News

2022

June

22

• Justice Department and Meta settle landmark housing discrimination case. Facebook-owner Meta agreed to revamp the social network’s targeted advertising system under a sweeping settlement with the U.S. Justice Department, after the company was accused of allowing landlords to market their housing

21

• Customers say banks refuse to pay when money is stolen on Zelle. In recent years, payment apps like Zelle, Venmo and Cash App have become the preferred way for millions of customers to transfer money from one person to another. Banks argue that they shouldn’t

15

• What parents need to know about child ID theft. Kids usually don’t find out they’ve been victims of identity theft until they take a big life step like applying for federal student aid or buying their first car, says the

14

• Doctor check-in software harvests your health data. There’s a burgeoning business in harvesting our patient data to target us with ultra-personalized ads. Patients who think medical information should come from a doctor — rather than a pharmaceutical marketing department —

13

• Cheaper than payday loans, but earned wage access fees can add up. Ryan isn't the only hourly worker using an employer-provided app to tap wages between paychecks. Largely unregulated, these earned-wage access apps have grown in popularity over the last decade as more employers offered them

• Must-pass bills give Congress (another) chance to lower drug costs. (The views expressed by contributors are their own and not the view of The Hill.) These days, it seems like it would be hard to get the majority of Americans to agree about anything. Everywhere

07

• Consumer Action receives contract to help low- and moderate-income clients lower utility bills (The organization will conduct education, outreach and marketing on programs in PG&E service area). Consumer Action will provide targeted populations with information about the California Alternate Rates for Energy (CARE), Family Electric Rate Assistance (FERA) and Energy Savings Assistance (ESA) programs, as well as other programs that help make energy more affordable and efficient for qualifying households.

• Massive rent increases hit mobile homes. Surging home prices and rents are cascading down to the country’s mobile home parks, where heightened demand, low supply and an increase in corporate owners is driving up monthly costs for low-income residents

02

• You can ask Google to take your personal data out of its search results. Google is offering a new tool to anyone who doesn't want their phone number, email or street address and other personal information to be found online: People can ask for their contact details to

• Education Dept. to clear $5.8B in debt of Corinthian Colleges students. The Biden administration will forgive $5.8 billion in debt held by 560,000 former students of the defunct for-profit chain Corinthian Colleges. The decision covers people who were enrolled in Corinthian schools — Everest Institute, WyoTech and Heald

• Nobody reads privacy policies. How to give us real privacy choices.. I applaud Twitter for putting effort into being more understandable. The same goes for Facebook, which last week rewrote its infamous privacy policy to a secondary-school reading level — but also tripled its length to 12,000

May

26

• Twitter pays $150 million penalty for breaking privacy promises again. It’s FTC 101. Companies can’t tell consumers they will use their personal information for one purpose and then use it for another. But according to the FTC, that’s the kind

17

• Buy now, pay dearly?. Buy now, pay later companies like Klarna, Afterpay and Affirm have taken the country by storm ever since the pandemic fueled an online shopping explosion. But offering customers the option to pay for anything from

• Income-targeted student loan forgiveness invites a ‘train wreck' (Michael Stratford, Politico). As President Joe Biden weighs a final decision on canceling “some” amount of federal student loan debt his aides have been working on proposals that would target the relief to certain borrowers, such

11

• Consumers lured Into predatory car repair loans. Auto repair shops affiliated with well-known brands—including AAMCO, Big O Tires, Grease Monkey, Jiffy Lube, Meineke, Midas, and Precision Tune Auto Care—are steering unsuspecting customers into loans charging up to 189 percent

05

• Bank of America to pay $10 million for illegal garnishments. The U.S. Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said it ordered Bank of America to pay a $10-million civil penalty for processing payments to creditors from customers' accounts in 3,700 cases and leaving the customers paying at

01

• Consumer Action INSIDER - May 2022. This month's INSIDER features stories about our recent activities, including a webinar exploring the impact of COVID on small businesses and a project using FinTech to improve financial wellness. Hotline Chronicles relates a woman's difficulty in receiving her income tax refund after attempting to have it sent to a prepaid card. And, we announce new settlements in our Class Action Database.

April

28

• Medicare Advantage plans often deny needed care. Every year, tens of thousands of people enrolled in private Medicare Advantage plans are denied necessary care that should be covered under the program, federal investigators concluded in a report. Advantage plans also refused to

26

• Senators question Zelle over its response to reports of rising fraud. Senators Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts and Bob Menendez of New Jersey took aim at Zelle, the popular money transfer app, warning that it is putting millions of Americans at risk of being defrauded. The lawmakers,

• How to opt out of Venmo’s new arbitration clause. If you use the Venmo app, you probably recently received an email explaining that the company is making changes to its user agreement — including a fairly onerous arbitration clause that, among other things, has