The good news: the U.S. economy is relatively strong again, with low unemployment and people raring to get out there and spend, spend, spend. The other good news: what goes up just keeps going up!
On Thursday, freelance writer Lisa McIntire's mother received a credit card offer from Bank of America sort of addressed to her daughter. There was one tiny difference, though, in the name; instead of Lisa McIntire, the letter was addressed to a "Lisa Is a Slut McIntire."
You heard of this fella, Bernie Madoff? Runs some sort of money management place in Midtown. Great guy to work for. The best. If you're job-hunting, that is absolutely the man you wanna work for.
Tired of receiving unsolicited credit card offers from the bank, one man finally gave in and signed up — but not before drawing up his own contract and making the bank sign it.
It was revealed Friday that hackers had hit the credit card payment processor Global Payments, and stolen potentially millions of Mastercard and Visa customer details in January and February. But on Sunday, Global Payments said in a press release that actually "less than 1,500,000 card numbers may have been exported." Heh, exported—like a fine, fraudulent wine.
You know what should be one of the hardest things in the world to do? Break into a bank and make off with tens of thousands of bank accounts. But hackers waltzed into Citigroup's website and did just that without breaking a sweat.
Conservative prankster James O'Keefe, the artless cad behind heavily edited video "stings" on NPR, ACORN, and other enemies of the state, has been paying for all of his work on his and his buddies' credit cards. Apparently it costs a lot of money to carry a camera and act like a jackass — $50,000, as it happens! So won't you be a peach and give him $50,000, or perhaps even $1 million? This is James O'Keefe's plea in an email to supporters.
Cybercriminals have gotten so sophisticated recently that their operations are almost indistinguishable from the legit businesses they rip off. Here's a "menu" of services offered by cybercriminals, including working physical credit cards and fake storefronts to scam unsuspecting Internet users.
The Way We Live Now: paying later. Down the road our situation will more favorably facilitate the repayment of loans taken on credit that we cannot currently afford. We have faith! Faith is American! We won't be broke—later!
