Items tagged with EFT
Rumors surrounding Verizon Wireless' Early Termination Fees (EFTs) have been flying around in recent days. Over the weekend, Verizon officially upped the fee for cancelling your contract early from $175 to $350. Under the new fee schedule, Verizon gives you a bit of a break by reducing the fee by a mere $10 per month for the life of the contract. Of course, that still leaves you with a $120 EFT 23 months into a 24-month deal. The new fee applies to "advanced devices." Verizon provides a full list of these devices, but safe to say, most smartphones are on there. You should also know that other phones not considered smartphones are on the list as well, such as the Versa and Glyde. EFTs for Verizon...
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"The devil made me do it" used to be the ready-made excuse you could trot out when you got caught being naughty. Society's views on personal responsibility have changed quite a bit since the devil was listed on everybody's rap sheet as an accomplice. The modern version is playing "Grand Theft Auto made me do it."Last month, the trio – all aged between 15 and 16, and as such may not be named – allegedly firebombed three cars in North Fulton County, Georgia with homemade petrol bombs. Each weapon was made from a bottle filled with a lighter fluid, with a rag stuffed into the spout as a fuse.According to a report by local news service WSBTV, the trio were arrested by local police. When they were...
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LifeLock, which is an ID theft protection service, but which has both been written about earlier in unflattering terms as well as sued by Experian, has been sued again, this time by a competitor. On Wednesday NAMESAFE sued LifeLock over search ads that it said were purchased by LifeLock, which used the NAMESAFE trademark yet directed users to LifeLock's web site. According to a press release issued by NameSafe on Friday, "We have discovered that LifeLock has been sponsoring advertisements on most major search engines including (among others) Google, Yahoo, Lycos, MSN, Dogpile, and AOL, that deceptively led consumers to Lifelock.com. Specifically, when you searched 'Namesafe.com' in any major...
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If Christians disappear off the face of the Earth because of "The Rapture," there's a site that has recently launched that will let you say "I told you so" via email to your "left behind" friends and relatives.For just $40 a year, believers can arrange for up to 62 people to get a final message exactly six days after the Rapture, that day when -- according to Christian end times dogma -- Christians will be swept up to heaven, while doubters are left behind to suffer seven years of Tribulation under a global government headed by the Antichrist."You've Been Left Behind gives you one last opportunity to reach your lost family and friends for Christ," reads the website, which is purportedly run "by...
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Toshiba backed the HD DVD format against Sony's rival Blu-ray high-definition disc method, and Toshiba lost. One wonders whether Sony might ask themselves from time to time if it might have been better to have lost. More or less, no one wants a Blu-ray player. Sales of Blu-ray players, excluding PlayStation 3 game consoles, dropped 40 percent from January to February in the U.S., according to NPD. Sales grew only 2 percent from February to March. The firm didn't release numbers of players sold."When we surveyed consumers late last year, an overwhelming number of them said they weren't investing in a new next-generation player because their old DVD player worked well and next-generation players...
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Om Malik at Gigaom has made an interesting analysis of the effects of widespread broadband penetration into the US market. As the demand for broadband tapers off because the pool of persons that don't yet have it slowly dries up, there's really only one thing the providers have left to sell: faster speeds.It should come as no surprise that the carriers have let go of incremental speed upgrades and have gone ahead and doubled or tripled the speeds of their offerings. Why? Because bumping speed to 2 Mbps from 1 Mbps doesn’t really feel like a big boost. A 6X speed bump, on the other hand, makes the Internet much faster — and worth paying for. Suddenly, Hulu and YouTube become much more fun to watch....
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It never ceases to amaze us when we hear stories of large organizations losing computers containing sensitive data of thousands of people. In the case of the VA laptop theft, it looks like a class-action law suit is potentially in the works, and will seek to compensate users for the added stress of worrying about their credit and embarrassment. In other words it isn't exactly the kind of additional burden that somebody suffering from post traumatic stress disorder needs to be dealing with.Considering the 26.5 million or so records that went missing, it certainly had an impact on a lot of former service members. For those who missed the initial story, here is a quick recap:“A...
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O2 has finally be confirmed as the U.K. carrier for Apple's iPhone, but they paid dearly for the privilege. The UK's largest mobile operator came from behind at the last minute to seal an agreement with Steve Jobs, Apple's chief executive, to market the iPhone in the UK, but one other operator described the deal as "madly money-losing". O2 is understood to have agreed a margin on the retail price - to be confirmed tomorrow - but will return to Apple as much as 40% of any revenues it makes from customers' use of the device. Unlike other phones, the carriers are actually being raked over the coals in their rush to grab the rights to this device,...
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This could also be known as ID theft due to software misconfiguration. This ID thief was using LimeWire to steal sensitive information from users' computers. But the only way this could happen is if the user misconfigured the software to include directories with sensitive info in them. The scheme undertaken by 35-year-old Gregory Kopiloff worked something like this, according to the U.S. Department of Justice: He'd use identity information gleaned from those documents to open credit accounts over the Internet, buy goods over the Internet, ship them to various mailboxes in the Puget Sound area and resell the merchandise for about half its retail price. Investigators said his scheme had...
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When will people learn? If you have a laptop with sensitive data on it, you should encrypt it. So many laptops or hard drives have been lost or stolen. And here we go again. A laptop containing unencrypted personal data on current and former employees of the AT&T Corp. was stolen recently from the car of an employee of a professional services firm doing work for the company. That theft prompted the company to notify an unspecified number of individuals about the potential compromise of their Social Security numbers, names and other personal details. As is typical in these incidents, employees whose data may be compromised will be offered a year of free credit monitoring. Also typically,...
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We Just got word from Dell that the company is planning to offer a free subscription to a theft protection service to XPS owners... Sticky-fingered PC pilferers take note: Dell is the first notebook supplier to offer a complimentary one year subscription to theft protection service on select notebook computers. Notebook computers are venturing farther from home and office, and are facing a greater risk for theft. Whether it's a sleek and light ultraportable that's easy to carry everywhere or a power-house gaming notebook that makes the rounds at LAN parties, mobile users want to use their notebooks on the go. Now Dell customers in the U.S. can have more peace of mind, because all XPS notebook...
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It seemed that almost every day last year we heard of yet another new attack of security vulnerability in an operating system or popular application. Much of this news came by way of white hat hackers who found and explained how to prevent attacks. And eWeek explain who they think are the five most noteworthy hackers of last year in terms of discoveries and disclosures. "In the security year that was 2006, zero-day attacks and exploits dominated the headlines. However, the year will be best remembered for the work of members of the hacking - er, security research - community who discovered and disclosed serious vulnerabilities in the technologies we take for granted, forced software...
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