Free Republic

Amazon has introduced a new program that makes it a little more easier to buy gaming PCs and PC components. While the price is technically the same, the burden is spread out across several months at no penalty to the buyer. Amazon now has a monthly payment system for big ticket items that shifts payments across five months instead of all at once. For instance, there's now the option to purchase a $2,000 PC with five monthly payments of $400 rather than forking over two grand at the time of sale. The applicable categories for this new program are: Laptops,...

A mistake on your credit report can cost you literally thousands of dollars, especially in this economy. So what can you expect from a big credit bureau if you ask them to investigate and correct the error? The answer, for many consumers: About 50 cents worth of effort, conducted by offshore workers at third-party firms. That’s just one of the findings from SmartMoney’s investigation into why credit-report errors continue to pop up so frequently—and why consumers often have so much trouble getting them fixed. To follow what one consumer advocate calls an “electronic hot potato,” SmartMoney pieced together a depiction...

(from Laptop Security blog)Even the most carefully laid plans can go awry. Federal prosecutors charged a Southern Californian woman this week with aggravated identity theft after she used a genealogy website to locate people who had recently died and to take over their credit cards. Tracy June Kirkland was using Rootsweb.com to find the names, Social Security numbers and birth dates of people who had died. She would then call credit card companies randomly to see if "she" had an account, if "she" did, she would request a mailing address change and, in some cases, would add her own name...

Credit bureau Experian is suing the identity theft prevention firm LifeLock, accusing it of deception and fraud in its familiar advertising campaign, which includes a spot in which CEO Todd Davis reveals his Social Security number and then brags about the effectiveness of the company’s protections. In the lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court on Feb. 13, Experian contends that LifeLock's advertising is misleading and that the firm is breaking federal law in the way it goes about protecting consumers. Lifelock CEO Davis, in an interview with msnbc.com on Wednesday, called the lawsuit baseless and said that Experian is simply...

The decision comes amid a bevy of media stories scrutinizing his past, including three bankruptcies, a short stint in jail and 1996 Federal Trade Commission charges of false advertising in a prior business. Employees of the identity theft-prevention firm were notified Monday of Maynard's resignation. LifeLock officials said Maynard wanted to spend more time with his family and the constant barrage of media inquiries "had become a major addition to his already heavy work load, as well as a distraction for the company."

There has to be some law firm out there that wants to make billions of dollars in a class action lawsuit concerning identity theft? In 2002 the Internal Revenue Service reported there where approximately 9 million tax files with mismatched names and Social Security Numbers. The IRS and Social Security Administration know that about 80 percent of the mismatches are the result of illegal immigrants using stolen identities. Credit bureaus, Banking corporations, and employers assist illegal immigrants by failing to follow the law. Credit bureaus that become aware of Social Security Numbers with multiple ID’s even set up sub-files to...