Consumer Protection

Barnes & Noble revealed this week that PIN pad devices at 63 of its stores nationwide were hacked, putting some of its customers at risk. The company discovered the hacking in September, and for the past month, the FBI has been investigating the case. Fewer than 1 percent of Barnes & Noble P...

Compete has agreed to settle FTC charges that it used its Web-tracking software to collect personal data without disclosing the extent of its information-gathering activities, and failed to honor promises it made to protect the personal data it collected. Under the settlement, Compete must obtain co...

Discover Bank is refunding approximately $200 million to more than 3.5 million customers under a joint enforcement action by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Discover will also pay a $14 million civil money penalty, with half going to the U.S. Treasury ...

Some folks' answer to wallet security is chaining it to their belts. Google's is to chain it to the cloud. The Search Giant added some security features to its Google Wallet product last week intended to make it safer for consumers to use. For example, credit card information no longer resides in th...

"My esteemed colleague, it is with much reverence that I am humbly, yet secretly, contacting you to tell you of great fortune that has come my way. My most honorable relative has kindly left me, in his will, eighty gold bars. Unfortunately, due to circumstances, I have to regretfully sell on the ...

Travel always seems to elicit great customer service stories -- that is, great stories from my perspective as a person who writes about CRM; not great as in "my experience while traveling was wonderful, stress-free and restored my faith in humanity." As fodder for columns, they're great. They're o...

Facebook rolled out a new mobile social discovery tool recently, only to deactivate it hours later and pull it from its iOS and Android apps. The service, which Facebook called "Find Friends Nearby," was designed to help Facebook users find other users who were in the same vicinity. Before the compa...

Consumers face a number of hurdles if they want to switch banks -- which they increasingly do, as their banks continue to raise fees, raise minimum balances, and create entirely new charges. Some bank policies are, in fact, designed to make it challenging -- and expensive -- for customers to walk aw...

President Barack Obama named Richard Cordray as head of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau via a recess appointment on Wednesday. It was a controversial move for the president, prompting Senate Republicans to accuse him of making a power grab and abusing executive authority. Indeed, Republica...

Providers of apps for mobile devices are just as responsible as other electronic commerce vendors in terms of protecting the privacy of customers. In a recent enforcement action, the Federal Trade Commission signaled that mobile apps fall within the agency's jurisdiction, and that it will not hesita...