— Cindy Williams @ 12:42 pm — 
April 11, 2011The major lenders use credit scores to make credit and business decisions.
Consumers Try to Adapt to Exorbitant Debit Card Fees 
Within the past few weeks major banks across the USA hikes their fees for using debit cards, while they also discontinued debit card rewards programs. The big banks claim that they had no choice in the matter because they are being overregulated and are losing vital profits, but most consumers consider that a pretty lame excuse.
The fact is that banks are losing profits thanks to the fact that they are finally being forced to stop charging outrageous credit card fees and using sneaky devices to add miscellaneous fees and charges to checking accounts. They can no longer enroll you in an overdraft program without your explicit permission, for example, a strategy that was helping banks make extra money every month on tens of millions of customers. Neither can they raise your credit card rates without warning or for no reason.
“Take control of your online reputation!” urges the new website BrandYourself.
Your name could be one of the 80 million names Googled every day, according to BrandYourself. Founded after CEO Pete Kistler realized his name was the same as that of a convicted felon, BrandYourself became a platform to improve and expand an individual’s online reputation.
BrandYourself has its roots at Syracuse Tech Garden’s student sandbox companies in the summer of 2009. Today, the company continues to receive accolades and honors for its innovation.
The purpose of BrandYourself is to help users improve their entire online reputation from one central online location. Much like MyWebCareer, BrandYourself helps you improve and maintain that reputation through statistics that monitor your brand—as in your Brand Strength, Google Grade, and web mentions. A big dif
There’s a battle raging in America, and it’s not one involving weapons or violence. Rather, the fray is seen in the corporate world, and it’s all about our money.
Now, we’re all used to marketing efforts that encourage us to buy from one company instead of another, but this is a different fight.
This isn’t about where we spend our money, it’s about how we spend it.
Attention around Near Field Communication is growing throughout mainstream media. Even so, many are unaware of its existence and future possibilities.
Simply put, Near Field Communication (NFC) is the ability for two wireless technologies to communicate with one another, typically requiring a proximity of four centimeters or less.
There are dozens of innovative, remarkable uses that could, and eventually will, come from NFC. However, th
The next email bearing my bank’s logo could very well be from a hacker.
Earlier today, Chase sent an email warning of a major theft that could affect me and other bank customers. “Chase is letting our customers know that we have been informed by Epsilon, a vendor we use to send emails, that an unauthorized person outside Epsilon accessed files that included email addresses of some Chase customers,” the email said.
Chase explained that although some customer email addresses were compromised in the breach, the stolen information “did not include any customer account or financial information. Based on everything we know, your accounts and confidential information remain secure.”
Based on news reports, Chase customers aren’t the only ones who have been victimized. According to The Associated Press, financial-service companies such Capital One, Barclays Bank, U.S. Read more…
FICO scores are used by the majority of credit grantors and are used more than any other score brand. FICO credit scores have been used since the late 1980’s and the FICO score has be an industry standard. Lenders benefit from using the scores because they are faster than manual underwriting and yield a more consistent evaluation of the consumer risk, or lack thereof.
More Efficient Than Manual Underwriting
Prior to credit scores, credit grantors manually reviewed applications and credit reports to evaluate risk. This took time and made the credit granting process long and drawn out. Lenders used credit applications, bank account information, credit file information such as past and present payment history, plus their experience to assess risk. They depended upon their previous experience to make a decision.
Now the underwriting process includes FICO scores. The use the same information, plus FICO scores. The