Debt settlement firms that require upfront payments continue to find themselves in the cross-hairs of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. On Thursday, the agency announced it filed a complaint against a Washington state payment processor, Meracord LLC, alleging it provides the financial structure that enables collection of illegal upfront fees from consumers [Keep reading]
You know those annoying reminders you keep getting from Adobe to update your Acrobat or Flash software? Now would be a good time to pay attention to them. Brian Krebs at KrebsOnSecurity.com discovered last week that computer criminals had gained access to Adobe’s servers and stole a treasure trove of [Keep reading]
Caller ID isn’t always what it appears, and increasingly, criminal telemarketers are taking advantage of that. Aggressive phone sales operators have pretended to be the IRS, and they’ve pretended to be charities, but apparently they’ve developed a new tactic recently — impersonating teachers, calling parents at home during the school day. [Keep reading]
Are those digital checks you can download from your online bank putting your money at risk? Perhaps. Old-fashioned check fraud, supercharged by online account hijacking, is the latest fraud headache, I learned at the Visa Security Summit in D.C. on Wednesday. Some are calling it check fraud with “digital fine [Keep reading]
A crush of health insurance buyers and lookie-loos are predictably knocking over websites today, frustrating consumers who want to sign up for coverage at a health care exchange. But there’s no need to rush. Coverage doesn’t start until Jan. 1, and you have until Dec. 15 to sign up. So [Keep reading]
ATM fees are up, overdraft fees are up, and the availability of free checking accounts is down, according to a new survey. But the rate of bad news is slowly, according to the data collected by BankRate.com. At least that’s something. Consumers fork over an average of $4.13 to access [Keep reading]
When Mariano pitched his first game for the New York Yankees, in May 1995, I arrived in Seattle to start my internship at MSNBC.com. I ‘retired’ in August, my career there almost precisely parallel to his – at least in time. That’s why we love sports so much. Baseball seasons [Keep reading]
The economics of petty theft is an interesting chicken-and-egg game. That’s how New York City police officers recently ended up imploring consumers to download the new iPhone operating system, iOS 7. They want you to be the egg. Last week, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman was among leading law [Keep reading]
Everyone is online, right? Wrong. About one in seven U.S. adults don’t use email or the (not quite the whole) worldwide web, according to a poll published by Wednesday by the Pew Research Center. Many in the disconnected crowd are older and poor, as one might expect. But a large number [Keep reading]
When consumers try to sign up at just-launched health care exchanges next week, they might be surprised that credit bureau Experian and its telephone help desk may stand in the way. And those seeking a subsidy will be confronted by Equifax’s controversial The Work Number product, a massive database the [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan