La Identidad de Marca en Acción

Maximizando la Experiencia del Visitante

Diferenciación en un Mar de Competidores

December 21, 2005 – Last week a computer tape containing the names, addresses, account information, payment histories and Social Security Number of 2 million people disappeared while in transit. The tape, which contained data on all of LaSalle Bank’s mortgage customers, had been shipped via DHL to Experian by the bank in November. It then reappeared two days ago.

There are bad dreams, there are nightmares and then there are situations like that of Joanne Sims.

January 6, 2006 – A new credit card scam has appeared in New York and appears to be moving west. Victims of the scam receive a call that they think is from their credit card company. Unfortunately, a lot of people are falling for this new telephone pitch, and having their credit ruined in the process.

January 27, 2006 – Yesterday, the Federal Trade Commission announced that it had reached a settlement agreement to fine ChoicePoint $10 million. The fine is a result of two data breaches last year that exposed personally identifiable financial data of 160,000 consumers to identity thieves. The exposure led to more than 800 cases of identity theft.

January 31, 2006 – In the new year, a variety of state legislatures continue to debate credit freeze law. Among these are states, on opposite sides of the country are working on unique credit freeze solutions. One of them is probably the best credit freeze law proposed in any state. The other is dumbest credit freeze proposal that we have ever seen.

February 9, 2006 – Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan has announced that her office has launched an identity theft hotline. The hotline will be staffed with consumer advocates, with the specific task of assisting victims with repairing their credit. It is the first service of its kind offered by any state in the country.

December 15, 2005 – Yesterday the House of Representatives voted to renew certain provisions of the Patriot Act that are set to expire at the end of this month. The bill now moves to the Senate, where debate is scheduled to begin on Thursday. But in an odd twist, a bipartisan group of six senators is threatening to filibuster the bill unless certain civil liberties guarantees are made. If the bill does make it to a vote, it has the votes to pass. But there is a 50-50 chance that the filibuster will hold which means the New Year could begin with significantly scaled back federal surveillance powers.

December 16, 2005 – In a stunning defeat for the White House, the Senate failed to end a filibuster that is preventing a vote to make sixteen provisions of the Patriot Act permanent law. The provisions, which give the government sweeping search and seizure powers, are due to expire at the end of this month. But a grass roots movement combined with news of abuses of power on the part of the administration, have given civil rights activists real hope that the provisions will never make it to a vote.

January 4, 2006 - Last month, H&R Block sent a promotional mailing to both existing customers and prospects. A portion of the recipients were surprised to find out that their Social Security Numbers were embedded in a string of numbers on the mailing label.

January 9, 2006 - On Friday, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich announced that he wants to ban the unauthorized sale of phone records within his state. The practice, know in the industry as “pretexting”, occurs when someone pretending to be the phone company’s customer calls the phone company and gains access to all of the call information available for the actual customer. Surprisingly, no state currently outlaws this practice. And disturbingly, this lack of regulation has seen the birth of a new cottage industry that allows nearly anyone the purchase the phone records of any person they desire.

January 12, 2006 – New Hampshire’s State Supreme Court has set aside portions of a 2004 state law that protected financial records revealed in divorce proceedings from prying eyes. The law had allowed judges to seal financial records of parties involved in a divorce for any reason.

January 25, 2006 – Last month, just prior to the Congressional holiday recess, renewal efforts for the Patriot Act ground to a halt. The law, which gives the federal government sweeping search and seizure powers that many believe to be unconstitutional, had sixteen very controversial clauses that were due to expire at the beginning of this year. The Bush Administration had been pushing Congress to renew the law in its entirety, and to make it permanent. But when four Republican senators (a so-called “gang of four”) joined with democrats to demand greater protections for individual privacy, they were able to launch a filibuster to prevent a long term renewal of the law. Instead, the Senate and House of Representatives were forced into a compromise that renewed the law until February 3, 2006.

February 14, 2006 – ACCESS has been concerned for months that the State Department’s plan to include RFID chips in passports has not been well thought out. The original plan would have placed an RFID chip in every passport which would have contained unencrypted data about the passport holder. After a storm of protest, the State Department revised the standard to include some encryption. Now, a Dutch television news program has along and broken that encryption in less than two hours. The ramifications of this to passport holders are anything but positive.

August 10, 2005 – There are a lot of people carrying large credit card balances which they will be lucky to pay off in their lifetime. Some consumers are being hit with interest rates in excess of 30% even though they have never been late on their credit card payments. The reason for this is that many credit card companies now use a system called "universal default", which allows them to raise your interest rate for reasons other than being late in the payment of your credit card bill.

If you have overdue books at the local library, you may want to return them now. That’s because a number of cash strapped libraries have started using collection agencies to collect fines and fees that are owed to them for overdue books. And once your name is turned over, there is a pretty good chance that you will find your library fines showing up as unpaid bills on your credit report.

On October 17th a new bankruptcy law goes into effect across the United States. While Congress claimed that the purpose of the law was to crack down on deadbeats, it is apparent that little or no thought went into how the law treats victims of circumstances that are beyond their control. ACCESS has made note on a number of occasions that this group is largely made up of people who lose their jobs and those that lose their medical coverage and then get hit with catastrophic medical bills. But there is another category of people who may wind up getting hit just as hard unless they are truly prepared; homeowners who become victims of natural or manmade disasters.

September 1, 2005 – As of today, residents of every state are eligible to receive their credit reports free of charge from the credit repositories (Experian, Equifax and Trans Union). These free credit reports were mandated by Congress with the passage of the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act (FACTA) in late 2003. Under the law, eligibility to receive free reports was phased in nationally, from west to east.

September 2, 2005 – ACCESS continues to receive a number of complaints about Boyajian Law Offices and JBC. This firm is under investigation in at least 13 states, has lost its license to act as a collection agent in one other, and was recently turned down in its request for a collection license by the state of Connecticut. Consumers are obviously fed-up, but other than complaining to the FTC and their state attorney general, most have felt relatively helpless. Well, there may be something else that you can do.

September 15, 2005 - If you are one of the 35 million Americans who only make minimum payments on your credit cards, you are going to be in for a rude surprise over the next year. The amount that you are going to be required to pay is going to double due to a little publicized federal lending rule that is about to go into effect. Unfortunately, most lenders don’t want you to know about the payment increases until after October 15th. That’s the date that new federal bankruptcy laws go into effect.

January 11, 2006 – If you are missing an old tax refund and wondering when it will show up, the answer may be “never”. That is because the IRS now uses software to identify possible cases of “refund fraud”. Unfortunately, the software appears to be error prone and tax payers are getting caught in the middle.

January 17, 2006 – Three months ago today, the United States new bankruptcy law went into effect. The law was hailed by Congress and the banking industry as a way to crack down on “abuses” by dead-beats who ran up their bills with the intent of never paying them. But if the past three months are any indication, those so called dead-beats are few and far between.

January 30, 2006 – In his State of the Union Speech tomorrow night, President Bush will propose a new approach to dealing with soaring costs associated with health insurance. But the proposal he will make does little to make insurance more affordable at the consumer level, and does nothing to address the underlying causes for the steep rise in insurance prices. Those who don’t have insurance for affordability reasons, or who can’t get it because for some reason they have been declared uninsurable will find virtually no light at the end of the President’s tunnel.

Après une vidéo très détaillée de PIONER lors des événements non-E3 de cet été et une promesse d’ouverture de phases de tests qui n’arrivait toujours pas, on s’était finalement résigné en se disant avec humour « rendez-vous… en 2025 ». Finalement, on était peut-être mauvaise langue car les devs du studio GFAGAMES ont publié un […]

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Hier, GSC Game World a partagé une petite vidéo de gameplay de S.T.A.L.K.E.R. 2: Heart of Chornobyl pour nous parler des armes. Ils nous rappellent que la zone est dangereuse, et qu’il faudra trouver des armes pour se défendre. Il y aura plusieurs types de munitions, et on aura aussi la possibilité d’ajouter des accessoires, […]

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C’est par le biais du compte X de KAMI que l’on a appris que Take-Two avait communiqué sur les dates de sorties prévisionnelles de ses futurs titres. Ce qui nous intéresse particulièrement ici, ce sont Borderlands 4 et Judas. Pendant la séance de questions/réponses de la conférence aux actionnaires du 6 novembre dernier, le CEO indique […]

Cela fait maintenant plus de cinq ans que l’on suit les tribulations de Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines 2. Entre reports et changements de studio, on n’a pas pu oublier le projet, qui semble enfin sérieusement se rapprocher d’une vraie sortie. La dernière fois qu’on vous en parlait, c’était pour l’annonce d’un dernier report à […]

Cela faisait un moment qu’on ne vous avait pas parlé de Hell Let Loose. Et c’est bien dommage, car il reste l’un des meilleurs représentants de sa catégorie : de bonnes sensations et un gameplay tactique, sans pour autant avoir trop de séquences de balade avant de tomber sur de l’action. La semaine dernière, Team […]

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Cela fait quelques années que l’on suit l’ambitieux mod Black Mesa: Blue Shift, qui entreprend de refaire le standalone Half-Life: Blue Shift, sorti en 2001, avec le moteur de Black Mesa, lui-même un remake du légendaire Half-Life, mais en travaillant aussi bien sur l’aspect esthétique que sur le gameplay et le level design. C’est pourquoi […]

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Jim Kloss reacted extensively to some basic questions. Join the discussion ..

What about this special Podcasting Vibe? Everybody involved is buzzing with energy and ideas. Deep irritation about futile mishaps has given way to endless goodwill (ALL crucial systems halt while ipodder starts downloading!!) and most are suddenly blessed with a thick skin and flexible ego (nobody gets mad at Dave Slusher, no matter how hard he tries). Isn't Adam Curry's Daily Source Code above

I'm using Feedburner for months now and haven't noticed a single glitch. That's a good omen for their latest innovation: SmartCast. By introducing SmartCast, Feedburner again stays ahead of the curve. It enables any feed publisher (RSS 1.0 and Atom included!) to create Podcasts: "If a publisher isn't able to create a feed that has the enclosure element, they can use our service and we'll turn it

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