Recently, we flagged an excellent segment from John Oliver on credit reporting. In light of that piece, consider this case, now on appeal to the Seventh Circuit: Toyota Motor Credit Corp. believed Jeffrey Brill owed Toyota an outstanding debt on a car lease. Toyota reported that debt to Trans Union. In fact, Brill’s name on the lease […]
Author Archives: Scott Michelman
When policymakers and journalists talk about college admissions (as they often do this time of year, because it's admission season), it tends to sound like this, Fivethirtyeight recounts: High school seniors spend months visiting colleges; writing essays; wrangling letters of recommendation; and practicing, taking and retaking an alphabet soup of ACTs, SATs and AP exams. […]
Check out this ominous piece from the Wall St. Journal, "How Private Is Your Tax Return?" which discusses the privacy practices of private preparers and tax software regarding filers' private information.
Last week, the California Supreme Court ruled unanimously that state labor law prohibits employers from forcing workers to perform their job on their feet when their tasks could be done sitting down. The ruling, which requires consideration of the totality of circumstances in determining whether seats are required for a particular job, was handed down […]
As you may have heard, on March 30, a D.C. district court threw out a designation by the federal Financial Stability Oversight Council (FSOC) that MetLife needs to comply with special government safeguards under Dodd-Frank for entities whose "material financial distress" could "pose a threat to the financial stability of the United States." (Here's coverage […]
We wrote yesterday about Goldman's $5 billion settlement with the government in connection with the financial crisis. The New York Times reports that fine print in the deal might get Goldman off the hook for up to 20% of that amount, through the use of various credits. Read the details here. (HT: alert reader Matthew […]
Companies pretend to be from the IRS and represent that you're in big, big trouble. (I've gotten a couple of these myself this month.) Ars Technica has the details.
This week's settlement between the financial giant and the government is the latest in a string of billion-dollar settlements addressing Wall Street misconduct in the lead-up to the financial crisis of 2008. (The others were with JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, Citibank, and Morgan Stanley, and the values ranged from approximately $3 billion to $16 billion.) […]
A company called Nest makes an electronic hub (the Revolv hub) that enables consumers to control the lights in their home remotely. Customers buying the product were promised "free lifetime service subscription." But next month, the Revolv hub will become inoperable, thanks to Nest itself. Why? Because the company prefers to put its resources toward a newer product […]
Read this story from Fusion about the Kansas farm that had the misfortune to be located near the geographic center of the country and became the "default" location for unlocatable IP addresses in the United States. What did that mean in practice? People who got scammed on the internet tended to think this farm was […]