Can a debt collector contact family, friends, or co-workers in an attempt to find you? Yes, yes, and yes. But she or he can’t say very much. (This story first appeared on Credit.com. Read it there.) The Fair Debt Collection Practices Act offers consumers a wide set of protections about [Keep reading]
The brilliant Joanna Stern wrote a piece for the Wall Street Journal this week decrying the silly “put a bluetooth device in everything” gold rush with a brilliantly-headlined story, “Smart Tampon? The Internet of Every Single Thing Must Be Stopped.” You should go read it, and then come back and [Keep reading]
A friend posed a question recently that’s particularly relevant to our current national conversation: When, exactly, was America great? The question is on everyone’s mind, thanks to Donald Trump’s surprise ascendancy to star in the world’s biggest reality TV show, our presidential election. His central theme, or at least the [Keep reading]
iTunes gift cards have become a common tool for online scammers to wring money out of victims, according to new warnings from Apple and U.S. federal authorities. One agency received a deluge of complaints during a recent weekend, including word from one victim who lost $31,000 in a recent iTunes payment scam, according to [Keep reading]
If you’ve ever turned on late-night television, you’ve seen the ads. They are ubiquitous in some parts of the country. Need cash? Drive in and give us your car title, we’ll give you a loan….at about 300 percent interest. Title loans from places like title loans jacksonville, are payday loans [Keep reading]
QUICK: What was your LinkedIn password in 2012? OK, now think of every password you have set at every service you use and make sure that LinkedIn password isn’t re-used anywhere. If ever you needed a reminder not to re-use passwords, here it is. We knew that LinkedIn got hacked in 2012, but [Keep reading]
You just listened to the voice mail, and your heart is in your throat. A debt collector called. What now? Your next step could be the difference between a manageable bump in the road and a years-long nightmare. So here, we’re going to walk you through these critical first few [Keep reading]
What’s the harm if someone gets your zip code wrong in a database? Well, that question ended up at the center of a Supreme Court ruling today — and a popular Twitter hashtag, #zipcodeharms. I’ll get to that in a minute. But first, is it a good or a bad thing when [Keep reading]
I call it “21st Century Moonlighting.” Others call it the “sharing economy,” the “gig economy,” etc. Whatever the name, I think one key to thriving (surviving?) in the digital economy is finding ways to supplement your full-time income. Etsy. Uber. Airbnb. Whatever. We all know incomes are stagnant, so the [Keep reading]
Frequent readers know that I often complain about the “death of the price tag.” Companies say something will cost X, but it really costs X+Y. Or sometimes, X+Y+Z+1A+2B……etc. Sometimes that means writing about tiny amounts of money that can create large amounts of bad feelings. Like surprise $1 surcharges. A [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan