Category: Your Money

A data breach at a company most Americans have never dealt with directly has grown into one of the largest on record, and the final tally is far bigger than early estimates suggested. Conduent, a business-services contractor that handles payments, benefits administration and customer records for government agencies and large companies, has confirmed that the…

Roughly 5.8 million people whose personal information ran through a company most of them never heard of now have a short window to collect cash. The company, 700Credit, processes credit reports and identity checks for auto dealerships, and a data breach exposed the names, addresses, birth dates and Social Security numbers of the consumers whose…

The option appears at checkout on almost every shopping site now: split the purchase into four payments, no interest, no credit check. Buy-now-pay-later has grown from a niche feature into a mainstream way to pay, and it reaches shoppers of every age. The easy approval is the selling point, but it hides a real risk…

Tax-refund fraud starts with a stolen Social Security number and a fake return filed before the real taxpayer gets around to filing. By the time a legitimate return is submitted, the refund has already been sent to a criminal, and the victim is left proving the theft to the government. The Internal Revenue Service offers…

Prepaying a funeral is sold as a final act of thoughtfulness, sparing loved ones both the money and the decisions during a hard week. The impulse is sound. The mechanics are riskier than most buyers realize, because a plan bought today depends on a specific business still standing years from now, and on where exactly…

Television and mailbox pitches promise retirees fast cash: sign over a stream of future settlement or pension checks and walk away with a lump sum today. The offers arrive dressed as convenience and freedom. Beneath the language sits a transaction in which the buyer keeps years of guaranteed payments and hands the seller a fraction…

Every scam call that opens with a retiree’s correct name, age, and street address started somewhere, and that somewhere is often a data broker. A sprawling, lightly regulated industry compiles detailed profiles on nearly every American adult and sells them by the thousand, including lists sorted by age and assumed wealth. Those lists are a…

Generosity has a predictable shadow. In the days after a hurricane, wildfire, or flood fills the news, a wave of fake charities floods phone lines and inboxes with urgent appeals to help the victims. The names sound noble and familiar, the images are heartbreaking, and the money, once sent, lands in a scammer’s account instead…

The caller sounds like the real thing. He gives a name, a badge number, and a case number, and he says a warrant has been issued because a summons for jury duty was ignored. The arrest can be avoided, he explains, by paying a fine right now over the phone. Nothing about that call is…

The phone rings on a hot afternoon, and the voice on the line says the electric bill is overdue. Unless a payment goes through in the next thirty minutes, the caller warns, the power will be shut off before nightfall. The threat is designed to land hardest on an older adult living alone in the…