I’m happy to announce that I’ve joined a great new personal finance site called Grow as a contributor. Led by Jennifer Barrett, who until recently was editing my CNBC.com stories, Grow is a part of the Acorns app. Acorns is one of the clever new finance startups generally called “FinTech.” If [Keep reading]
By now you’ve probably heard the sexy story of one major league baseball team hacking another in a perhaps the most famous case of corporate espionage to date. It’s the most famous because it involves the Houston Astros and the St. Louis Cardinals, but it’s really a trivial case in [Keep reading]
Will 2016 be the year people really start buying things with their phones? The year a hacker finally turns the lights off? Or a self-driving car causes an accident? Maybe, maybe not. Maybe some of these things won’t happen until January 2017 — the 12-month time horizon is pretty arbitrary — but these [Keep reading]
Every year at about this time, technology reporters typically recount the big computer crimes from the past 12 months and proclaim “The Year of the Hacker” or some such moniker. This year, it fits. Two years ago, the Target hack ushered in a new era of credit card theft awareness and ultimately helped inspire a [Keep reading]
What is this? Ransomware? A new Cryptolocker? A less scary blue screen of death? Nope. This is a Microsoft Update. The latest stupid Microsoft trick hit me today — it’s been making the rounds for the past several weeks, and it’s likely to hit you, too. So I’m writing up [Keep reading]
If you think using your new chip credit card is annoying, imagine what it’s like on the other side of the cash register. Well, you don’t have to imagine, because store clerk Dawn is going to tell you. As U.S. consumers and merchants get used to the new chip-enabled EMV credit and debit [Keep reading]
It’s Christmas Eve, and unless you are out shopping, you have only one choice left for a last-minute gift — an email gift card. E-gifting is a new tradition that’s growing every year, and once again, Christmas Eve is expected to be the busiest day of the year for digital gift [Keep reading]
Consumers around the world trust data storage company Seagate to keep their information safe, but the firm this week apparently allowed one of its website security certificates to lapse. The expiration means some Seagate backup functions currently don’t work. It also calls into question the firm’s business practices, according to [Keep reading]
As one of the first journalists to write about the identity theft phenomenon more than a decade ago, people often ask me if I think LifeLock is worth it. I’ve never been a fan of the company, which began its uneasy existence with a brazen advertising campaign that included plastering the founder’s [Keep reading]
Ever since I started writing the Red Tape Chronicles, people (mostly journalists) have complained that I cover two very different topics: tech gone bad and consumer ripoffs. I’ll admit it: I don’t care. Often enough, these subjects overlap. You don’t care if a hacker is stealing your money or a [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan