Tag archive: credit

Albert Gonzales of Miami might never have thought it, but he’s making history. The 38-year-old, along with two unnamed Russians, has been charged with the largest identity theft in history – stealing data from 130 million credit and debit cards. The Department of Justice alleges that Gonzales used an SQL injection attack to breach firewalls and steal the information. His targets included 7-Eleven, Hannaford Brothers, and card… Read More

It’s no secret that Motorola has financial problems. Standard & Poor’s has given it a junk credit rating, and it was having financial troubles prior to the credit crunch biting hard. But it’s taking steps to ride out the recession. Co-chieif executives Greg Brown and Sanjay Jha have both agreed to forgo their 2008 cash bonuses and will take a 25% salary cut, according to CNET. Beginning in 2009, the… Read More

On June 5 Kentucky’s Attorney General, Jack Conway, announced the introduction of a cyber crime unit in the state, and it began operations only last week, with a focus on identity theft. Now it certainly has a crime to investigate, as Conway himself has been a victim of ID theft. He discovered the problem when his credit card was refused by iTunes, and he says thieves used his stolen credit card to spend thousands of dollars on… Read More

As Steve Jobs announced last week after dropping the price of the 8 GB iPhone by $200, Apple has unveiled details of how early iPhone buyers can receive $100 in Apple Store credit. The credits are by way of apology for dropping the iPhone price so much—and so quickly—after the product went on sale in late June. Although early adopters of any new technology always pay a premium, Apple responded to customer complaints and announced… Read More

Well, technically it's not Citigroup's fault. According to the company, UPS lost the backup tapes which held information for 1.9 million Citigroup customers while shipping them to a credit Bureau in Texas. The tapes also contain information for about 50,000 closed customer accounts. Citibank claims customer accounts are safe because they require direct approval by the customer, but what about your credit information, social security… Read More

Today's high-tech games increasingly appeal to an older set. And soon those customers will be able to use credit or debit cards as a payment option. These so-called “micropayments” are gaining currency on the Internet as a way to perform small-ticket transactions such as downloading a song or accessing other online content. One early customer is Incredible Technologies Inc., a manufacturer of coin-operated video games… Read More

Houston, Texas, federal court Judge Vanessa Gilmore sentenced Houston resident Zachary Hill to 46 months in jail for his role in duping consumers into turning over 473 credit card numbers. The Justice Department said the sentence is “one of, if not the longest” ever handed down against an e-mail scammer, said spokesman Michael Kulstad. Hill, 20, used a “phishing” scheme to make his e-mail look like it came from… Read More

The security breach was confirmed Monday by Equifax Canada Inc., a major national consumer-credit reporting agency. By gaining access to the files, criminals have obtained social-insurance numbers, bank- account numbers, credit histories, home addresses, job descriptions, the names of spouses

PayPal, which claims 40 million customers worldwide, had specifically stated that it provided the same rights and protections of a traditional credit card transaction, said Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. But consumers were often denied those rights, he said. For example, consumers who didn't receive merchandise purchased through PayPal were often denied reimbursement from either PayPal or American Express or Discover credit cards. A… Read More