Consumers to See Notices on Check Changes
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In the next few weeks, consumers will start receiving notices from banks and other financial institutions about changes to their checking accounts.
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Sears Holdings has come under fire from privacy advocates for making the purchase history of its customers publicly available on its Managemyhome.com Web site.Manage My Home is a community portal where Sears shoppers can download product manuals, find product tips, and get home renovation ideas.The Web site has a feature called &quot;Find your products&quot; that lets users look up past purchases. Ostensibly, this is designed to help customers keep track of items they&#39;ve bought from the retailer, but the site also lets them look up the purchase histories of other people.&quot;Sears offers no security whatsoever to prevent a Manage My Home user from retrieving another person&#39;s purchase history by entering that person&#39;s name, phone number, and address,&quot; wrote Ben Edelman, an assistant professor with Harvard Business School, in a blog posting.This is a violation of Sears&#39; own online privacy policy, which does not allow the company to share users&#39; purchase history with the general public, Edelman said.The information could be misused by scammers, said Benjamin Googins, a CA senior engineer who has also written about the issue. &quot;A potential burglar or scam artist could quite easily sit at home with a phone book, checking to see what people in a given neighborhood had purchased,&quot; he wrote.Googins said that he was able to track purchases as far back as 1978 on the site.One Sears customer said he was upset by the disclosure.&quot;It&#39;s pretty amazing that in 2008 a major corporation such as Sears Roebuck can show such blatant disregard for the privacy of its customers. It definitely will make me think twice before ordering from them again,&quot; said Doug Fuller, an Oakland, Calif., realtor. &quot;It&#39;s not like it is some rinky-dink company. This is a major corporation. And with all the identity theft going on, this is the best they can do?&quot; he said via instant message.A Sears spokeswoman did not respond to a request for comment. Sears Holdings, the owner of the Sears Roebuck and Kmart department stores, is the third-largest retailer in the United States.This is the second time Sears has come under fire for privacy concerns in recent weeks. In December and early January, Googins and Edelman blasted Sears for&#160;downloading invasive comScore Web tracking software&#160;to some users of its MySHCcommunity.com Web site without adequate disclosure.Sears has defended its use of the tracking software, pointing out that users are notified of the software&#39;s features before they download it.
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With holiday shopping in full swing, U.S. banking regulators on Tuesday urged consumers to carefully check the terms and conditions when buying gift cards, including fees and expiration dates.
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Look for more disclosure from your financial advisors soon.
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(New York-AP) Oct. 28, 2004 - Don&#39;t write a check you can&#39;t cover now. A new check processing system went into effect Thursday that speeds the time it takes for a check to clear.
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Some consumer advocates are worried new check regulations that go into effect today will catch consumers by surprise. Checks will now be cleared electronically, reducing the amount of time
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By Patrick Wright, North County Times, Escondido, Calif.  Feb. 6--CARLSBAD -- First, Document Sciences Corp. wanted to change the  way you feel about financial statements. Now, it wants to make it easier for  workers to read e-mail attachments.
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ATLANTA -- New federal laws take effect Thursday that could dramatically shorten the time it takes for a check to clear the bank because the information will now be transmitted electronically.
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faq With the change coming later this year, follow these steps to help ensure that you're on time.
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By Dennis Rockstroh, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Mar. 11--Today we re-visit the Consumer Action Line Web log at http://blogs.mercurynews.com/ consumer actionline/ just in case you haven't visited.   Ms. Jekyll, Ms.
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New "Check 21" rules may soon be changing how your bank serves you.
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Changes are bringing Americans closer to a checkless society -- changes that could be costly if you aren&#39;t careful. The first checks in the United States were
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New identity checks are to be introduced to safeguard homeowners against property fraud.
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The Check Clearing for the 21st Century Act, or Check 21, will supposedly revolutionize the check-clearing process. It is the most significant change since banks actually started clearing checks.
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Microsoft is to give users three working days notice about upcoming security patches. Starting this month the software giant will provide a general summary of upcoming updates just before it releases patches
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Shoppers will be able to tell how much damage their purchases do the environment under a new plan.
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Consumers who have become used to writing checks in the expectation of having at least a couple of days to cover them with a deposit may soon be in for a rude awakening.