When 2013 began, I never imagined I’d be setting up my own consumer news service. But the year was full of surprises, opportunities, a successful book launch, and some disappointments. It all cleared the way for this exciting change. As New Year’s approaches, I’m proud to say that 50,000 people [Keep reading]
We’re about to find out how effective a major implementation of encryption really is. Target’s quite tardy admission that it’s lost encrypted PIN codes along with millions of credit card numbers might be one of the largest public tests of encryption were ever seen. Remember, a person with a debit [Keep reading]
Brian Krebs connects the dots and spins an amazing tale about a hacker who he things is involved in selling the stolen Target credit cards. And, he says, someone offered him $10,000 not to print it. Using a combination of deep searches, cached versions of websites, and his own archives [Keep reading]
I’m hearing a lot of screaming from the hills about chip-enabled credit card right now: Why Europe has had them for 10 years, and how silly that Americans don’t have them yet. Well, there’s some good reasons why shoppers in the States don’t have chip-and-pin yet. Here’s the most important [Keep reading]
How much do you plan to spend on gifts this holiday season? If you’re like the average American, a little less than last year. That certainly doesn’t make you a Scrooge — you are probably spending a lot more than you did at the height of the recession — but it [Keep reading]
When I published my book Stop Getting Ripped Off, I wanted to include some ideas that go way beyond the tired, old financial advice that can fit on an index card. My “two-card” credit card strategy for occasional overspenders is one of those ideas. have a “clean card” and a “line of [Keep reading]
Borrow $10,000 from a website, pay back $62,000 over seven years: Who would have a problem with that? Federal and state regulators said they did on Monday, and announced a lawsuit against online loan servicer CashCall, saying the firm essentially used Indian reservation-based Western Sky Financial as a front to [Keep reading]
Consumers are more outraged than ever, according to a new survey. And cable or satellite TV is the worst offender! I love surveys about consumer rage. Rage is a special kind of reaction, the bastard child of anger and helplessness. When you have a frustrating situation and there’s nothing you [Keep reading]
Websites that offer short-term, high-interest loans to consumers continue to draw the attention of regulators, with New York state authorities issuing 16 subpoenas to lead generation websites recently, according to the New York Times. The relatively new practice of offering payday loans online through websites involves a thicket of complicated [Keep reading]
Could a hip 20-something Chicagoan limit her weekly spending to $100 a week for an entire month? Nicole DiVito set out to find out last month, trying what she called “No-Spend November.” The results were…mixed. “No Spend November… Good in theory; Mediocre in practice,” DiVito says. I think she’s being [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan