Congress needs to take a hard look at credit practices

Right before Christmas, the Consumers Union spearheaded a campaign calling for credit card reforms. It now appears as if some of the issues they surfaced are being looked into by the Senate Committee on Banking, Housing and Urban Affairs.

And Consumers Union isn't alone - a lot of other consumer groups are pretty much calling for the same kind of corrective action for the industry, here.

But it's not only consumer groups that are up in arms. Merchants seem to be, also.

The Merchants Payment Coalition is also applauding this development and is calling for a "deeper look" into interchange fees, which they say cost consumers $30 billion a year. Notably, they state that this amount represents twice the amount the industry charges for late fees, which have also been under attack by the consumer groups mentioned above.

The describe these fees as:

Americans pay a hidden fee on virtually every transaction they make, whether they use a credit card or not, costing consumers tens of billions of dollars a year. This fee, called interchange, is a percentage of each transaction that Visa and MasterCard banks collect from merchants every time a consumer uses a credit or debit card to pay for a purchase. The fee varies with type of card, size of merchant and other factors, but averages close to 2 percent for credit card and signature debit transactions. These hidden fees drive up the cost of goods and services for all consumers whether they pay with plastic, cash or check.

Merchants Payment Coalition page about this, here.

The National Retail Federation is also very "passionate" about interchange fees.

In July, they issued a press release, stating:

The National Retail Federation welcomed a hearing on soaring credit card interchanges rates scheduled to be held today by the Senate Judiciary Committee. The hearing is expected to focus on the $26.3 billion in credit card interchange fees collected each year, the impact of the fees on American retailers and consumers and whether the price-fixing practices involved in setting interchange fees violate federal antitrust laws.

National Retail Federation press release, here.

Since this release was issued in July stating that interchange fees brought in 26.3 billion, I guess the current estimates of $30 billion means that these fees were more profitable than anticipated for the credit card issuers?

We seem to be living in a world, where the amount of debt carried by consumers is at an all time high and fraud is running rampant. Critics claim that credit is issued too easily and not very responsibly.

Please note, this doesn't only apply to the credit card industry, we are (also) beginning to see the impact in the mortgage industry - where defaults are at a record high. Probably the result of too many people "flipping properties," and what appears to have been a record amount of "mortgage fraud."

We are also seeing a growing amount - especially with all the data breaches - of payment card (credit/debit) card fraud.

It makes one wonder how much longer it will be before we hit "bottom," and an economic disaster is the result. If this happens - who will pay the cost?

Our leaders need to examine this problem carefully - and take appropriate action to fix it. Passing the costs of it between businesses (and ultimately consumers) will only work for so long.

TJX's stolen data is being used - 200,000 accounts identified, so far

My guess is that the recent TJX data breach will prove to be the largest on record. Several sources are already reporting data from this breach is being used to commit fraud.

The Boston Globe is reporting:

The Massachusetts Bankers Association said yesterday that several banks reported fraud linked to debit and credit card numbers pilfered from TJX's computer system for unauthorized purchases made in Florida, Georgia, and Louisiana in the United States, and Hong Kong and Sweden overseas.

Middlesex Savings Bank is reissuing at least 20,000 Visa debit cards and had about a dozen suspected cases of fraudulent activity as far away as California and Japan, bank officials said. The bank said it costs at least $5 to replace a card, and many of the fraudulent charges were occurring at gas stations, discounters, grocery stores, and Internet merchants.

Boston Globe story, here.

This is likely the "tip of the iceberg" because a majority of the affected institutions haven't reported in yet.

Meanwhile up North, thousands of Canadian citizens have been affected. CTV is reporting:

Fraudulent activity has been confirmed on the accounts of thousands of Canadian credit-card holders who had their information stolen during a security breach at the U.S. parent company of Winners and HomeSense.

CTV story, here.

My advice is that if you have shopped at a TJX company recently - watch your statements, carefully.

Especially, if you have a debit-card. Debit cards aren't protected as well as credit cards. Tom Fragala (Truston Identity Theft Services) has a great post on his blog about this, here.

Tom developed this service from a victim's standpoint and has helped many victims, both personally and with his well-known commentary on the subject.

If you are a victim - I can personally recommend his services - which don't expose your personal information (again), also.

Here is my previous post on the TJX data breach:

TJX named as point-of-compromise in International …

Symantec warns of newsletters and "legitimate" advertising being hijacked!

Viagra with your Fantasy Football?

Spam is getting worse than ever, and a lot of spam filters don't seem to be stopping it. Even worse, legitimate mail is being designated as "spam" and placed in "bulk folders."

I find myself having to review my "bulk folder," daily.

Symantec is reporting a new "sneaky" spam tactic being seen out there. Legitimate newsletters and advertising from well known organizations, such as Walmart and ESPN are having ads for Viagra (example) inserted into their publications and sent out as if they are affiliated with the product.

In essence, the spammers are "hijacking" legitimate publications.

As reported in the Symantec Security Response blog by Kelly Conley:

We've noticed a tricky new spam tactic occurring recently and thought we'd share it with you. It’s always exciting when a new spamming technique comes along and it’s even more exciting when our filtering capabilities are successful against it. Most users running our product will not have seen this. Spam filtering can still protect you from this “new spam technique,” but, even if you have seen it or even opened it, you probably gave it a one-two glance and wondered “Eh? This isn't what I thought it was.”

The headers are legit – coming from a newsletter or ad that you have signed up for. You should be receiving this mail, right? Nope, it's a spam email. Look closer. There at the top of the page. It's an ad for something entirely different than what you thought was going to be in that email.

Kelly's full post, here.

Symantec's researchers have noted these "faux" (fake) images inserted on legitimate pages, or when the page is accessed - a "pop in" spam message appears moments later. They've also noted that the spammers seem to be able to control how many messages are sent out. No more than one a day is sent to any particular e-mail address -- and a different legitimate newsletter, or retailer is used each time.

According to the researchers, the motivation behind this is to (probably) make the reader more likely to read the message (believe it's credible). This method is possibly also used to in an attempt to trick a lot of the spam filters out there.

The good news is that - according to Kelly - Symantec's filters appear to be catching almost all of this.

A lot of us laugh at spammers and their "seemingly ridiculous" advertising, but the sad truth is, they wouldn't be sending it out if unless some people were falling for it. And that person might be one of your grandparents, or "younger relatives."

Even worse, the products they are "hawking" are questionable and in some instances, dangerous. In addition to this, spam is also used as a means to hook "victims" into all the various Internet scams that I frequently write about.

Symantec covers this issue "online fraud" (and others) on their blog, here.

Screenshot (below) of Kohl's ad being hijacked to sell drugs

Small Businesses are often the victims of financial misdeeds

Large businesses often employ dedicated experts to protect their assets. Unfortunately, smaller business can't afford these resources, and therefore are more vulnerable to fraud losses.

And it's easier for these larger businesses to write-off their fraud losses. The sad truth is that - if not managed properly - fraud losses can put a smaller business "out of business."

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners noted in the 2006 report to the nation that small businesses seem to suffer "disproportionate fraud losses," when compared to larger organizations.

I did a previous post, which links to the report, here.

I read an interesting article by Lena West (CEO of xynoMedia Technology) that offers some practical advice to small businesses.

Ms. West writes:

It is officially open-season on small businesses. Hackers, phishers, spammers and fraudsters often use small businesses as target practice before going after the big guys, though it's news that often doesn't make it in the headlines. No one really knows the true impact of online security breaches, as only 20 percent of businesses reported computer intrusions to legal authorities, according to the FBI and Computer Security Institute. And every online merchant knows the threat of bogus credit card purchases is one that never goes away.

Full story from e-commerceguide.com, here.

The story points on how to deal with and protect yourself from everything from data-breaches to credit/debit card chargebacks.

Since in my opinion (awareness is the best and most effective fraud tool) - this article is great information for anyone, who owns a smaller business.