A few important links:

Mystery Shoppers Find Deceit, Incompetence Among Tax Preparers

Tax Scams Proliferate In April

Tax Time Tips

If you weren't already suspicious of such services, you should be. Companies like this that prety on the weak and defenseless while simultaneously pretending to offer a helping hand are the worst kind of scum.

A city that found that the red light cameras made motorists more cautious resulting in less tickatable offenses turned them off.

(H/T to Schneier's Blog for the link)

Maybe now I can stop referring to myself as "paranoid" and just use the term "Security Professional" instead.

In a Wired.com essay, Bruce Schneier writes how security professionals just think differently. While engineers try to figure out how to make things work, Security Professionals think about how to break them.

For example:

SmartWater is a liquid with a unique identifier linked to a particular owner. "The idea is for me to paint this stuff on my valuables as proof of ownership," I wrote when I first learned about the idea. "I think a better idea would be for me to paint it on your valuables, and then call the police."

And it's simply thinking in this way that would prevent a lot of bad products (like smart water) from ever being developed in the first place.

It's worth repeating that if you get charged for something you didn't ask for, you should challenge it. One point this article makes that I want to stress, sometimes you get signed up for something because you didn't notice and uncheck a box during a transaction with some other company or you had a free trial and it charged you after it was over.

These are dishonest and while they might technically be legal (though they shouldn't be), it's worth challenging them all the same.

Just as AOL was the first to go to unlimited Internet access in the 90's thus changing the way Internet service is charged, Verizon is making that step in the wireless communications field. All I can say is that it's about damn time.

Wireless companies have been robbing people for years with their ridiculous rate plans and minute to minute charges. Now that they're going flat rate, chances are that the prices will come down just like they did for Internet service so many years ago.

I'm putting out the call for all people who get money unexpectedly to take the unpopular route and use it to pay down some debt rather than spend it. The very idea that you are in a position to spend new money while you're in debt at all is why Americans and America is in so much trouble right now.

Embrace the philosophy of a The Total Money Makeover and work towards it. Even if it violates the implanted logic that businesses and the credit industry have forced upon you, work your way out of debt before starting new ones and learn to live debt free.

Now realistically, I will probably spend some of the money on something nice like going out to dinner or a small gift for my wife. Psychologically, many of us will need to spend at least some of the money, but I'm OK with doing that if you still apply the vast majority to outstanding debts.

This is a nice article explaining the five major monthly bills you should be ditching until you are debt-free (on your credit cards and accounts anyway). Included is the whining they know you'll do when you hear their recommendation:

5) Cable. Your Excuse: "But, but, but I need cable! I get a good deal! It's only $100 a month! I use it a lot! It's bundled with my phone and my internet. I'll only save $30 a month if I cancel it."

It's really sad how well the marketing has worked that people believe they really need and use this stuff. I have never had cable TV service. You can rent the best shows in the stores, borrow them from friends or just watch it with a regular antenna (for stuff that comes on the major channels). A lot of new shows are available from the networks directly on the Internet anyway.

The one service they forgot to mention was cellphone. Most people probably forget that it's just a convenience, not a necessity.

If you've been on college campuses these days, you'll often see the booths where you get a free shirt or coffee mug for signing up for a credit card. Well, it's pretty obvious that college kids have no idea how to handle credit and the credit card companies know it.

Rhoades took the job and signed up roughly 30 students for cards. He regrets any trouble he caused other students from his actions.

Still, his actions may have been most damaging to himself. He ended up with $13,000 worth of debt that he is now struggling to repay.

We don't get any training how to deal with and manage credit, but we get plenty of training on how to get and abuse it. So sad…

(H/T to The Consumerist for the link)

Says the only person to vote against the bill: "We are putting this industry out of business".

Well, yeah. You are. Kudos for all those who voted for it!

It's not as good as West Virginia(who banned all payday lending), but Oregon has taken a first important step to contain the evil that is payday lending.

The new laws should significantly ease the triple-digit interest rates charged by payday lenders and their cousins, auto title lenders. Indeed, payday lenders say the new laws will drive them out of the state altogether. Whether that is so remains to be seen, but the laws still allow payday lenders, through a combination of interest rates and "origination fees," to charge effective annual interest rates of well over 150% on one-month loans.

I like this line too:

If that's so, however, the demise of the industry might not be a bad thing at all. Any industry whose best argument is that it can only make money by exploiting the worst of its credit risks, and keeping them in a never-ending cycle of renewals and interest payments, doesn't seem to have much going for it.

Hear, hear.

A former payday scum manager comes clean in a video released by The Center for Responsible Lending.

In this 4 minute video, Rebecca tells how payday loans are rarely two-week loans. Most of her customers came in payday after payday to renew the loan—after the first time, they couldn't afford to pay it off. Rebecca tells how she and her co-workers explained away the 400% interest rate, and how tough their collection tactics were. And she tells how she came to understand that rather than help her customers, these loans were "keeping them poor."

Now if Virginia would just kick out the whole industry like West Virginia did.

This has promise. Apparently, the Credit Card Act of 2007 will ban some of the less consumer friendly practices of credit card companies.

Here are some of the provisions and what I think they mean:

Summary

That's most of the really important stuff anyway. The Consumerist has a link to an online form that will help you tell your congressmembers to support this so be sure to head over there for it.

Just to show I'm not the only one out there that thinks this way:

Click the link above for the rest of his essay, but this part is the part I was nodding with:

First, fix the economic problem. Credit card companies make more money extending easy credit and making it trivial for customers to use their cards than they lose from fraud. They won't improve their security as long as you (and not they) are the one who suffers from identity theft. It's the same for banks and brokerages: As long as you're the one who suffers when your account is hacked, they don't have any incentive to fix the problem. And data brokers like ChoicePoint are worse; they don't suffer if they reveal your information. You don't have a business relationship with them; you can't even switch to a competitor in disgust.

Credit card security works as well as it does because the 1968 Truth in Lending Law limits consumer liability for fraud to $50. If the credit card companies could pass fraud losses on to the consumers, they would be spending far less money to stop those losses. But once Congress forced them to suffer the costs of fraud, they invented all sorts of security measures–real-time transaction verification, expert systems patrolling the transaction database and so on–to prevent fraud. The lesson is clear: Make the party in the best position to mitigate the risk responsible for the risk. What this will do is enable the capitalist innovation engine. Once it's in the financial interest of financial institutions to protect us from identity theft, they will.

In clever application of the law, debt collectors have started to garnish wages from debtors. To stop the garnishment, you have to pay to file the case in district court. How's that for twisted justice?

According to Public Citizen, the DoD has proposed some rules that severly limited the scope of protections as suggested by consumer protection groups. Up to June 11th, you can submit your ideas about the proposal to them directly (information about sending in the comments is on the last page of the proposal).

The Consumerist is running an article explaining how both Quicken and MS Money improperly and possibly illegally force users to upgrade to newer software by purposely cutting off necessary features to older versions.

Ars Technica has an article about the IRS wanting eBay to turn over information on its users' earnings.

This pretty much sums up the issue:

With so many people making part or all of their living through eBay, the government wants its cut. This isn't an issue of any new taxes, but an attempt to collect the income tax that is already required. Because eBay does not report information about its sellers to the government, income reporting is left up to individuals, and the temptation not to list eBay revenue as income can be a strong one—and in some cases, it's not always clear when one has to do so.

And,

eBay isn't the only Internet business that has been feeling the heat in recent months. The government is also considering how to apply tax laws to virtual worlds and goods, and it faces some of the same problems that it does with eBay. While some sellers can make a good living out of hawking such items, few report the profits as taxable income, and Uncle Sam wants its cut.

To me this seems like one of those things you know is wrong, even if you can't articulate exactly why. Second Lifers, and Warcrafters beware.

Consumeraffairs writes that congress may take a look at the credit card industry and how it's been hurting consumers for years. They talk about the practice of assessing fees for anything and everything, but don't forget about those difficult to understand agreements:

"Anyone who has ever tried to read a credit card agreement knows that the terms are simply incomprehensible," Warren said. "The inserts sent along with monthly bills to amend the card agreements are filled with language even a lawyer would have difficulty parsing."

It's as this point that some would say "well, if you don't understand it, then don't sign it". That's great in theory, but how many things in life actually work that way? Do you completely understand all the terms and conditions when you bought your car? Bought your house? Signed up for your last web service?

People have a right to simple to understand terms and conditions for everything they do. Not everyone is a lawyer and even they don't want to read pages and pages of crap just to open an account with a retailer.

Most of all, the expert witnesses emphasized the willingness of banks to lend to just about anyone as a prime reason for the explosion in consumer credit card debt.

This is called "Predatory Lending" and is similar to sending wine-of-the-month brochures to a list of Alcoholics Anonymous attendees.

"To make the assumption of debt more attractive to these households — and to entice them into carrying debt for longer periods — creditors lowered minimum payment balances from around five percent of principal to just over two percent," Manning said.

And this is called "Modern Slavery". Are you getting that I think the credit industry is in serious need of alteration?

Listen folks, have a little patience. If you're going to get a refund, that's great, but don't under any circumstances give part of it away to a tax preparer. It's just throwing away money.