When Sam Largent opened his second bar in the Seattle area, he thought he’d take a bold risk: No cash allowed. Well, no physical currency, anyway. All customers must pay with plastic. Debit and credit only; no greenbacks welcome. “Dealing with cash brings a lot of issues,” says Largent. Like [Keep reading]
Kristin Kalning called Wells Fargo bank with a simple issue last week — she wanted to change the mailing address on a small, decades-old IRA account. Instead, she was peppered with what she felt were overly aggressive questions about her personal financial situation, and told she couldn’t do anything with [Keep reading]
It reads like a typical Internet hoax that catches viral fire: “Stand with me at Standing Rock,” the post begins. “The Morton County Sheriff’s Department has been using Facebook check-ins to find out who is at Standing Rock in order to target them in attempts to disrupt the prayer camps.” [Keep reading]
The FCC today ruled that when it comes to your personal information, Internet service providers are more like telephone companies and less like websites — and so it has limited ISPs ability to make money by digitally stalking you and selling that data. The ruling represents a rare win for [Keep reading]
With the housing market steaming ahead like the housing bubble never happened, it’s easy to forget that about 7 million Americans lost their home during the recession. And I think it’s easy to forget what I believe was the biggest failure of the Obama administration. While banks got bailouts, homeowners [Keep reading]
It’s easy to blame dumb consumers using bad passwords when a large-scale Internet attack occurs, and that’s what happened on Friday when sites like Reddit and Twitter became unavailable during an Internet of Things-driven denial of service attack. But a developing melodrama has U.S. security firms saying passwords were hard-coded into the gadgets [Keep reading]
An army of infected gadgets — like nanny cameras — overwhelmed a critical Internet service provider on Friday, knocking many large Internet companies offline. The firm at the middle of the attack, New Hampshire-based Dyn, said late Friday that it is enduring a third wave of digital onslaught. Dyn said late [Keep reading]
An army of infected gadgets — like nanny cameras — overwhelmed a critical Internet service provider on Friday, knocking many large Internet companies offline. The firm at the middle of the attack, New Hampshire-based Dyn, said late Friday that it is enduring a third wave of digital onslaught. It’s not clear [Keep reading]
I’m constantly amazed at the unfair contracts consumers are forced to sign during simple transactions with large corporations. Lawyers load up standard-form contracts with one-sided, take-it-or-leave-it terms, often called “contracts of adhesion.” I’m in a crowd that believes one-sided contracts where there’s unequal bargaining power aren’t contracts at all, and [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan