Proto-Hypertext Memory Expander
Data breaches keep happening, they keep getting worse, and yet companies keep collecting our data in ever-more-invasive ways, subjecting it to ever-longer retention, and systematically underinvesting in security.
Continue reading “Companies keep losing your data because it doesn’t cost them anything”
Binding arbitration is corporate America’s favorite dirty trick: to use a product, you are forced to give up your right to sue if the company hurts you, cheats you, or even kills you.
Continue reading “The new Pixel phone has a bizarre, obscure “opt out” arbitration waiver”
Centurylink is a giant, scammy telco notorious for larding its customers’ bills with fraudulent charges, and instructing its customer service reps to do everything possible not to waive those charges; they also open fake accounts in their customers’ names, a la Wells Fargo, and then rack up charges against them.
Continue reading “Scammy phone company Centurylink: “No one can sue us because we don’t have any customers””
A class action suit by some of the 3,500,000+ Wells Fargo customers defrauded in the company’s fake account scam was foundering in Utah, thanks to the company’s insistence that its binding arbitration clauses also applied to the accounts it fraudulently opened (that is, by agreeing not to sue the company for defrauding you over the accounts you opened, you were also agreeing not to sue them if it opened a bunch more accounts and forged your signature on the papers).
Continue reading “Wells Fargo’s CEO told Congress that he wouldn’t enforce binding arbitration, so Wells is getting sued in Utah”
The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (previously) is practically the only US regulator we can be proud of — founded by Elizabeth Warren before she ran for the Senate, the CFRB is a consumer protection agency that has been at the forefront of reining in criminal activities like Wells Fargo’s nationwide frauds and Equifax’s dox attack on the USA, as well as being the best defense Americans have against predatory loan-sharks masquerading as “payday lenders,” abusive debt-collectors, racial discrimination in lending, and the student loan racket.
Katie Van Fleet has suffered 15 identity thefts since the Equifax breach and she believes the criminals who’ve targeted her are using information from the breach to open credit cards in her name; she’s started a class-action suit against Equifax.
Continue reading “Woman blames 15 identity thefts on Equifax breach”
Senators Bob Corker, Jeff Flake and John McCain talk a big game about not letting the GOP be the handmaiden of trumpist corruption, but when the chips were down last night, they voted with their party and a tie-breaking vote from Vice President Handmaid’s Tale to pass legislation that lets financial institutions take away your right to sue them when they defraud you.
One of the major triumphs of Elizabeth Warren’s Consumer Financial Protection Bureau was a rule that banned the finance industry from using binding arbitration clauses to prevent defrauded customers from joining in class action suits to sue crooked banks.
Continue reading “Corporations form coalition to ask a court to ban coalitions (of people the corporations have screwed over)”
During the five weeks after hackers stole 143 million Americans’ data from Equifax, and while its execs were selling off their stock by the millions, the company sprang into action, producing an insecure site for checking whether your own data was breached that produces the same output no matter what name and SSN you input.
Continue reading “How to opt out of Equifax’s rights-stripping arbitration clause”
Before Equifax doxed 143 million Americans (but after it had suffered repeated smaller breaches that should have alerted the company to deficiencies in its security), it directed its lobbying body, the Consumer Data Industry Association, to pressure the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau to exempt credit-reporting bureaux from a soon-to-begin rule banning binding arbitration clauses in user agreements.
Continue reading “Equifax lobbied to take away breach victims’ right to sue”
