It’s every job applicant’s nightmare. You are in the running for a new position, then an HR representative calls with bad news: You’ve failed a background check. The firm thinks you have a criminal record! It’s a typical 21st Century database screw-up, but by the time you run down the [Keep reading]
You know I love a good privacy outrage as much as anyone. But a story last week in the Financial Times started a kerfuffle about Facebook posts and pictures impacting your all-important FICO credit score. FICO tells me in no uncertain terms this isn’t true. The incident is a good [Keep reading]
Remember last year when Verizon tried to trick its mobile users into trading incredibly personal information for a lame “rewards” program that only gave consumers near-worthless points in an auction game? Starting next month, it makes a lot more sense, thanks to the Verizon-AOL deal. Through “Verizon Selects,” people who took [Keep reading]
When you heard that CIA Director John Brennan’s private AOL email account had been hacked, you probably had the same question I did: Why did he have an AOL account? As I told NBC’s Pete Williams yesterday, the jokes write themselves. Was his carrier pigeon kidnapped, too? AOL and CIA [Keep reading]
FEB. 23, 2012 — You already have an “insurance score.” You have an “Employment Credit Score.” There’s even a “MedFICO,” which attempts to predict whether you’ll actually pay your doctor’s bills. Now that a “Facebook score” has been invented, I expect a “Grocery Habits score” and a “Music Taste” score [Keep reading]
“Being in a state of constant observation will be the new normal. Everyone will come to expect it whether at work or at play.” — Lisa Sotto, cyberlaw expert. A chilling thought, no? Pun intended. Is privacy dead? People ask me this all the time, as one of the few [Keep reading]
Who turns down a LinkedIn invitation? You never know — that one connection could be the first step towards a new job, or a new client, or a lucrative contract. Or, it could be the first step towards getting hacked. In the latest cautionary tale about overly-promiscuous social media sharing, investigators [Keep reading]
Credit cards with magnetic stripes are being eliminated in favor of cards with fraud-fighting computer chips. Here are all the details you need to know as a cardholder. Why is Oct. 1 important? Banks and merchants have been inching toward the magnetic-to-chip transition for a long time. New rules take [Keep reading]
Bad guys are so much more nimble than good guys that they have a two-month head start in most hacking situations, a new report has found. Meanwhile, software flaws that are even a decade old continue to be used to hack hundreds of thousands of computers, according to Kenna Security. [Keep reading]
Here’s a prediction you need to heed: a large number of you will soon leave your credit cards behind at a retail store after making a purchase. Why? Because the biggest change in the way Americans spend money in decades is about to occur, and there will be hiccups. And [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan