Category Archives: Deceptive Acts and Practices

What to Know About the Facebook Data Leak – The Wall Street Journal.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/was-my-facebook-data-leaked-what-you-need-to-know-11617751579 More identity theft, more ways for thieves to access credit in another consumer’s name. Consumers can still get free weekly credit reports from https://www.annualcreditreport.com/index.action for free credit reports.

Liberty Vittert: Collecting your data is the biggest, baddest, business around. Where’s our government?

Data Collection Infograph

The Fair Credit Reporting Act was ahead of its time in terms of assuring consumer rights re: the accuracy of the data that is involuntary reported about consumers.  One of the next frontiers is establishing consumers’ rights to control that data.   Listen to Microsoft’s president discuss . . . Your rights are being violated and […]

Where You Went to College May Matter on Your Loan Application

Loan Application Form

Despite the growing embrace of such measures, some consumer advocates say the trend will hurt lower-income or minority borrowers. “It entrenches and perpetuates inequality in such an obvious and stark way,” says Chi Chi Wu, an attorney for the National Consumer Law Center, who adds that the existing system already makes it harder for people […]

Clarence Thomas Just Voted With the Liberals in a Big Consumer Rights Case. Why?

Home Depot Logo

The story of Home Depot is a tale of greed, grift, and civil procedure. It centers on a scheme that involved three companies: Home Depot, Citibank, and Carolina Water Systems Inc. Here’s how it allegedly worked. Representatives from Home Depot or CWS called homeowners and claimed that “contaminants” were found in nearby tap water. They urged homeowners […]

Hundreds of millions of Facebook records exposed on Amazon cloud servers

Facebook on a mobile phone

A vast collection of data on Facebook users was exposed to the public until recently on Amazon’s cloud computing servers, researchers have found. UpGuard, a cybersecurity firm, said Wednesday that there were more than 540 million records including comments, likes, reactions and account names exposed to the public. The number of users whose data was included is […]

Wells Fargo customers who had fake accounts created in their names are a step closer to some payback.

Wells Fargo Business Building

A federal judge granted preliminary approval over the weekend for Wells Fargo’s $142 million national class action settlement. The court ruled that the settlement, which covers fake accounts back to 2002, “fair, reasonable and adequate.”  Victims may still have to wait before they get paid. The bank and lawyers for the plaintiffs plan to reach out to […]

AT&T faces thousands of complaints about overcharging for services

A CBS News investigation has uncovered over 4,000 complaints against AT&T and DirecTV related to deals, promotions and overcharging in the past two years. Customers who try to opt out of their contracts are forced to pay early termination fees and are not allowed to file lawsuits.  http://www.cbsnews.com/videos/at-t-faces-thousands-of-complaints-about-overcharging-for-services/