April 2011 Archives

News organizations that have sniffed around hacker chatrooms say that some of their denizens are offering 2.2 million credit card numbers they say they hacked from Sony PlayStation's database of online users.

Sony, meanwhile, is trying to reassure its customers, saying there's still no evidence that the card numbers were hacked, and besides, they were stored in an encrypted fashion.

My wedding was just over a month ago, and on that day, I truly felt like a princess. People waited on me hand and foot. Everyone constantly asked me if I needed or wanted anything. It was kind of a let down when I realized I was only getting special treatment for one day.

I cannot even fathom what life is like for Kate Middleton, the gorgeous commoner who is marrying the United Kingdom's Prince William in Westminster Abbey today. She will be a real princess every day. Ah, a girl's dream. Though it comes with the heavy responsibility of hosting endless social events, completing loads of charity work, acting as a diplomat, being a fashion icon, and most importantly, bearing heirs to the throne. She will be in the spotlight and on the pages of infamous British tabloids for the rest of her life, being scrutinized for any potential mishap (or bit of cellulite). Is it worth it to have everything when you're constantly in the spotlight?

If you lack the budget of a royal, read on for some of my favorite personal finance blog posts from the past week.

When you signed up to play KillStation or another game online on your PlayStation, I bet you didn't think there would be any real life danger.

Now you know differently.

Sony, which runs the PlayStation network, announced Tuesday that between April 17 and April 19, data from its 77 million account holders was "compromised in connection with an illegal and unauthorized intrusion into our network."

Here's what consumers should know about the situation -- and do to protect their real-world finances:

April is National Financial Literacy Month. It's time to step up and make sure you know your personal finance basics. If you have kids, whether first graders or teenagers, it's also a great time to help educate them about healthy money habits.

You can further your personal finance know-how by reading on for my roundup of my favorite blog posts from the past week!

Over the past several years, as the economy has been cooling off, zombies have been heating up.

It seems like the red-hot undead have been cropping up everywhere recently, including starring roles in feature films, popular books and hit TV shows. But zombies have come a long way from their days in the "Thriller" music video. No longer content to just entertain us, zombies now want to teach us something, too.

I'm going to guess that I'm not alone when I feel that taxes are unfair. Then I stop and think about it. My taxes provide me with my local libraries. They pay for the police forces and firefighters who keep our society orderly and safe. They keep the postal system running, as inefficient as it may be sometimes. They pay for our teachers and schools, and our city animal shelter. As much as I want to complain about paying my taxes (and accountant), it's really not that bad. We pay far less taxes in the United States than in Europe. Heck, we can even file our taxes online and pay it with our credit cards!

I was interested to read on MSNBC that over half of Americans--54 percent--think their taxes are either fair or very fair in an Associated Press-GfK poll. However, in a question asking whether taxes should be increased to lower the federal deficits, only 29 percent said yes. Just over 60 percent of Americans prefer that government services be cut instead of taxes raised.

For more personal finance insight, please read on for my roundup of my favorite blog posts from the past week!

They said it couldn't be done, but it has: Two blog posts in two blog carnivals -- in one week.

This week, two of my recent blog posts made it into two separate carnivals, establishing what surely must be some sort of Internet record. Yeah, that's right Rebecca Black: You're not the only online phenomenon.

An undisclosed number of HSBC bank customers apparently saw their credit scores briefly tumble because of a credit reporting error that occurred April 1.

This was no April Fool's Day prank: Credit bureau Experian says an "isolated administrative error" altered the information on some HSBC customers' credit reports. According to an MSNBC report, that "glitch" in Experian's credit reporting "temporarily torpedoed an undisclosed number of consumers' credit scores." MSNBC added that HSBC customers who pay for credit monitoring services became aware of the error after they received alerts about a sudden fall in their credit scores.

Borrowers weren't laughing.

What do the companies Chase, Victoria's Secret, Viking River Cruises, TiVo, BestBuy.com and Beachbody have in common? I am on all of their email mailing lists, and I received an email from each of them this week telling them that my email address on file with them has been compromised. As my colleague Jeremy Simon wrote about earlier this week, all of these companies, in addition to many other large corporations, use a vendor called Epsilon to send out their emails.

The company's database was compromised, and thousands, if not millions, of email addresses were stolen. All of these companies said that not all customers were affected by the data breach. Viking River Cruises says the only information that may have been obtained was my name and/or email address. The other companies say that only my email address may have been taken, so I'm curious if names were stolen or not.

It never occurred to me that so many companies I do business would all use the same email vendor with the same database. I had no idea that being on so many mailing lists could come back to bite me. I also received a new Bank of America debit card in the mail this week with a letter saying that my account may have been compromised, and they are preemptively sending me a new one and monitoring my account. This also happened with them a few months ago, and it messes up my automatic payments. However, that may be unrelated to the Epsilon catastrophe. Fraudsters, I shake my fist at you!

Now we're on to my roundup of my top 10 favorite posts from the personal finance blogosphere in the past week. Enjoy!

The next email bearing my bank's logo could very well be from a hacker.

Earlier today, Chase sent an email warning of a major theft that could affect me and other bank customers. "Chase is letting our customers know that we have been informed by Epsilon, a vendor we use to send emails, that an unauthorized person outside Epsilon accessed files that included email addresses of some Chase customers," the email said.

Chase explained that although some customer email addresses were compromised in the breach, the stolen information "did not include any customer account or financial information. Based on everything we know, your accounts and confidential information remain secure."

Based on news reports, Chase customers aren't the only ones who have been victimized.

A new chapter of my life began on Saturday when I tied the knot with my partner of five-and-a-half years. We were only able to go on a quick getaway for our honeymoon, so I'm already back to normal life. Except it's not quite the same.

I went to the county clerk's office to try to start the name change process, but I wasn't able to make it happen since they hadn't received my marriage license in the mail from the officiant yet (I learned that you need a certified copy of it to take to the Social Security office before your name is legally changed). Once all that happens, then I need to go to my banks and change the name on my accounts and cards, plus set up a new joint account with him. I also need to update all of my insurance information, get a new driver's license and so on.

Some of the other things are easy. Others are a little trickier. Fortunately, there aren't any deadlines, so I have time to slowly but surely change my finances to reflect married life. I'm interested to see how my credit is affected by my new marital status.

While I get to work on all of this, read on for my list of my top 10 favorite personal finance blog posts from the past week!