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THE RED TAPE CHRONICLES

Technology has hidden side effects -- we reveal them here

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  • Cybercrime / Privacy
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Red Tape Wire Service

Gotchas / Consumer

‘Neighbor spoofing’ robocalls continues to ruin dinners, weekends; FCC in new push to stop phone spam

March 8, 2018 Bob Sullivan 2

The FCC is issuing fresh warnings about so-called “neighbor spoofing” as the agency plans a fresh push to tamp down illegal robocalls — and scammers continue to perfect their tools of evasion. Neighbor spoofing involves spam calls that arrive appearing to come from a nearby phone number. If your number [Keep reading]

Gotchas / Consumer

Hate Gotchas? Read a free excerpt of the all-new Gotcha Capitalism here

March 5, 2018 Bob Sullivan 0

“You’ve been hacked. But there’s hope. Let me explain.” Writing a book is a very long journey. Re-writing a book, 10 years later, is an even longer journey. But that’s where I have arrived, and I invite you dear reader to come along with me.  More than a decade ago, [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Here’s why that new IRS tax ID theft scam is so convincing

March 1, 2018 Bob Sullivan 3

If you receive an unexpected deposit from the IRS into your bank account in the next few weeks, don’t celebrate. You are likely a victim of a nasty, ingenious new form of ID theft designed by criminals to evade updated IRS security protections. In other words, in this cat and [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

P2P bank app Zelle soars in popularity — with criminals, and without fraud protections

February 23, 2018 Bob Sullivan 4

WARNING: Zelle isn’t really a safe way to send money.  Huh? But it’s backed by all these big banks!  Read on… Every time a new payment app bursts on the scene, there’s a fraud learning curve. Companies never emphasize enough how risky the new app is, and consumers always learn [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

A criminal opened a DirecTV account in his name, and his credit score dropped 150 points

February 22, 2018 Bob Sullivan 2

  Mark was getting ready for bed last October when a disturbing notification arrived in his email – there had been a “change” in his credit information, a credit monitoring service warned. Filled with dread, he logged in and found the trouble: a black mark on his credit report, claiming [Keep reading]

30 Days of Gotchas

Gift cards cards are safer, but not safe, and rebate cards are tricky — 30 Days of Gotchas

February 21, 2018 Bob Sullivan 0

(NOTE: This is a free excerpt from my new book: Gotcha Capitalism, 10 years later.  A lot has happened in the world of credit cards since 2008.  It’s fun to look back….) Gift cards could be pretty diabolical when they burst onto the scene in the late 1990s. Junk fees [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Facebook set me to ‘like’ a Congressional candidate without my consent

February 14, 2018 Bob Sullivan 2

Facebook is having a tough time controlling its reputation for unfairly impacting political events, and this won’t help: the social media giant can make users “like” a political candidate’s page without their consent.  It just happened to me. I’m a journalist, so I don’t like any any political pages, unless [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

Tech’s dark side takes the spotlight with tales of the Infocalypse; is there a glimmer of hope?

February 13, 2018 Bob Sullivan 2

If you think fake news is bad, wait until fake news video becomes a thing. Or until an entire generation of kids hacked by Silicon Valley’s attention-mining tools comes of age.  Or until Facebook throws up its hands and realizes it simply can’t stop the Frankenstein it has created. We’re [Keep reading]

30 Days of Gotchas

Credit cards: 10 years later, the Gotchas aren’t gone, but they’re on the run: 30 Days of Gotchas

February 12, 2018 Bob Sullivan 0

(NOTE: This is a free excerpt from my new book: Gotcha Capitalism, 10 years later.  A lot has happened in the world of credit cards since 2008.  It’s fun to look back….) When I began writing Gotcha Capitalism sometime in 2006, there was only one choice for Chapter One: credit [Keep reading]

Cybercrime / Privacy

‘Some would say’ is a lazy rhetorical device that now, thanks to tech, threatens our society

February 7, 2018 Bob Sullivan 1

If we won’t hold our politicians accountable, perhaps we’ll hold our technology accountable.  We’d better start somewhere soon, before America is reduced to an unrecognizable Tower of Babel.  This week, there were signs of hope for this, but also signals that the worst might be yet to come. I’ll start [Keep reading]

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About me

BOB SULLIVAN is a veteran journalist and the author of four books, including the 2008 New York Times Best-Seller, Gotcha Capitalism, and the 2010 New York Times Best Seller, Stop Getting Ripped Off! His latest, The Plateau Effect, was published in 2013, and as a paperback, called Getting Unstuck in 2014. He has won the Society of Professional Journalists prestigious Public Service award, a Peabody award, and The Consumer Federation of America Betty Furness award, and been given Consumer Action’s Consumer Excellence Award.

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