FICO admitted this week that its credit scores don’t do such a good job of predicting which consumers might not pay their bills someday soon. The credit-scoring firm rolled out a new product called the FICO Resilience Index, which theoretically will tell banks which consumers will be able to weather [Keep reading]
The United States and many venerated European democracies are well on their way to becoming “a fact-free version of Democracy Lite,” warns today’s podcast guest, Nina Jankowicz. She’s the ‘disinformation fellow’ at the Wilson Center in Washington D.C., and she has a new book out called How to Lose the [Keep reading]
The developer of a popular yoga iPhone app says Apple is forcing him to “steal” from users by requiring implementation of gotcha-style automated payments at the end of their free trial. The developer currently lets fans of the Down Dog app opt-in to monthly payments at the end of the [Keep reading]
We’re all used to earning interest at a bank when we save money. But could a financial institution soon charge you ‘interest’ to park your money there? Yes, says Ken Tumin, the man behind DepositAccounts.com. Interest rates are now so low that saving money could soon cost consumers. In today’s [Keep reading]
Fake News is stoking violence and helping destroy our democracy. Fake pills make people sick and can even kill them. Fake foods, like fake olive oil, or mislabeled fish, rip consumers off and steal profits from honest companies. The world is becoming overrun by fake everything, says Avivah Litan, renowned [Keep reading]
Old advertising pitches nearly always boiled down to a cliche — “Half of advertising works, half doesn’t, and we don’t know which half is which. So, you’d better advertise.” Then the Internet came along and changed that equation, promising precise data on which ads do work, through highly targeted ads, [Keep reading]
Americans are shopping online at record levels — thanks to Covid-19…and with all that flurry of activity, criminals have flocked to e-commerce, too. Julie Ferguson, CEO of the Merchant Risk Council, talked to me recently about why online credit card fraud and other kinds of fraud seem to be spreading [Keep reading]
HOBOKEN, N.J. — One thing you learn when covering a protest in person– if you are honest — is that you probably know less about what’s going on than almost anyone else. All you know is what you see right in front of your face. In the chaos, there’s no [Keep reading]
If you’ve ever wondered how your local police department ended up with military HUMVEES, visit The Marshall Project. There, you can click on your community and see if has been was the recipient of a Pentagon surplus program known as “1033.” Since the late 1990s — when signed into law [Keep reading]
With President Donald Trump threatening retribution against Twitter with an executive order, you’re going to hear a lot about Section 230 this week — and maybe for many weeks. The ensuing discussion could shake the Internet to its very roots. That’s going to make legal scholars very happy, but it [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan