Consumerist
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bureaucracy
Everyone Knows How To Handle A Stolen Checkbook Except For Verizon
Yesterday I was musing that Time Warner Cable was passing the cost of customer care off to other businesses, by requiring customers to take half-days or full days off of work just to wait for a cable repairman. Today I think I stumbled upon another hidden economic impact of bad customer service: it's responsible for generating a lot of the "free" content online. The next time you're reading an IMDB entry about "Damages" or "Big Love" for example, you can thank Verizon's collection of angry, confused, and possibly insane employees, and all the idle time they create for a customer who has to deal with them. More » -
washington mutual
WaMu Saddles Credit Card Theft Victim With Thousands In Fraudulent Charges
Someone stole reader A's WaMu credit card number and racked up thousands in fraudulent charges, and now WaMu wants A to pay for it. The fraudsters also made a PIN request for a cash advance over the phone, and WaMu said that phonecall orginated from A's parents house. Because of this, which A says is impossible, WaMu demands A be responsible for the charges. He's written letters and called executive customer service and it's gotten him nowhere. His crappy story, inside...
More »
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identity theft
The Maid Is Stealing Your Checkbook
Identity theft is rising in the recession, according to a Brooklyn public defender I talked to at a party this weekend. Most often the crime starts with the perp stealing the victim's checkbook, he said. More » -
public records
Erroneous Public Records Data, Or: Who The Heck Is This Hipolito Guy?
Kathy has an unusual problem. She thinks that there might be a problem with some of her public records and/or her credit report, but she isn't sure how to find out how it got there, let alone remove it. See, there's a man named Hipolito, with the same relatively common last name as Kathy, who keeps popping up in public records questions used to verify her identity. She has no idea who this man is, and neither does anyone in her family. More » -
whoops
The IRS Isn't Sure Who They Hired Or Why Your Sensitive Tax Documents Are Filed In Dumpsters
Here are three things you didn't want to know: 1) The IRS doesn't always conduct background checks on the employees contracted to handle your sensitive tax documents; 2) Those contracted employees regularly toss your sensitive tax documents into dumpsters without first shedding them; 3) The IRS doesn't really know who's in charge of conducting background checks on contracted employees, or who's responsible for keeping your sensitive tax documents shredded and out of dumpsters. At least that's what the Treasury Inspector General's office uncovered when it audited everyone's favorite auditors. More » -
fraud
Watch Out For Fraudulent ITunes Purchases, Whether You Have An ITunes Account Or Not
MyFox New York notes that some people are being hit with fraudulent charges on their bank accounts from the iTunes Music Store, or in some cases from a fake iTunes store. Earlier this month, a reader wote to us with a similar complaint:
More »I woke up this morning to an email stating I had made two $50 gift card purchases [on iTunes Music Store]. I contacted my bank and apple, then did a google search and found that many others had the same thing happen to them.
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amex
Don't Move House If You Have An Amex Card
Here's a cautionary tale from a Consumerist reader whose credit card companycontacted his out-of-date phone number and got authorization for a $4000 spending spree.withdrew thousands of dollars from his bank account for a payment he had supposedly scheduled and then OK'd over the phone. The problem? He hadn't scheduled it, that wasn't him on the phone, and that wasn't his phone number. More » -
personal security
Make Sure You Secure Your Smartphone
Do you own an iPhone, G1, Blackberry, Windows or Nokia smartphone? Fancy phones are a nice target for thieves, and unfortunately they're often packed with sensitive information that can be too easily accessed and exploited. Why not take the time this weekend to make sure it's secure? More »
11:15 AM on Fri Apr 24 2009
By Chris Walters
0 views, 41 commentsMost discussed Pizza_Club: Oh, and it's free. Send a text message to your phone and it will reply back with the GPS more »
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data breaches
Visa Covers Butt By 'Delisting' Breached Credit Card Payment Processors
Visa has removed Heartland Payment Systems and RBS WorldPay, the two huge payment processors that suffered recent data breaches, from its list of companies that are in compliance with Payment Card Industry (PCI) rules. It says they can get back on the list when they recertify that they have proper security in place. While this may sound like a significant change in the status of the companies, in reality it does little to change how the three companies do business with each other or with merchants. It's just a way for Visa to protect itself from any upcoming lawsuits by banks and credit unions against the payment processors. More » -
comcast
8,000 Comcast Passwords Exposed, Phishing Scam Suspected
The New York Times has reported that a list of over 8,000 Comcast user name and passwords were available to the public via Scribd for two months, before a Wilkes University professor discovered it over the weekend after doing a search for his identity online. Comcast is saying it looks like the result of a phishing scam and isn't an inside job, and that there are so many duplicate entries on the list that it's closer to 4,000 customers. More » -
best buy
Best Buy Employee Arrested For Stealing Credit Cards
Uh oh, another Best Buy employee has been caught swiping data from customers. Unlike the woman last August who went on small time shopping sprees, this woman was caught using a card reader to swipe and store info on as many as 4,000 customers at the Best Buy store located at 1880 Palm Beach Lakes Blvd in Palm Beach, Florida. More » -
cellphones
Cellphone Recycler Says 99% Of Phones Still Contain Personal Data
It's really great to put your old cellphone back into circulation, even if that means just donating it to a family member. But please, remember to wipe the phone first.
Regenersis studied a random sample of 2000 handsets processed during the first week in December and found that 99% of handsets received contained some sort of personal data, including: contacts, SMS messages, pictures, music, videos, calendar entries, emails, notes, mailing lists and to do lists. In some cases, extremely sensitive information was contained, including bank details, addresses, and confidential emails.
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record breaking
Credit And Debit Card Breach May Affect Over 100 Million
The Washington Post has reported that Heartland Payment Systems, a payment processor that services "more than 250,000 businesses," has had more than 100 million transactions compromised via malicious software that was installed on its network; it will likely turn out to be the largest data breach ever reported. The "good" news is that the criminals were only capturing credit card numbers, the names on the cards, and expiration dates—the info encoded onto the magnetic strip on the card. Because no addresses, SSNs or PINs were stolen, the prospect of full-blown identity theft is pretty small—which must explain why Heartland isn't offering any sort of credit monitoring package as compensation. Instead, their CFO says, "We recognize and feel badly about the inconvenience this is going to cause consumers." More » -
identity theft
Play Anti-Phishing Phil And Learn How To Spot Phishing Attacks
Phishing attacks are pretty cleverly designed, because they skip most virus checkpoints altogether and go for the true weak spot in human-computer interaction, the human. Lorrie Faith Cranor, a computer security researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, has been studying phishing attacks to identify new ways to fight them. More » -
BoingBoing has the 500 worst passwords. We'll sum it up: if your password is password, 123456, or 696969, say goodbye to your identity.
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identity theft
DIY ID Theft Protection
Do you want to be one of over eight million identity theft victims? No, but most of the services sold by "identity theft protection" companies you can get for free. Here's how. More »
1:12 PM on Sun Dec 14 2008
By Bargaineering.com
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identity theft
Dallas School District Caught Using Random SSNs For Foreign Workers
The Dallas Independent School District has been making up fake Social Security Numbers for foreign hires for years, even after being told in 2004 by the state's education board to stop because it's illegal. The numbers were meant to "expedite" the hiring process and get the employees on payroll, but they found their way onto Department of Homeland Security and IRS forms (which are kept in-district but shared with feds upon request), were used for criminal background checks, and in at least 26 cases were numbers in use by real people. More » -
social security number
Can I Change My Social Security Number?
Concerned about a recent incident in which his wife's social security number may have been exposed (by a Bank of America employee, but that's another story), Christian wants to know if you can change your social security number. In special circumstances, yes, the Social Security Administration will change your number. You need to show proof that 1) you've suffered harm from someone misusing your ss# and 2) you've made all reasonable efforts to otherwise solve the problem i.e. credit report freezes, closing accounts and changing account numbers, etc. If both of these apply, then you can simply visit your local SSA office, call, or visit www.ssa.gov/reach.htm.
When Someone Else Uses Your Social Security Number [SSA.gov]
identity theft
New York, 9:56 AM
Sat Jul 4
27 posts in the last 24 hours
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