to sue the firm, and is asking for $75,000 to avoid litigation. Consumer advocacy group Public Citizen is representing the couple, John and Jen Palmer of Layton, [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan