Only a week after news of the massive Equifax hack hit, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has announced that it too was hacked. The SEC hack took place in 2016 and according to a report from Reuters, the hackers could have profited from using insider information to make trades. Michelle Price writes: The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the hack occurred in 2016 but that it had only discovered last month that the cyber criminals may have used the information to make illicit trades. The hackers exploited a software glitch in the test filing component of the system to … [Read more...]
Is Your Software Up to Date?
At the heart of the Equifax breach was a bit of outdated software on the company's systems that its administrators had missed. This obviously has led to a large-scale disaster, potentially exposing the identifying information of up to 143 million Americans. But is your small business computer system updated? Many of the updates you receive from your software provider plug known holes in the security of your system. Hackers know about these holes, and search for systems that haven't plugged them. If your system is out of date, you're a bigger target than you were before your software … [Read more...]
Equifax Breach: How Did it Happen? What Does it Mean?
When a company's business is solely devoted to collecting your most valuable information, you would hope that its security is up to the challenge of a world full of criminal hackers looking to exploit your data for their gain. Unfortunately that wasn't the case with Equifax. The company allowed months to go by before plugging a known hole in its security. The WSJ reports: On March 8, researchers at Cisco Systems Inc. reported an online security flaw that allowed hackers to break into servers around the internet. Cisco urged users to upgrade their systems immediately with a newly issued … [Read more...]
Is College a Good Investment?
A majority of American men now say college isn’t worth the cost. The WSJ reports on the changing attitudes toward higher education. Americans are losing faith in the value of a college degree, with majorities of young adults, men and rural residents saying college isn’t worth the cost, a new Wall Street Journal/NBC News survey shows. The findings reflect an increase in public skepticism of higher education from just four years ago and highlight a growing divide in opinion falling along gender, educational, regional and partisan lines. They also carry political implications for … [Read more...]
Are You a Victim of the Equifax Data Breach?
With 143 million Americans possibly affected by the Equifax data breach, if you're an adult with a credit card, it's more likely than not that you've had your data stolen. The problem with the Equifax breach is that it's a gateway to so many other possible breaches. Every bit of credit you have in the world is cataloged by Equifax and the other credit ratings agencies. Now it's possible that along with your roster of credit card and loan information, your Social Security number, driver's license number, address and more have been leaked. The stock market is already hammering Equifax … [Read more...]
Is a New Market Driven Wealth Record Really Healthy?
“U.S. household net worth climbed to a record $92.8 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2016, as the end-of-year surge in stocks and a steady climb in home prices added more than $2 trillion of wealth to household balance sheets. The biggest contributor to the increase was the stock market, which added $728 billion to household balance sheets in the fourth quarter, according to the Federal Reserve’s quarterly financial accounts report,” reports the WSJ. Haven’t we seen this movie before? Josh Zumbrun writes: The report provides no information on the distribution of wealth among households. … [Read more...]
IRS Fraud Getting Better, but Risks Remain
Since peaking in 2014 at 766,000, the number of reports of tax-ID theft involving federal returns has dropped dramatically. But risks remain to tax filers who don't protect themselves. Thieves are using new methods to get access to tax filers' information in order to file false claims in their names, and then pocketing fraudulent refunds before anyone knows what's happening. Laura Saunders writes in The Wall Street Journal: And thieves are constantly trying to defeat new detection efforts. In some recent schemes, phishers pretend to be high-level executives requesting W-2 information for many … [Read more...]
This is a Detailed Account of Why You Can’t Trust Brokerage Research
The Wall Street Journal has a must-read story that lays out in detail why brokerage research must not be relied upon. Brokers are first and foremost in the business of distributing securities. As you will read here, the research departments are a part of the package of gaining underwriting business. The more favorable the opinion on an issuer the more money business for the bank. On the Sunday after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election, sparking turmoil in emerging markets, J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. downgraded Indonesia’s stock market. The move set off a chain reaction that … [Read more...]
Identity Fraud on the Rise: Here’s Fidelity’s Customer Protection Guarantee
Identity fraud is on the rise as reported here in the Wall Street Journal. More consumers became victims of identity fraud last year than at any point in more than a decade despite new security protections implemented by the credit-card industry, a report released Wednesday said. Some 15.4 million U.S. consumers were victims of identity fraud in 2016, resulting in $16 billion in total losses, according to the report by consulting firm Javelin Strategy & Research and identity-theft-protection firm LifeLock Inc. The number of victims rose 18% from 2015 and was the highest since Javelin, … [Read more...]
Want to Get Away? Read this First
Good advice from Fidelity Investments on travel security and peace of mind. Keep these documents safe. When embarking on vacation, take steps to keep these documents safe and accessible as you travel. Health-related information. When traveling overseas, you may find yourself in situations where you need information about your current vaccinations. For instance, some countries in Central and South America, and also in Africa, require tourists to have a certificate showing they've had a yellow-fever vaccination. For both domestic and international travel, it's also a good idea to bring … [Read more...]
- « Previous Page
- 1
- …
- 7
- 8
- 9
- 10
- Next Page »