facebook
A depressed woman has lost her benefits because her
insurance agent found Facebook photos where she appears to be having fun.
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call centers
Out of the shadows steps a dark figure, sporting wrinkled khakis, a retractable namebadge, and a headset dangling from his ear. It's the telermarketing insider, and he's going to confess to you how his industry really works and how you can resist and even fight back:
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personal information
When an insurer decides whether to offer you a new policy, or whether to raise rates on a current one, he most likely pulls a CLUE report that lists any homeowner or automobile insurance loss claims (or sometimes even just inquiries) that you've made over the past 3-7 years. Hopefully you monitor your consumer credit report for errors, but as you can see, that's not the only one you should keep an eye on.
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storm8
For secretly stealing users' phone number by exploiting a backdoor
iPhone vulnerability, app developer Storm8 got slapped with a class action lawsuit.
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woot
Robear wanted to order from
shirt.woot, but something strange happened when he went to register. After choosing a username and entering his e-mail address, he noticed that all of the forms were pre-populated with another customer's information...including that user's credit card information. He contacted Woot to try to find out what could have happened, but Woot either hasn't figured it out yet, or just isn't responding. (UPDATE: Response from Woot below.)
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what the dell
Zach ordered a netbook online from Dell, then got a call from a customer service rep who wanted to verify his identity for the order. He was stumped as to why the company needed to give his birthday and last four digits of his SSN.
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psas
Update: The deadline for adding an email address to your commenter ID is this Sunday, October 18th, at midnight EST. If your account doesn't include an email address by then, you will have to register again when we move the site, and you may not get the same username. If you've already added an email address, thanks! We'll see you on the other side!
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rebates
Greg says he inadvertently authorized
Citi to share his personal info because he applied for an online rebate. He writes:
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security
We're no longer indignant about Amex's weirdly lax security policies anymore, we're just confused. Why would a major credit card company cold call new customers and
insist they give up bank and address info over the phone, or
email sensitive data to strangers? Or, we just learned, demand that you use a lame password that isn't case sensitive, is only 6 to 8 characters long, and can't contain special characters?
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privacy
Here's the problem with Gmail: so many people use it that a mistyped e-mail address probably will not result in a bounced message. It will result in your message going to the wrong person, since nearly every derivation of a name is probably a working address.
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privacy
Jonathan wanted to
opt out everyone in his family from direct marketing campaigns, something the
DMA promises is possible via their website. Surprise! It turns out the DMA doesn't really care so much about whether or not you want to be taken off any mailing lists, and they have a rotten website and poor security protocols to prove it.
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privacy
Apparently the new generation of med students aren't as concerned as you might like them to be about sharing your medical information on Facebook or Twitter, says Time.
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security
We're not sure why a company would bother with offering a password feature on their customer accounts if they disable them without warning 3 months later as a matter of policy, but that's how
Southern California Gas Company rolls. Does it really matter, you ask? It might if you're a victim of
domestic violence.
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