Jeremy Duffy - Awareness Advocate » Good news

Lifelock Loses Court Battle and Two Bullet Points

Jeremy — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 03:23:35 +0000

Lifelock was sued by Experian for placing fraud alerts for anyone and everyone when the alerts are supposed to be set by individuals themselves and only when they feel they are at risk for ID theft. While I think the whole fraud alert system is bogus and it doesn't really matter if you set one or not, I can't help but snicker that the courts ruled that the practice of a 3rd party company setting them for customers (like Lifelock does) is not legal.

Considering that the first 2 bullet points on Lifelock's "what we do" page is "set fraud alerts" and "set them again after they expire", their list of what you supposedly get for the money you pay is going to look quite anemic indeed.

Senate Passes Credit Reform Bill

Jeremy — Tue, 19 May 2009 18:33:41 +0000

That bill that everyone's been talking about a while just passed with most of the good protections still in tact (go figure). Essentially, the bill is a shinging example of regulation at its best and industry at its worst as it mandates that credit companies stop doing things that are dishonest and one-sided.

Wow. Who knew that without laws to prevent it, companies would stoop to one-sided and dishonest policies for the sake of money… hmmm.

Some of the major points:

Plain-English contracts

Can't raise interest rates on existing balances unless the card holder is 60 days behind, then the rate has to be restored if payments are on time for six months.

45 days advance notice required for rate increases.

Credit card companies can't charge a late fee if they themselves are late processing a payment.

Statements have to get mailed 21 days before the payment is due.

Harder to give credit cards to people under 21.

Rates can be increased within the first year

Promotional rates have to last at least 6 month

UK Police to Purge DNA Info on 800,000 Innocent People

Jeremy — Mon, 04 May 2009 15:01:15 +0000

In a country that's been getting some pretty bad press for the Orwellian tactics they've put in place over the years, this is a nice change. It seems that people still understand that innocent people who've committed no crimes shouldn't be tracked in government databases. Hopefully the US will follow their example.

Companies Beginning to Deep-Six Foreign Call Centers

Jeremy — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 17:57:41 +0000

(in heavy Indian accent): "Thank you for calling Microsoft! My name is Bob, how may I help you!?"

Yeah sure…

Well, if you're as sick of working with someone who's command of the English language is worse than a drunk's, you'll be happy to know that it looks like the foreign call center could be coming to an end.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

The FTC Strikes Back Against “Freecreditreport.com”

Jeremy — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 16:15:32 +0000

In a direct slap across the face to the barely legal Freecreditreport.com, the FTC has released a spoof video of the pirate restaurant ad to highlight that there's only ONE place to get free credit reports and the rest are all pay services in disguise.

The original ad

The FTC version

Beware of the others,

There's always a catch,

They claim to be free,

But there are strings attached,

Brilliant!

It's so very rare that regulatory agencies actually get it right! Send this link to everyone you know and make sure they see it too.

Obama at it Again, Poking Holes in Golden Parachutes

Jeremy — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 17:22:02 +0000

Obama's administration is calling for a cap of $500000 per year maximum for any executive of a company that's receiving federal bail-out money. So, if you suck at your job and had to ask the government for a handout, you can't be making bonuses and millions per year. They must be so sad.

Read about it at the New York Times.

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

RIAA and Music Industry Stop Lawsuits

Jeremy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 14:20:36 +0000

They finally gave up and will work with ISPs to just send notices to people who appear to be sharing files.

Credit Card Companies Eat New Regulation

Jeremy — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:40:38 +0000

Ha!

Regulators have handed down new rules that will curb some of the more abusive practices of the credit card industry.

They also restrict such lender practices as allocating all payments to balances with lower interest rates when a borrower has balances with different rates

Did you know they did that? Think store cards with those various interest rate deals that you have to pay off by a certain time or get slapped with fees. What if the store doesn't apply any of your payment to that PART of your debt? What happens? Yeah… it's not good.

The new rules prohibit:

_Placing unfair time constraints on payments. A payment could not be deemed late unless the borrower is given a reasonable period of time, such as 21 days, to pay.

_Placing too-high fees for exceeding the credit limit solely because of a hold placed on the account.

_Unfairly computing balances in a computing tactic known as double-cycle billing.

_Unfairly adding security deposits and fees for issuing credit or making it available.

_Making deceptive offers of credit.

Good start. Too bad we have to constantly be watching companies to prevent them from ripping us off, but that's capitalism…

Part of the So-Called PATRIOT Act Dumped

Jeremy — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:05:08 +0000

Until the ruling, recipients of so-called "national security letters" were legally forbidden from speaking out. The letters, usually a demand for documents, or a notice that private records had been searched by government authorities, were criticized as a cover-all for FBI abuses.

It's a good start.

Microsoft Malware Scanner Detects Almost 1 Million Fake Virus Scanners

Jeremy — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 21:01:46 +0000

One of the best and most revolting ways to get people to install your nasty software is to tell them that it's actually security software. Thus is the case with many anti-virus products which are actually viruses themselves. The worst part about this scenario is that people won't ever detect the malware because they would need an anti-virus to do that and they think they've already got one.

Fortunately, rather than just push out unwanted software to people through Windows update, Microsoft has added the very useful and surprisingly responsible function of scanning, detecting, and removing known malware from users' systems.

Not only does this help a lot of people, it hurts the scumbags who try to scam them while at the same time increasing the over-all security of the Internet. Nice move.