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]
Ever thought something was a bad idea — like walking down a dark street, or adding a feature to a product you thought no one would want — but did it anyway because everyone else around you seemed to think it was ok? Group process can be a wonderful thing. [Keep reading]
Scattered Canary sounds a bit like bad band name from high school, but it’s really the name given to a highly organized cybercrime game base in Nigeria that’s managed to steal millions of dollars from state unemployment systems, according to my guest — Armen Najarian is Chief Identity Officer [Keep reading]
I’ve spent my career writing about the scourge of hidden fees and surcharges — and how they wreck the normal price function of market economics — but for once, I’m not sure how I feel about a new fee making the rounds. (In fact, it’s the 10th Anniversary of Gotcha [Keep reading]
k Once upon a time, Americans waited until dinnertime to find out what happened in the world that day. Then, Ted Turner had a crazy itch to scratch and everything changed. Not for the better, I’d argue. For starters, people now tune to TV news — and to the Internet [Keep reading]
Bob Sullivan