Consumer Action: Putting The “Freeze” On Credit FilesWritten by James Dimmitt
In wake of 40 million MasterCard, Visa, Discover, and American Express accounts recently being breached, consumers and legislators are scrambling for ways to protect their personal and financial information from being hijacked and used fraudulently by hackers and ID thieves.One type of privacy protection being widely debated is option to “freeze” your individual credit reports. Californians have been protected by such a law since 2002. Vermont, Texas, and Louisiana have also passed “freeze laws” and other states are taking a closer look at enacting similar types of consumer protection. Placing a freeze on your credit files with three major credit reporting agencies - Experian, TransUnion, and Equifax - effectively shuts out potential lenders from accessing your credit files in order to make you an offer for credit. It would also protect your data from being used by identity thieves. When applying for new credit accounts or loans, consumers would use a special password to “unfreeze” their accounts. Consumer advocates who support such a freeze point out that this type of privacy protection “prevents damage before it occurs.” Consumer action groups see this as one of most effective measures available because it places control in hands of consumer and not data-collecting agencies who profit from selling consumer information.
| | When You Need Extra Cash, Ebay Fits The BillWritten by Barbara Gibson
We all have items in our closets and stuffed in drawers that we no longer have a use for. Some of us use our free time to manufacture craft items that we give to our friends and families for gifts, and still others of us buy candles and other items in bulk to sell to family and co workers for a little extra cash. Anyone with something that they no longer need or want to sell has options to help create a little more cash flow. EBay is an online community providing auction services for buyers and sellers of just about everything. The question remains, though, how to utilize this website in best way to make most money?The first thing to consider is what you want to sell. Looking over your items, would it be better to sell them off one item at a time, or to sell a bulk lot at some discount from individual cost of items. Another thing to consider is if you want to use buy it now option. This allows someone to pay a preset price for item, if there have not been any other bids, and avoid auction proceedings. If you have multiple items, do you want to spend cost for multiple listings, or do a dutch auction, where there are multiple items that are sold for a set bid price? This allows multiple people to get items from same auction.
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