There is a great article in Business Week this week that talks about a scam that bank and credit card companies are pulling on consumers.  It has resulted in the banks winning arbitration cases against consumers to the tune of a 99.998% clip.  That is right, 99.998%.  It has turned arbitration, where an impartial judge makes determination into the biggest home field advantage this side of the NBA play offs.

It seems many of the credit card agreements that govern your use of credit cards call for arbitration to settle any disputes between you and the credit card company.  Well the credit card company gets to pick the arbitration company. Many pick the National Arbitration Forum, which markets itself to the credit card companies as a form of collection agency.  The whole system is basically stacked against the consumer, which results in the credit card companies getting their way.  Business Week does a great job of digging in here and finding out all of the dirty secrets of this scam.  I highly recommend you read the article for all of the details.

I don't think too many people disagree that over the last years there has been a big swing in the pendulum favoring business's over the consumer. Many of the laws and rules that were put in place to protect consumers over the years have either been thrown out or ignored.  Our bankruptcy laws have been totally rewritten to the disadvantage of the consumer.  Lazes-fare attitudes toward regulating business has seen oil companies raking in billions of dollars a quarter while we pay 4 dollars a gallon.  Health insurance companies raising rates higher than inflation while hospitals have to close for not making enough money.  A mortgage industry that without oversight has written loans that has our finance system to the brink of disaster. A return of inflation and recession at the same time.

Not too advertise my own political views, but do I think it is time for a change?  Your damn right I do!  I hope that the press shining the light on some of these injustices will make it easier for a new era in Washington to make right (no pun intended) some of the wrongs in our system.

There is a great article in Business Week this week that talks about a scam that bank and credit card companies are pulling on consumers.  It has resulted in the banks winning arbitration cases against consumers to the tune of a 99.998% clip.  That is right, 99.998%.  It has turned arbitration, where an impartial judge makes determination into the biggest home field advantage this side of the NBA play offs.

It seems many of the credit card agreements that govern your use of credit cards call for arbitration to settle any disputes between you and the credit card company.  Well the credit card company gets to pick the arbitration company. Many pick the National Arbitration Forum, which markets itself to the credit card companies as a form of collection agency.  The whole system is basically stacked against the consumer, which results in the credit card companies getting their way.  Business Week does a great job of digging in here and finding out all of the dirty secrets of this scam.  I highly recommend you read the article for all of the details.

I don't think too many people disagree that over the last years there has been a big swing in the pendulum favoring business's over the consumer. Many of the laws and rules that were put in place to protect consumers over the years have either been thrown out or ignored.  Our bankruptcy laws have been totally rewritten to the disadvantage of the consumer.  Lazes-fare attitudes toward regulating business has seen oil companies raking in billions of dollars a quarter while we pay 4 dollars a gallon.  Health insurance companies raising rates higher than inflation while hospitals have to close for not making enough money.  A mortgage industry that without oversight has written loans that has our finance system to the brink of disaster. A return of inflation and recession at the same time.

Not too advertise my own political views, but do I think it is time for a change?  Your damn right I do!  I hope that the press shining the light on some of these injustices will make it easier for a new era in Washington to make right (no pun intended) some of the wrongs in our system.

I was reading Ellen Messmer's report today about the security incident over at Lending Tree. Yeah, I know another information breach by insiders case, BFD.  But I think there is something different about this one.  From what I am reading this is more a case of corporate espionage than the usual hackers for fraud and financial gain type of deal.  For a long time now we have been hearing from people like Bruce Schneier in this article talk about the front in security moving from dealing with script kiddies working for kicks to organized cybercriminal gangs that are in it for financial gain. Mostly the gain is about identity theft and gaining access to funds fraudulently.

In the Lending Tree case though there was not evidently a motive to use the ill begotten information for identity theft or fraud.  Rather they represented Glengary, Glen Ross leads.  That is the names, contacts and qualifications of people looking for mortgages.  A mortgage company would consider these leads more valuable than gold, more valuable even that gasoline!  So to my mind this is more a case of corporate espionage where a company that is competitive to Lending Tree infiltrated their networks through people, rather than technology to gain access to their corporate crown jewels. 

This sort of stealing your competitors information has been going on for decades, well before computers and cybercrime were around.  However, this is a great example of some things not going out of style.  Obtaining your competitors information is a great motive, computers are just the container where the information is kept.  Sort of like cracking a safe.  It is always easier getting into a safe if you are given the combination, than if you have to crack it yourself. 

Yet another front in the cybercrime war that security folks need to be on guard for!

I was reading Ellen Messmer's report today about the security incident over at Lending Tree. Yeah, I know another information breach by insiders case, BFD.  But I think there is something different about this one.  From what I am reading this is more a case of corporate espionage than the usual hackers for fraud and financial gain type of deal.  For a long time now we have been hearing from people like Bruce Schneier in this article talk about the front in security moving from dealing with script kiddies working for kicks to organized cybercriminal gangs that are in it for financial gain. Mostly the gain is about identity theft and gaining access to funds fraudulently.

In the Lending Tree case though there was not evidently a motive to use the ill begotten information for identity theft or fraud.  Rather they represented Glengary, Glen Ross leads.  That is the names, contacts and qualifications of people looking for mortgages.  A mortgage company would consider these leads more valuable than gold, more valuable even that gasoline!  So to my mind this is more a case of corporate espionage where a company that is competitive to Lending Tree infiltrated their networks through people, rather than technology to gain access to their corporate crown jewels. 

This sort of stealing your competitors information has been going on for decades, well before computers and cybercrime were around.  However, this is a great example of some things not going out of style.  Obtaining your competitors information is a great motive, computers are just the container where the information is kept.  Sort of like cracking a safe.  It is always easier getting into a safe if you are given the combination, than if you have to crack it yourself. 

Yet another front in the cybercrime war that security folks need to be on guard for!