Credit Cards Mojo » Credit Cards

Tips that can save you from credit card fraud

admin2 — Sat, 29 May 2010 10:50:49 +0000

With the increased use of credit card these days there have been an increase in the no of frauds related to credit cards too. One never comes to know that directly or indirectly we leave a trail wherever we go or whatever we do these days and all this credit goes to the credit card. Whenever you swipe your credit card whether it is on the gas station or wall mart you unintentionally leave a record which makes you recordable, leading to the leak of your personal information too. With this increased use of plastic money there has been increase in the breach of personal security too. People have now become the glass consumers. You can easily be tracked down because of your credit card because of which not much consumer privacy is left these days. A mentally disturbed hacker can breach into these files and can easily misuse your records or bank accounts. This is the real reason of the increased credit card fraud these days. People and there personal belongings have become so transparent these days that it has become very easy for the master minds to play with other people assets. But one should not panic as credit card information always remains at risk. For fraud there have been few steps a person can always take in order to be assured against such threats. Therefore following are few tips for people who are a regular credit card users in order to protect there personal information against such tricksters.

Consumer debt is not your friend

admin2 — Wed, 05 May 2010 12:02:42 +0000

Here’s a simple MBA lesson: borrow money to buy things that go up in value. Borrow money if it improves your productivity and makes you more money. Leverage multiplies the power of your business because with leverage, every dollar you make in profit is multiplied.

That’s very different from the consumer version of this lesson: borrow money to buy things that go down in value. This is wrongheaded, short-term and irrational.

A few decades ago, mass marketers had a problem: American consumers had bought all they could buy. It was hard to grow because dispensable income was spoken for. The only way to grow was to steal market share, and that’s difficult. Enter consumer debt.

How we pay with plastic will change Monday with new credit card rules

lorenzo — Sun, 21 Feb 2010 17:43:44 +0000

New consumer-friendly rules taking effect Monday will mean colossal changes for the 180 million people nationwide who have credit cards — and even millions who don’t.

If you pay with plastic:

No longer will banks arbitrarily be able to change the interest rate on your balance.
No longer can they confuse you by changing the date your monthly payment is due.
No longer can they cut your credit limit, allow you to go over it, then charge a penalty.

And the list goes on.

Read more at: Cleveland Ohio Business News

___________

{Photography by Jason Rogers}

Post from: Credit Cards Mojo

How we pay with plastic will change Monday with new credit card rules

Credit card’s newest trick: 79.9 percent interest

lorenzo — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 21:01:03 +0000

It’s no mistake. This credit card’s interest rate is 79.9 percent.

The bloated APR is how First Premier Bank, a subprime credit card issuer, is skirting new regulations intended to curb abusive practices in the industry. It’s a strategy other subprime card issuers could start adopting to get around the new rules.

Typically, the First Premier card comes with a minimum of $256 in fees in the first year for a credit line of $250. Starting in February, however, a new law will cap such fees at 25 percent of a card’s credit line.

In a recent mailing for a preapproved card, First Premier lowers fees to just that limit — $75 in the first year for a credit line of $300. But the new law doesn’t set a cap on interest rates. Hence the 79.9 APR, up from the previous 9.9 percent.

Latest bank fee is for paying off credit card on time every month

lorenzo — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 12:53:19 +0000

ou floss regularly, yield to oncoming traffic and use your credit cards judiciously, dutifully paying off your balance every month.

You may believe that your exemplary behavior shields you from unexpected credit card fees. Sadly, that is no longer the case.

Starting next year, Bank of America will charge a small number of customers an annual fee, ranging from $29 to $99. The bank has characterized the fee as experimental. But card holders who have never carried a balance or paid late fees could be among those affected.

NEW RULE PROPOSED: Fed wants banks to get customer OK to pay debit card, ATM overdrafts

CALCULATORS: How long will it take to pay off your debt?

Citigroup, meanwhile, has started charging annual fees to card holders who don’t put more than a specific amount on their cards, typically $2,400 a year. Other banks are charging inactivity fees if customers don’t use their credit cards during a specific period of time. You heard that right: You could be spanked for staying out of debt.

Austan Goolsbee – Credit Card Bill Kicks in August 20, 2009

lorenzo — Sat, 22 Aug 2009 01:29:27 +0000

Austan Goolsbee of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers talks about the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility and Disclosure (CARD) Act of 2009 – also known as the Credit Card Bill of Rights – which he worked hard on and which kicks in today. Watch the video to get a taste of the types of credit card headaches you won’t have to deal with anymore.

Post from: Credit Cards Mojo

Austan Goolsbee – Credit Card Bill Kicks in August 20, 2009

DefCon: ‘Credit Hackers’ Win the Credit Card Game … Legally

lorenzo — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:28:29 +0000

Hundreds of “credit hackers” are legally gaming financial institutions by taking advantage of loopholes in the U.S. credit-reporting system, a security researcher says — warning that identity thieves could follow suit.

Christopher Soghoian, a fellow at Harvard’s Berkman Center, took a security expert’s eye to the tricks already in use by a healthy subculture of clever consumers who have managed to garner zero-interest loans and erase some information from their credit profiles. He’s presenting his findings Saturday at the DefCon hacker convention.

“The techniques outlined in this paper are not traditional hacking,” he said in an interview. “All that is being done is taking advantage of the formalized structure of the process.”

In his paper (.pdf), Soghoian highlights several approaches perfected by the credit hackers.

In one ploy, the consumer generates a massive amount of quick credit by carefully timing simultaneous applications from different lenders. This takes advantage of the fact that it takes several days for an inquiry to appear on a consumer’s credit report, leaving issuing banks blind to the parallel applications.

Chase dumping former WaMu card holders

lorenzo — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 17:10:07 +0000

Steven Lobdell points out an image on Chase bank’s Web site that says “Welcome WaMu customers. We’re here for you.”

But, apparently not for him. Lobdell is one of a group of former Washington Mutual credit card customers who were abruptly dumped by Chase in recent days. He holds two Chase cards; both were canceled as of July 15.

“It’s kind of ironic, isn’t it?” he said. “I think Chase is two-faced….We were good enough for Washington Mutual, why not good enough for Chase?” Across the Internet, thousands of former WaMu customers are expressing the same outrage. They say Chase is dumping them as customers, despite their solid payment records.

JP Morgan Chase & Co. acquired Washington Mutual and its troubled portfolio of credit cards in September, at the height of the banking system collapse. While Chase has recently set about to tidy up the ranks of its credit card holders, consumers are bearing the brunt of the cleaning. Two weeks ago, Chase began forcing some customers to raise their minimum monthly payments from 2 to 5 percent. And now, it’s cutting off some customers all together. Thousands of complaints from former Washington Mutual customers can be found on personal finance blogs all across the Web.

Network Solutions breach exposes nearly 600,000

lorenzo — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 23:33:01 +0000

Network Solutions is investigating a breach on its servers that may have led to the theft of credit card data of 573,928 people who made purchases on Web sites hosted by the company.

Networks Solutions notified 4,343 of its nearly 10,000 e-commerce merchant customers on Friday about the breach. It affects 573,928 cardholders whose name, address, and credit card number were exposed between March 12 and June 8, said Susan Wade, a spokeswoman for Network Solutions.

Mysterious code was discovered in early June on servers hosting e-commerce customer sites during routine maintenance, she said. The company called in a third-party forensics team to help with the investigation, and the team was able to crack some of the code on July 13, determining that it could be related to credit card data, she added.

Credit card transactions were intentionally diverted by an unknown source from certain Network Solutions servers to servers outside, Network Solutions wrote in an e-mail to merchant customers.

“So we notified law enforcement and began the process of notifying our customers,” Wade said. “At this point, we don’t have a reason to believe that (the data) has been used, but we are working with the credit card companies,” nonetheless.

Network Solutions also is paying to have credit-monitoring specialist TransUnion help the merchants notify their customers according to data breach notification laws in effect in certain states. Affected consumers will get 12 months of free credit-monitoring services.

It’s unknown how the malicious code got onto the system and where it came from, Wade said. (Read more at: cnet)

___________

{Photography by Andres Rueda}

Colleges Pimping Their Students

Staff Writer — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 02:45:43 +0000

Students go to universities to gain an education, to discover their interests, to network, and to pursue degrees in their chosen fields of study. It should be a time to focus on academics and perhaps to have some fun. However, students are increasingly being targeted by predatory credit card lenders. Moreover, instead of safeguarding our students, universities and their alumni associations have elected to assist these card-issuing banks in exchange for additional revenue.

Some Universities in Bed Credit-Card Companies

Recently, BusinessWeek has uncovered over two dozen secret contracts between card-issuing banks and public universities. The main offense is universities are selling students’ personal information, typically to the highest bidding credit-card companies. This allows for the card-issuing banks to target their marketing campaigns to students. For example, the Ohio State alumni association worked out a seven-year, multimillion dollar deal with MBNA where the association provided the bank with email addresses, home addresses, and phone numbers for their 55,000 undergraduates. Under the contract, the card company was allowed to send at least 5 direct-mail marketing campaigns each year and contact students at least three times by phone each year. (Read more at: Watson Inc)

___________

{Photography by Euthman}

Post from: Credit Cards Mojo

Colleges Pimping Their Students