Want to ruin your credit rating this year? Then go ahead and shift all your debt onto a balance transfer credit card. These little pieces of plastic will happily shelter your holiday hangover debt with a 0% APR (during the bonus period) while subtle fees and restrictions slowly work to destroy your finances. Sure, the credit card issuers are marketing them as useful tools for fixing your credit score, not making it worse – but we all know that’s a lie. They really just want to harvest your debt. In fact, there’s a lot more to balance transfer credit cards than you probably know. Don’t believe us? Think back. Try to remember if your card issuer was up-front about these fun facts: [click to continue…]
What would you do if, while you’re busy checking your Facebook news feed, “Facebook Security” suddenly popped up in the chat window and asked you to verify your identity by clicking a link?
Don’t do that.
Especially if some of the characters in their name are ASCII symbols and the link contains a foreign “.vu” address. Especially if the site which the link leads to asks you for your credit card number as proof.
How do people keep falling for these things?
This past week, scammers unleashed a massive phishing scheme designed to pilfer credit card numbers from Facebook’s 800 million users by tricking them into entering the information on a fake website. The news first broke when Kaspersky lab expert David Jacoby reported it on his blog. According to the veteran programmer, the scammer poses as a Facebook security expert and asks you to click a link that looks like a random smattering of letters and numbers. The link redirects you to a site where you’re asked for your email address, password, full name and all the other information a hacker needs to assume your identity. It’s pretty much the same routine as any other phishing scheme. [click to continue…]
