uBank Of America Must Pay $30M For Military Relief Law Violationsr

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  (James Callan)

  The Servicemembers Civil Relief Act (SCRA) aims to protect members of the Armed Forces from unfair and harmful practices that jeopardize their financial well-being while deployed. It shouldn’t be surprising then, that failing to adhere to those protections is frowned upon by federal regulators. Just ask Bank of America, which is now on the hook for $30 million stemming from SCRA violations related to more than 73,000 servicemember accounts.

  The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency announced that Bank of America must pay the hefty fine and provide remediation to the affected customer accounts after an investigation found the bank violated SCRA when it came to collecting debts from military customers.

  According to the OCC consent order [PDF], since 2006 Bank of America took improper legal action against military customers for delinquent credit card accounts and overdrafts.

  In many cases, investigators found that deficiencies in BofA’s enterprise compliance risk management function led to unsafe and unsound practices and violations of SCRA.

  For example, the investigation found that when the bank filed legal action against military customers to collect debts, employees asserted in affidavits that they had personal knowledge of the alleged delinquencies, when in fact they didn’t.

  In other cases, according to the OCC filing, employees filed court documents without the proper notarization.

  Additionally, the institution failed to devote sufficient financial, staffing and managerial resources to ensure proper administration of its legal documentation and to overseeing outside counsel and other third-party providers handling those documents.

  Under the consent order, the bank is required to strengthen its oversight of military member accounts to prevent future violations of SCRA.

  Bank of America must also improve its SCRA-compliance policies and procedures for determining whether “military personnel are eligible for requested SCRA-related benefits, for ensuring that the bank calculates the SCRA benefits correctly, and for verifying the military service status of servicemembers prior to seeking or obtaining default judgments on non-home loans.”

  The New York Times reports that while the bank did not admit any wrongdoing with regard to the OCC’s findings, it has taken steps to amend its SCRA weaknesses.

  “We have taken significant steps over the last several years, and will take further steps now, to ensure we have the right controls and processes in place to meet – and exceed – what is required by law and what our military customers deserve and expect,” the company said in a statement.

  OCC Takes Action Against Bank of America to Protect Consumers and to Ensure Servicemembers Receive Credit Protections for Their Non-Home Loans [Office of the Comptroller of the Currency]
  Bank of America Fined for Violations of Military Relief Law [The New York Times]

  
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by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

uVintage Apple Computer Worth $200K Dropped Off For Recyclingr

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  Here’s an Apple I on display at the Smithsonian. Check your garage. (Ed Uthman)

  Back in April, a woman in her sixties dropped off a box of what she said was her late husband’s computer junk at an electronics recycling company in California’s Bay Area. She didn’t want a donation receipt, and just wanted the stuff out of her garage. It was only after she left that anyone looked through the box. They found something astonishing: one of the first few hundred desktop computers that Apple sold in the ’70s.

  The Apple I was hand-built, and sold for $666 in 1976. It’s worth a lot more than that now: Clean Bay Area sold the machine for $200,000 to a private collector. Half of that money rightfully belongs to the woman who dropped the box of stuff off, and they would really, really like to find her.

  You can’t blame her for not realizing what treasure was in what probably looked like a box of random computer junk. Every household now has at least one box of old computer towers, giant trackball mice, and tangled parallel cables. Anyone who has gone through the belongings of a loved one who has died knows how this works. There’s all of this stuff to get rid of, and the owner isn’t around to tell you what belongs together and what’s valuable.

  Generally, the company promises 50% to the “donor” if items picked up for recycling still have any value. They generally deal with businesses, but they accept donations from individuals too. From now on, the company says they won’t let people drop off boxes of equipment and take off without leaving contact information.

  After all of this publicity, we hope that her identity remains private after she comes forward to claim her money.

  Apple I discarded as junk sells for $200,000; mystery woman stands to get half [San Jose Mercury News]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uPatriot Act’s NSA Phone-Snooping Program Expires (For Now)r

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  (713 Avenue)

  As lawmakers in D.C. flipped over their calendars from May to June last night, the sun set — at least temporarily — on the National Security Agency’s ability to collect mass amounts of information from telephone companies about their customers’ calls.

  Section 215 of the USA PATRIOT Act amended three sections of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act to explain how the government can compel companies to hand over information with regard to intelligence investigations.

  The law is deliberately vague on what can be collected, saying the government can require the “production of any tangible things (including books, records, papers, documents, and other items),” but the NSA has used its Sec. 215 authority mostly for collection of telephone metadata — non-content information like phone numbers, duration of calls, identities of those involved in call — from telecom providers.

  This section, along with several others, were set to expire at the end of 2005, but has been reauthorized repeatedly in the years since.

  Congress could have let Sec. 215 die a quiet death by simply doing nothing and allowing it to sunset on June 1. But in the weeks leading up to the expiration date, the House introduced and passed, on May 13, the USA FREEDOM Act, intended to replace the PATRIOT Act.

  The legislation would end the bulk data collection allowed under Sec. 215, and increase transparency with regard to FISA court decisions.

  At the same time, the FREEDOM Act would create a new call detail records program overseen by the FISA court, which means records would still be collected.

  The bill would also create a “strictly limited emergency authority” under which the emergency use of Section 215 would still be authorized. The only difference is that the government would be required to destroy the collected information after the fact if a FISA court denies the application.

  The initial attempt, a week ago, to get a senate vote on the FREEDOM Act failed when proponents of the bill could not muster the 60 yeas needed for cloture. With Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell also unable to push through an as-is extension of the PATRIOT Act provisions, and with the May 31 deadline looming, the senators gathered again on Sunday to take another cloture vote. This time, the vote was 77-17 in favor of moving forward with consideration of the bill.

  That doesn’t mean that all 77 of those senators are going to vote for the FREEDOM Act. It just puts an end to any attempt to filibuster the legislation. However, given the support for the bill in both the House of Representatives — where it passed 338-88 — and the White House, it now seems likely that the senate will soon sign off on the FREEDOM Act.

  The current version of the bill includes a six-month transition period during which phone companies would be required to update their systems to allow individual, court-ordered queries for records of terror suspects. That transition could last even longer, possibly up to a year, if senators approves proposed amendments to the legislation. Any changes to the bill could result in further delay, which could erode its support and momentum.

  In anticipation of the lapse in its surveillance authority, the NSA reportedly began shutting it down late last week.

  “We’ve said for the past several days that the wind-down process would need to begin yesterday if there was no legislative agreement,” an administration official told the National Journal. “That process has begun.”

  Earlier this spring a federal appeals court ruled that the NSA bulk collection program was in violation of the law because the agency was gathering massive amounts of potentially sensitive information without proper judicial review.

  “The more metadata the government collects and analyzes… the greater the capacity for such metadata to reveal ever more private and previously unascertainable information about individuals,” reads the ruling, which clarifies that Sec. 215 does “not preclude judicial review, and that the bulk telephone metadata program is not authorized” by the law.

  This decision overturned a 2013 ruling in the same case, in which the judge explained that the “blunt tool only works because it collects everything,” while cautioning that, “Such a program, if unchecked, imperils the civil liberties of every citizen.”

  
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by Chris Morran via Consumerist

uThe IRS Is Still Using Windows XP, Has A Cybersecurity Staff Of 363 Peopler

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  (afagen)

  In the last few years, tax return fraud has become a serious problem at the state and federal levels, thanks to the growth of e-filing and security holes in IRS and third-party tax software systems. Is the IRS to blame for this trend? There are really only two options: the IRS is either broke or incompetent.

  CNN puts it in slightly different terms, asking whether the agency is broke or unable to allocate the budget that it has to protect all of the data that it collects about us. The agency has 10% fewer employees than it did five years ago, but processes more tax returns and also has even more work since the Affordable Care Act was implemented, processing health insurance information and assessing penalties when needed.

  While maybe better technology could help the IRS finish more work quickly, there’s a catch: they still have computers running 13-year-old Windows XP, and even their fraud-catching software is two decades old. The agency employs fewer cybersecurity staff than it used to, even as one would think the demand would go up as e-filing has become more popular.

  At the same time, the “incompetent” thing might also apply: a new anti-fraud program was supposed to be finished three years ago, and is late and over-budget. Congress is still punishing the agency for what some members of Congress consider “lavish” spending in recent years on things like conferences and training videos. However, when it’s innocent taxpayers who end up with their identities stolen and their tax refund sent to the other side of the world, that punishment is affecting the wrong people.

  Is the IRS too broke to protect your info? [CNN Money]

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uSally Beauty: Investigation Confirms Customer Payment Info May Have Been Put At Risk, But Not Debit PINsr

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  (JeepersMedia)

  Three weeks after Sally Beauty first said it was looking into whether it’d been the victim of a hack attack, the company says it’s confirmed that criminals used malware on some of its point-of-sale systems, possibly exposing payment information for customers who used cards at some of its U.S. stores.

  Criminals deployed the malware at certain stores during “varying times” between March 6 and April 17, the company said in a press release, though it’s unclear how many stores or how many customers were affected.

  Although payment information may have been at risk for some customers, Sally Beauty says it has “no reason to believe, and has no information to suggest that debit card PINs may have been impacted.”

  It says it’s eliminated the malware from all Sally Beauty point-of-sale systems.

  “We regret any inconvenience this incident may have caused our customers, and we want to reassure them that protecting our customers is our priority,” said Chris Brickman, President and CEO in the press release, adding that because the company “cannot pinpoint exactly which cards might have been affected during our reported date range,” it’s offering credit card monitoring services to anyone who used a credit or debit card at Sally Beauty store between March 6 and April 17.

  Customers who wish to take advantage of the free identity protection services can go to sallybeautyholdings.com; call 1-866-234-9442 or email customerserviceinquiry@sallybeauty.com.

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

uThis McDonald’s Asks Drive-Thru Customers To Bend The Laws Of Physicsr

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• McDonald’s is trying all kinds of new things to attract younger customers and sling fries at them, but we’re not so sure about their plan to increase drive-thru traffic in the United Kingdom by bending the laws of physics. “Please use both lanes to place your order,” a new sign says. Both?

  An Alert Twitter user somewhere in the UK shared this confusing notice while visiting only one of the drive-thru lanes.

  @daraobriain McDonalds drive thru now suggesting we order using Quantum Theory? #quantumdrivethru http://pic.twitter.com/LEotITZ7pg

  — Nick Cook (@hockeynick13) May 28, 2015

  Yes, yes, we know what the sign is supposed to mean, but that has never stopped us from following an amusing premise through to a conclusion. Perhaps there is a hole in the universe centered on this McDonald’s that allows customers to be in two places at once, doubling drive-thru revenue. Seems like a waste of a perfectly nice wormhole.

  Of course, bending the laws of physics is nothing new in marketing: there were the curtains that somehow block more than 100% of light and gravity-proof soup. None of these lead to bilocation, though.

  McDonald’s defy quantum physics with sign

  
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by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

uMan Named God Reaches Settlement With Equifax, Finally Gets A Credit Scorer

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  ([RAWRZ!])

  You might recall a story from about a year back where a man with the first name “God” had a little dispute with credit-reporting agency Equifax, namely that the company wouldn’t recognize his moniker as legitimate. He’s now come out on top in his battle with Equifax, which has agreed he and his financial history do exist, and have granted him a shiny new credit score.

  The Russian native and Brooklyn resident sued the credit-reporting agency last year in federal court claiming that the snag in his Equifax report that rejects his first name has kept him from buying a car, despite his credit scores of more than 720 at other agencies. He claimed a customer service representative even suggested he change his first name to make everything easier.

  The New York Post reports that God and Equifax have reached a settlement where Equifax has agreed to enter his name into its database, as well as giving him an undisclosed payout.

  With his new healthy credit score, God says he’s relieved the case has been settled and is planning to buy a BMW to celebrate.

  “It’s been five years of this,” he told the NYP. “I’m glad that it’s over.”

  His lawyer adds that Equifax actually added God’s name to its database when he took legal action last year, but that the financial part of the settlement took longer to finalize.

  Equifax did not comment to the NYP.

  Man named God settles lawsuit with credit agency [New York Post]

  
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by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist