FTC Imposes $5 Billion Penalty and Sweeping New Privacy Restrictions on Facebook

Facebook, Inc. will pay a record-breaking $5 billion penalty, and submit to new restrictions and a modified corporate structure that will hold the company accountable for the decisions it makes about its users’ privacy, to settle Federal Trade Commission charges that the company violated a 2012 FTC order by deceiving users about their ability to control the privacy of their personal information.

FTC Sues Cambridge Analytica, Settles with Former CEO and App Developer

The Federal Trade Commission filed an administrative complaint against data analytics company Cambridge Analytica, and filed settlements for public comment with Cambridge Analytica’s former chief executive and an app developer who worked with the company, alleging they employed deceptive tactics to harvest personal information from tens of millions of Facebook users for voter profiling and targeting.

DCS2019 Room Block Ends August 16, Book Your Rooms Today!

Have you booked your room at the Red Rock Hotel?   We have insured that all Debt Connection Symposium and Expo 2019 conference attendees get a conference-discounted rate of $190 for a standard room.  So if you do not have your room reserved, please act fast, space is limited, and we expect to sell out.   Debt Connection Symposium and Expo 2019 will be held on September 10-12, 2019 at the Red Rock Hotel in Las Vegas, NV. 

Standard Room Discount Rate For Registered Attendees

Hotel Information:
Red Rock Casino Resort & Spa
11011 W Charleston Blvd Las Vegas, NV 89135
Phone: 702-797-7777
Reservation Code: RCIDCS
Room Block Ends August 16, 2019
The room rate of $190 is for DCS2019 registered conference attendees only.

IMPORTANT: Please be advised that DCS2019 has not authorized any third-party housing services or third-party housing companies to represent the event and sell hotel rooms on our behalf. Only reserve your hotel room directly with the Red Rock Hotel using the information listed above.

CFPB issues report on tradeline reporting by third-party debt collectors

The CFPB has issued a new report on tradelines reported by third-party debt collectors as reflected on credit reports compiled by nationwide consumer reporting agencies.  The third-party collector tradelines consist of those reported by debt buyers and those reported by non-buyers (i.e. where the debt is still owned by the original creditor).  A single debt collections firm may collect on both debts it owns and debts that others own. The report is based on information from the CFPB’s Consumer Credit Panel, which is described as “a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records” from one of the three national CRAs for the period Q2 2004 through Q2 2018.

Fintech Impact – A Long Way to Go

Given its press coverage, one would conclude that financial technology (fintech) has all but taken over residential real estate and its financing. However, a new report from Jung Choi, Karan Kaul, and Laurie Goodman of the Urban Institute (UI) states that the online share of all home sales (to owner-occupants, investors, fix-and-flippers, and others) is less than 15 percent.  Compare this to other online shares; book sales, 55 percent; music, 80 percent; electronics, 35 percent.

New Cyber Attack Trends Report Reveals That Digital Criminals Made Off With $45 Billion in 2018

A new report on cyber attack trends that combines information from a number of high-level sources has just been released, and it reveals a startling amount of cyber crime growth. The report revealed that cyber crime became a $45 billion industry in 2018, up tens of billions of dollars from the previous year. The report from the Internet Society’s Online Trust Alliance (OTA) identifies trends by using data from sources including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Symantec, prominent cybercrime journal Cybersecurity Ventures, security consultant Risk Based Security, the Identity Theft Resource Center and the Internet Society’s own internal data to create as comprehensive a picture as possible of the annual cyber crime market.

4th Circuit Finds Lenders Entitled to Tribal Sovereign Immunity

A panel for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit recently foundthat two lending entities affiliated with the Lac Vieux Desert Band of the Lake Superior Chippewa Indians (the Tribe) are entitled to tribal sovereign immunity as “arms of the tribe”.  The panel then ordered the dismissal of an underlying putative class action brought by five Virginia residents who claimed the payday loans they obtained online from the tribe-affiliated lenders violated state usury laws.  The panel’s decision reverses that of the district court, which held that the affiliated lenders failed to sufficiently prove they were “arms of the tribe” and thus were subject to the court’s jurisdiction.

FCC’s Pai Proposes to Expand ‘Written’ Hearings

CreditCompass™ from TransUnion Reaches Milestone with Over 50,000 Consumers Seeking Individualized Plans to Reach Credit Score Goals

More than 50,000 consumers are in the process of improving their credit health using TransUnion’s (NYSE: TRU) CreditCompass™, a groundbreaking credit product launched just three months ago.   CreditCompass is based on the real credit experiences of millions of consumers and provides specific steps for improving individual credit health.

CFPB Issues Report on Tradeline Reporting by Third-Party Debt Collectors

The CFPB (Consumer Financial Protection Bureau) has issued a new report on tradelines reported by third-party debt collectors as reflected on credit reports compiled by nationwide consumer reporting agencies. The third-party collector tradelines consist of those reported by debt buyers and those reported by non-buyers (i.e. where the debt is still owned by the original creditor). A single debt collections firm may collect on both debts it owns and debts that others own. The report is based on information from the CFPB’s Consumer Credit Panel, which is described as “a longitudinal, nationally representative sample of approximately five million de-identified credit records” from one of the three national CRAs for the period Q2 2004 through Q2 2018.

Pushing for change for banks

For Richard Hunt, lobbying on behalf of the nation’s banks isn’t quite what it used to be. As president and CEO of the Consumer Bankers Association (CBA) since 2009, Hunt has led the group’s efforts to repair the industry’s post-crisis reputation while working for changes to the rules imposed on banks after the 2008 recession. Hunt, a former House chief of staff, has advocated for banks and the broader financial services industry since 2001, in the bullish days of the early 2000s economic expansion.

Attorney General James Objects To Mortgage Servicer’s Unlawful Attempt To Strip Away Rights Of Homeowners

NEW YORK – Attorney General Letitia James has taken action against Ditech Holding Corporation (Ditech) by filing a brief in the United States Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York, opposing the mortgage servicer’s attempted end-run around statutory protections for homeowners.

$575 million Equifax settlement illustrates security basics for your business

Patch your software. Segment your network. Monitor for intruders. According to tech experts, those are security basics for businesses of any size. But when you’re industry giant Equifax – a company in possession of staggering amounts of highly confidential information about more than 200 million Americans – it’s almost unthinkable not to implement those fundamental protections. An FTC, CFPB, and State AG settlement of at least $575 million illustrates the injury to consumers when companies ignore reasonably foreseeable (and preventable) threats to sensitive data. Read on for security tips for your business and what consumers can do to get compensation for their losses and sign up for free credit monitoring.

States Put Stamp on Student Loan Oversight

Before the legislative session that began in January, consumer groups in Colorado had twice sought to work with state lawmakers to pass a bill establishing a student borrower bill of rights, coming up short both times. But with Democrats in control of both state houses in 2019 and a new attorney general focused on consumer protections, the measure passed in May with days left in the legislative session.

Equifax, regulators sign $700m deal to settle data breach lawsuits

Equifax signed a settlement today to lay to rest lawsuits brought forward by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC), state attorneys, and a class-action case relating to the firm's 2017 data breach. The security incident was caused by a failure to resolve a known security flaw in Apache Struts, despite a patch being made available two months prior to the breach. This permitted a hacker to access the credit monitoring company's systems, leading to the theft of records belonging to over 146 million users. Names, dates of birth, Social Security numbers, phone numbers, email addresses, and driver's license details were among the data sets stolen. 

Residents welcoming first new community banks since the recession

CFPB Report: One In Four Consumers Have Debt In Collections

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said in a report that a bit more than one in four —  to be specific, 28 percent — of consumers have had at least one debt in collections. The report, released Thursday (July 18), examined collections tradelines — information about a consumer account sent to a credit reporting company, generally on a regular basis — from 2004 to 2018.  The data spanned debt buyer tradelines, representing debt bought from creditors that has been charged off by creditors and non-buyer tradelines, which attempt to collect on behalf of the original creditor. The percentage of consumers sampled with third party collections never went below 27 percent or above 34 percent. Peak levels — and levels of 33 percent and above — occurred after the financial crisis into 2013.

Bank of America CEO on the importance of digital banking: ‘The numbers are just rolling’

Digital banking is a key strategy to appeal to millennial consumers, Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan told CNBC on Thursday. He estimates the bank serves 16 million millennial customers, ranging between the ages of 25 and 41, who have about $200 billion worth of deposits, investments and loans with the bank. “They have, you know, $60-70 billion of checking deposit ... and then Gen Z adds another chunk on top of that,” Moynihan said in a one-on-one with “Mad Money’s” Jim Cramer. “As a millennial-only bank, it would be one of the biggest banks in the country.”

CCPA Creates Possible Dilemmas for Companies Sending Text Messages. Is Your Business Ready?

Don’t wait to implement your California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) compliance as it could require changes to your operations. CCPA can apply to businesses even if they do not have offices or employees in California. It can also reach activities conducted outside of California.  With the impending implementation of the CCPA, brands and platforms that use text messages to contact consumers (could be customers, employees, others) must be sure their texting programs comply with the CCPA.

Kathleen L. Kraninger’s Speech at the Exchequer Club

Thank you for that introduction, and thanks for having me. I’m delighted to be here to spend time with such a distinguished group of experts and leaders in financial and economic policy.   As you heard from the introduction, I’ve been in public service now going on 20 years working in both the Congress and the Executive Branch. I’m honored to be able to carry this forward at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. And, I can tell you, I hit the ground running. 

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Releases Report on Third-Party Debt Collections

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) released a report today that found that more than one-in-four consumers with a credit report have at least one debt in collection by third-party debt collectors.   Today’s report, which covers 2004 to 2018, is drawn from the Bureau’s Consumer Credit Panel (CCP), a nationally representative sample of approximately 5 million de-identified credit records maintained by one of the three nationwide credit reporting companies. Close to 900 third-party debt collectors furnished collection tradelines in the CCP. A tradeline is information about a consumer account that is sent, generally on a regular basis, to a credit reporting company. Tradelines contain data such as account balance, payment history, and status of the account.

If cracks are forming in the US economy, banks didn’t get the memo

House panel advances anti-robocall bill

A House panel on Wednesday voted to advance legislation aimed at protecting U.S. consumers from the billions of illegal robocalls made every year.   The Stopping Bad Robocalls Act had accrued 152 co-sponsors and passed the House Energy and Commerce Committee, 49-0.

These are the biggest complaints about debt collectors

A strong federal law, the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, protects consumers against certain unfair collection practices. It applies only to outside, or third-party debt collectors (not creditors collecting their own debts) and only for personal (not business) debts. State laws may provide additional protection. In its 2018 annual report to Congress about debt collection complaints, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau described collection complaints received by the Federal Trade Commission. In 2018, the FTC received 84,500 complaints about debt collectors — down from 88,000 in 2017. A complaint does not mean a law has been broken, and some complaints may be the result of overseas debt collection scammers who harass consumers.

CFPB Advisory Offers Steps for Financial Institutions to Protect Seniors

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) has issued an update to a 2016 advisory to financial institutions, which included a series of best practices designed to assist those institutions in protecting seniors who hold certain accounts with them. In this update of the previous advisory, the CFPB encourages banks and credit unions to report to the most appropriate local, state or federal authorities whenever they suspect that an American senior is that target of elder financial exploitation (EFE). “The updated advisory focuses on reporting suspected financial abuse,” the CFPB says in its announcement of the advisory update. “It builds on the Bureau’s earlier recommendations and its recent research on Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) on EFE.”

Consumer Financial Protection Bureau Recommends Financial Institutions Report Suspected Financial Exploitation of Older Adults

WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (Bureau) today issued an updated advisory to financial institutions urging them to report to the appropriate local, state and federal authorities whenever they suspect that an older adult is the target or victim of financial exploitation. The Bureau also recommended that financial institutions file Suspicious Activity Reports (SARs) with the federal government when they suspect elder financial exploitation (EFE). Today’s updated advisory builds on the Bureau’s earlier recommendations and its recent research on elder financial abuse. It contains voluntary best practices to help financial institutions prevent and respond to EFE.

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Debt Connection Symposium & Expo 2019

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National Creditors Bar Association 2019 Fall Conference

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