The Survive and Thrive Boomer Guide

CFPB and seven states launch ‘innovation network’ that will approve new risky financial products and protect them from enforcement

Under the Trump administration, the federal agency that’s supposed to protect consumers from Wall Street and financial predators has thought of yet another way to strip consumers of their protections. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB announced Tuesday that, working with seven state regulators, it launched the American Consumer Financial Innovation Network or ACFIN, a network that it said would "enhance coordination among federal and state regulators to facilitate financial innovation."

The CFPB invited all state regulators to join ACFIN, and the attorneys general of Alabama, Arizona, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Utah took the offer.

Consumer advocates criticized the CFPB action because it gives banks, fintech companies, and other corporations no-action letters and approvals that will protect companies from enforcement and determine potentially new risky financial products and services to be in compliance with the law.

Google-YouTube $170 million settlement for violations of kids’ privacy law too weak, critics say

Google and its subsidiary YouTube agreed to pay a record $170 million Wednesday to settle charges by the Federal Trade Commission and New York Attorney General’s Office that YouTube illegally collected personal information from children without their parents’ consent.

The settlement requires Google and YouTube to pay $136 million to the FTC and $34 million to New York for allegedly violating the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act Rule. The $136 million penalty is the largest amount the FTC has gotten in a COPPA case since the law was enacted in 1998.

In a lawsuit filed against the companies, the agencies allege that YouTube violated the COPPA Rule by collecting personal information – identifiers that track users across the Internet – from viewers of child-directed channels, without notifying parents and getting their consent. YouTube earned millions of dollars by using the identifiers – cookies – to deliver targeted ads to viewers, according to the lawsuit.

What to do about your virtual valuables as you get older

As consumers spend more time online and on their devices, they accumulate digital assets. Digital asset are something of value or significance created online or on a mobile phone, laptop, or tablet. 

As consumers age, they may want to consider transferring their digital assets to someone else. They might also want to include something related to their financial life that they may need to refer to later. Examples of digital assets could include the funds in a PayPal account or the downloadable PDF for a yearly tax filing from online tax preparation software.  

Here are tips from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s blog to help you create a plan for your digital assets:

Attorneys general and telecommunications companies join to stop robocalls

Fifty-one attorneys general announced an agreement Thursday with 12 telecommunications providers on a set of principles intended to limit and prevent robocalls. The providers have agreed to incorporate these principles into their business practices.

This agreement comes from the work of a group of attorneys general who in 2018 formed the Robocall Technologies Working Group. The group collaborated with telecommunication providers to make it more difficult for scammers to use robocall technologies to intrude on and defraud consumers.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have joined this agreement with the following telecommunication companies: AT&T, Bandwidth, CenturyLink, Charter, Comcast, Consolidated, Frontier, Sprint, T-Mobile, U.S. Cellular, Verizon, and Windstream.

iBuying costs sellers more, study shows

What is iBuying? iBuyers purchase homes from sellers at a lower than market price based on proprietary algorithms, pay the seller almost immediately, make any needed improvements, then re-sell the homes.

The total cost of using iBuying for home sellers is 13-15 percent of a home’s sale price, according to research by Collateral Analytics.

That compares to a 5-7 percent commission, plus the costs of any needed home repairs or preparation, for a seller working with a traditional real estate agent. In addition, iBuying sellers are freed from the uncertainty of selling their home.

CFPB fails consumers by not carrying out payday lending rule, consumer groups say

Photo: Aliman Senai

Consumer groups urged the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB in a letter sent Monday to take action to carry out the payment requirements in its payday lending rule, whose compliance date was Aug. 19.

These requirements restrict payday and vehicle-title lenders from attempting to withdraw money from borrowers’ bank accounts after two attempts have failed. The safeguards would help consumers avoid fees for unsuccessful debit attempts and possible account closures.

The CFPB is refusing to take steps to carry out the requirements and protect consumers, according to the consumer groups.

Broker in pension scam, who settles with CFPB and Arkansas, unable to pay most of repayment to consumers

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB and the Arkansas Attorney General’s Office filed a proposed settlement Wednesday with a securities broker for allegedly misrepresenting high-interest loans to veterans and other consumers in exchange for future rights to their pensions.

Andrew Gamber and his three companies – Voyager Financial Group, BAIC Inc., and SoBell Corp. – would be banned from the industry if a judge approves the proposed settlement.

The CFPB and the state agency alleged in a lawsuit that Gamber and his companies misrepresented that the contracts were valid when they were actually illegal loans, that the product wasn’t a high-interest loan, and when consumers would receive their funds. They also failed to inform consumers of the interest rate on the loan, according to the lawsuit.

CFPB settles its predatory lending lawsuit against ITT Educational Services

Photo: Dwight Burdette

ITT Educational Services Inc. has agreed to a settlement with the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau or CFPB to resolve the agency’s lawsuit, which alleges that ITT engaged in predatory lending practices in its private loan program.

The CFPB’s lawsuit, filed in federal court in 2014, alleges that ITT helped to create private loan programs for students at ITT Technical Institute, the school run by ITT until it filed for bankruptcy and closed in 2016. The CFPB alleges that ITT improperly induced students to take out those loans to pay the tuition amounts not covered by loans or other tuition assistance from the federal government. The agency’s complaint also alleges that ITT knew that the student borrowers didn’t understand the terms and conditions of the loans and couldn’t afford them, resulting in high default rates.

Are you ready to go back to cable?

It's August, so I guess my Comcast TV contract has run out. How do I know? I got a bill for $185.65 instead of the usual $145.25.

When I first signed up for Comcast in 2008, I chose to get the $99 bundle: $33 for television, $33 for internet, and $33 for a landline phone. Every year or two since then when my contract runs out, I've had to beg, plead, and yell to get Comcast to offer me the $99 bundle again. I have to ask for the supervisor and/or call back another day to try. It's so frustrating. The price for the services should be the price for the services. Having hidden prices is unfair to all customers.

I haven't "cut the cable" because I don't watch much TV. In addition, there isn't a company in my area that's going to be any better than Comcast for providing internet services.

Can you really just go to the Equifax website and get $125?

Although dozens of people have said on Facebook that you can easily get the $125 from the Equifax data breach settlement, the answer is no, you can’t. When you go to the Equifax Data Breach Settlement website to the File a Claim page, you need to list what activities you did related to the breach that cost you money. For up to 10 hours, you don’t need to provide any documentation.

You’ll be asked if you want money or free credit monitoring. If you request money, you have to say that you have credit monitoring for at least six months.

I listed time spent freezing my credit reports, which I did earlier this year. So, we’ll see if I get the $125 or a lesser amount.