January 24, 2006
Just three weeks ago, I blogged that Donald Trump, according to Timothy O'Brien in the New York Times, might not be a billionaire and might only be worth a few hundred million. Now it seems Trump is suing. The Independent summarizes quite nicely: You can apparently say what you like about Mr Trump, whose third wife, the former Slovenian model Melania Knauss is pregnant with his fifth child, so long as you never, ever impugn his billionaire status. The suit is demanding an extraordinary $2.5bn in compensation for the alleged slight as well as another $2.5bn in punitive damages. The defendants are Mr O'Brien and his publisher, Warner Books.
In other words, since Trump allegedly hasn't got that money now, perhaps he can win such a sum from Warner Books and also see Tim O'Brien jailed for impugning his illustrious reputation. Rather chilling, isn't it?
As USA Today put it about O'Brien's page-turner: "TrumpNation is chock full of examples of Trump's tendency to exaggerate, particularly when it comes to his net worth."
Tags:
billionaire, donald trump, lawsuit, new york times
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Posted on 1/24/2006
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January 10, 2006
An astounding document arrived in the mail today. The final three pages of my American Express charge card bill were titled NOTICE OF CHANGES. How does a charge card different from a credit card? Generally, you have to pay the bill in full each month, unless you wrangle a special agreement, of which American Express offers several. For the pleasure of using this charge card—which does have some wonderful benefits—you pay $55 per year. But the most extraordinary aspect of this document is that American Express is shifting card accounts from its Travel Related Services (TRS) to its Centurion Bank (AECB). Applicable law shifts from New York (and Amex's headquarters) to the Mormon Theocracy. Utah is not exactly a consumer-friendly state, nor are courts there considered sympathetic to consumers.
What other diabolical changes have been made? Under the heading Suspension/Cancellation:
In addition to any other actions we may take under this Agreement, we may suspend or cancel your Account, any Feature, or any component of your Account, and/or we may suspend or cancel the authorization of any Additional Cardmember to make Charges to your Account, at our sole discretion at any time, with or without cause, whether or not your Account is in default, and without giving you notice, subject to applicable law.
In other words, they can get rid of you for any reason or for no reason, without giving you notice. What if you are overseas on a long trip and suddenly your card does not work? What if customer service decides you were somehow rude during your last phone call, or that you phoned one too many times? What if you said I don't want to speak to a customer service representative in India via VoIP because the connection is lousy and I can't understand you? Can Samantha in Bangalore (who ought to be honest and say her real name is Sunitha or Snigda and not Samantha) decide to instantaneously close your account? Well, of course not.
/>To be fair, clauses such as this are obviously to deal with problematic customers, who of course can be abusive in addition to not paying their bills. But the language is really unfortunate; every customer sounds like a potential adversary subject to litigation, rather than a cherished cardholder. If you've been a cardmember in good standing for decades—the sort that American Express touts in its glossy advertisements (for which it annually spends millions of dollars)—this language seems denigrating, insulting, un-American and potentially even illegal. Fortunately, they added an escape clause pertaining exactly to its questionable legality just in the event a court does find it questionable. Who knows, though? I doubt I'll find myself before a judge in Utah trying to assert this any time soon. I'm still waiting for my meager payout from the LiPuma Settlement pertaining to Amex's overcharging customers on foreign transactions dating back several years.
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american express
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Posted on 1/10/2006
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January 06, 2006
You've heard of ATM skimming, whereby thieves install equipment at a real ATM or install an entirely fake ATM at a shopping mall? It seems that clever thieves have ratcheted up the ante, now targeting ATMs in Chinatown and Staten Island. Customers' card numbers and PINs were captured, and then phony cards manufactured to steal money from those customers' accounts. There's an additional twist to this story, as these thieves apparently superimposed their own keypads over the ATM keypads to steal data. Fraudwar has pictures of where thieves mount this equipment on ATMs as well as explanations of how ATM skimming devices and hidden cameras function. Fraudwar reminds us: It is always prudent to conceal your actions when entering your PIN. When you do this, the camera doesn't record your PIN number and they can't clone your card. But honestly, this is our worst nightmare come true. It's also quite bizarre. Curiously, both locations—bank lobbies at 2626 Hylan Blvd, on Staten Island and 221 Canal St. in Manhattan—were at Washington Mutual ATMs, and even more curiously, according to ATMmarketplace.com, this happened in summer 2005 at a Washington Mutual in Idaho. Why Washington Mutual? Because their ATM withdrawals are free? Because they have low security? No clue. But Sgt. Robert Delaney of the NYPD Identity Theft Squad tells the New York Post something interesting: The thieves would typically place the bogus, second keypad inside one of the locations on a Saturday after normal banking hours when the branch was closed, Delaney said. "They'd leave it for maybe eight hours. That's how they would capture all the data. Then they'd retrieve it," he said.
Scams like this have an unfortunate history in New York. It was 15 to 20 years ago that phonecards were popular and cellphones weren't widespread. At Penn Station and the Port Authority Bus Terminal, thieves observed people punching in their phonecard codes by "shoulder surfing" and within minutes sometimes, those codes were spread to various criminal gangs who resold phone calls in places such as Chinatown, where lines of several people could at times be observed waiting to illegally purchase cheap calls overseas. Obviously that crime disappeared as phone calls became cheaper and cellphones ubiquitous.
But thieves today are far more sophisticated, thanks to information technology and cheap electronics. Thieves have made shoulder surfing far easier by installing hidden cameras that record customers' PIN entries at ATMs. Identity theft is on the rise, and it seems each week brings a frightful new tale of bank backup data tapes being stolen. This week it is Bank tape lost with data on 90,000 customers. Last week it was Marriott. Last February it was Bank of America. How do all these tapes get "lost"? Is someone stealing from or paying off the UPS drivers who drive the routes to the major credit-reporting agencies' data centers? 2005 was stunning for the depth of ID fraud crime. Wall Street & Technology reports this week on the Sad State of Data Security; when even the US Department of Justice erroneously displays social security numbers on their website, we've got a big problem on our hands.
Truth is, there is no data security in this country. Ringelmatz himself, who is completely paranoid about shredding his trash and anything with his name and address on it, was the victim of ID theft in 2005. Police, district attorneys, credit card companies, banks—none whatsoever were helpful. Only Citibank ID theft solutions pitched in and got a crack staffer on the case, who resolved everything. In contrast, Bank of America was useless. I closed my accounts and three times demanded letters indicating I'd closed my accounts, which six months later I still haven't received. (Bank of America became the nation's largest credit-card issuer this week. Good luck, folks.) Of course, bloggers have been posting for months about a Washington post story from last July that described how anyone can buy a list of your incoming and outgoing phone calls, cell or land-line, for $110 online. Has anything been done about that? Nope.
Fixing the problems created by this thief took several months, and was demoralizing, frustrating and deeply annoying—not to mention time-consuming. One kind law-enforcement type told me there are rings in Las Vegas that traffic big time in social security numbers. Apparently it's a big business. How did it happen? Did someone steal my social security number from my bank? I've never carried my social security card in my life, nor have I given it out to anyone except banks, employers or credit card companies. I will probably never find out how it happened. And my case, I was told, was small potatoes compared to some. I should feel lucky, I was told.
What can you do to protect yourself? Little or nothing, considering that 99 percent of companies still don't encrypt backup data, says Greg Shipley, chief technology officer at Neohapsis, a security consulting and IT product-testing company. You can demand to know from your bank and credit-card providers how they protect your data, but that's like barking up a tree. What about protecting your your ATM/debit card? It's really pathetic if you've got to start examining the ATM you are using to determine if your card is going to be cloned behind your back. You could consider avoiding Washington Mutual, which has a history of taking insufficient security measures in New York City. If they can't be bothered to ensure the safety of their banks and their ATMs, you shouldn't be banking there. But the rash of NYC bank robberies in 2004 and 2005 does underscore just how unconcerned major commercial banks have become about security in their quest for ever-higher profits. So do not hesitate to ask your bank's branch manager what he or she has specifically done to improve security at that branch, and to declare you will close your accounts if you feel the bank does not take security seriously enough. Do ask the manager why there is no armed guard on duty at the branch during business hours, or why there is no security guard on duty in the ATM vestibule after hours.
What action can you take right now? Write to your congressional representative and demand stronger data protection laws. Don't let 2006 become the year of the victim. Spend five minutes now writing a thoughtful letter outlining your demands rather than wasting months later to get your financial life back in order if you become a victim. The only reason you can get free annual credit reports from the three major credit reporting agencies now is because of ID theft and consumer complaints. Complain some more, and you might actually get data protection in this country. But don't hold your breath.
UPDATE: More than 200,000 New York residents have received potentially bad news about the security of their personal information since a new law went into effect Dec. 7.
UPDATE: Ameriprise Says Stolen Laptop Had Data on 230,000 People
Tags:
atm theft, skimming, washington mutual
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Posted on 1/6/2006
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January 02, 2006
Only in New York could a mogul who has repeated declared bankruptcy and whose net worth is probably far less than one imagines even be considered a possible candidate for governor. How does Trump's own situation so resemble the crumbling façade of the empire state after 12 years of George "Did-Nothing" Pataki? According to news reports:
• Trump's finances are as precarious as that of New York state. Trump manages to move around debt and hide it in various places.
• Trump is about illusion, not substance. His lid covers his pate the way Albany's budget attempts to smooth over bald patches; i.e. not very well.
• Trump has experience in the low-end casino business. New York state is run like a tawdry casino; whether you think of its as a craps game or spin of the roulette wheel is for you to decide.
• Trump's bark is worse than his bite. It's easy to get on t.v. and shout, "You're fired!" It's more complicated to reveal your actual net worth, draw up real and fair budgets, and to pay appropriations in a timely and legal manner. Trump indeed might be worth even less than a tenth of his declared $4 to $5 billion, according to a New York Times exposé.
For all these reasons, Trump would be the ideal candidate to follow Pataki, to prove once and for all that New York is run like Byzantium at the end of the eastern Roman Empire. But it seems The Donald doesn't want the job: "I'm not going to run for governor because I'm having too much fun doing what I'm doing now," Trump told the New York Post for its Tuesday editions. Most likely someone tipped him off that with Albany's entrenched bureaucrats you can't just get on t.v. and scream, "You're fired!"
Tags:
governor, pataki, trump
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Posted on 1/2/2006
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