This year, airlines have introduced a new kind of fare, the “Basic Economy” ticket. Passengers with this ticket type board last and, on some airlines, only get to bring one carry-on item on board, paying the same fees as Economy travelers to check other luggage. Some passengers on United or American who didn’t read the fine print are getting hit with fees for bringing extra carry-on bags in addition to the fees for gate-checking those bags.
The Wall Street Journal reports that some passengers who have chosen to save money by booking a basic economy ticket (or who booked one without raelizing it) lose the money they saved when they have to pay to gate-check their carry-ons, in addition to paying a fee for forgetting their lowly status and bringing two carry-ons in the first place.
One traveler described paying $25 for his own carry-on suitcase and $35 for his wife’s, since she had already checked another bag. On top of that, they had to pay an extra $25 fee for each bag for bringing them to the gate.
“Whatever I saved with Basic Economy, I had to pay more, he told the WSJ. “This fee is not at all fair.”
United and American have different names for the same type of fee, calling it a “gate-handling charge” or a “gate service fee.” They mean the same thing, though: It’s the fee that airlines charge you for forgetting that you aren’t allowed to have any space in the overhead bin.
“The whole guiding principle here is that it’s important for Basic Economy passengers to check all bags larger than a personal item,” a spokesman for American told the WSJ.
“We do everything we can to make sure customers do not reach the gate with a bag that needs to be gate-checked,” a United spokeswoman said when asked the same question.
It’s easier for agents at check-in to accept the bags and credit-card transactions, rather than having gate agents taking bags and processing payments closer to takeoff.
Movies and television shows can increase the recognition of otherwise undervalued or appreciated business, industries, or hobbies. However, in the case of the new film It, clowns around the country say they’re losing business.
NBC New York reports that local professional clowns blame It — the latest adaptation of Stephen King’s novel of the same name — for a decrease in business.
The film, which focuses on an evil clown menacing and snatching children in a small Maine town, doesn’t exactly endear clowns to children or their parents.
In the last few weeks, as the promotion of the movie has ramped up, John Nelson says his company, Clowns in Town, has gotten several cancellations.
“Last week, my partner and I had six cancellations of birthday parties,” he said. “I have heard from reports from other clowns, in New York and other cities, that they have been canceled as well.”
These cancellations, he notes, can have a devastating financial impact on the professional clowns, as they are often left empty-handed since they don’t require deposits for booking.
Nelson and other professional clowns say they aren’t going to let that evil Pennywise get the best of them.
Instead, they’ve teamed up to host a rally outside New York’s Union Square Regal Cinema Thursday night, NBC reports.
Of course, the rally might not do too much to woo in customers, as it could exacerbate the fears in some, known as coulrophobia.
The cheating diesels that Volkswagen has bought back as part of its settlement with purchasers are sitting in vehicular purgatories across the country, waiting to be repaired so they can go to new homes. Only some of them were sprung early: 69 “Dieselgate” vehicles were stolen only to turn up with fake Michigan titles at an auto auction in Kentucky.
Volkswagen needs a lot of space to store cars that have its TDI “clean diesel” engines that were cheating on their emissions tests, a global scandal that led to massive penalties, recalls, and even criminal charges against the company and against key executives involved in the scandal.
While a fix has been approved for most of the recalled vehicles, they still remain in vehicular purgatory awaiting repairs. They’re being kept at sites including the port of Baltimore, an Air Force base in California, and the parking lot of the Pontiac Silverdome, former home of the Detroit Lions and Detroit Pistons.
With hundreds of vehicles stashed in the Silverdome lot, someone must have realized that the cars wouldn’t be missed immediately. Indiana state police told WDRB-TV (via Jalopnik) that at least 69 vehicles have disappeared from the lot. The cars were given counterfeit Michigan titles, and were sold at auto auctions in Indiana and Kentucky.
“Volkswagen was keeping track of all these vehicles they were purchasing back or buying back,” a state police officer told the TV station. “When these VIN numbers start[ed] showing up again in their system, that’s when the red flags started flying up.”
Volkswagen was keeping track of these vehicles for exactly this reason, and learned about their whereabouts when the stolen cars legally re-entered state databases after they were inspected.
The seller who brought 32 Volkswagens and Audis to an auction in Kentucky told WDRB through a legal representative that the cars were purchased from “a supplier out of Michigan,” and the seller bought them for around $11,000 each, selling them for around $18,000.
State police in Indiana believe that the people responsible for the actual theft are further up the chain, and that the auto thefts may have been an inside job. The FBI is investigating, but no one has been charged in this case yet.
A fix has been approved for most of the recalled vehicles, which means they could start to be repaired and re-sold soon.
Even if you don’t live anywhere near Kentucky or Indiana, the thefts could affect you, since the vehicles have since made their way across the country. So far, authorities say they are aware of vehicles were sold to dealerships in California and Georgia.
If your car’s title looks sketchy or something seems off, contact the local police or sheriff’s department to the facility that conducted the vehicle’s inspection listed on the title.
We already know that more than 143 million Americans’ personal identify information was compromised as part of Equinox’s two-month-long data breach. If you thought that was bad enough, it gets worse: The credit reporting agency’s lax data security may have affected tens of millions more consumers across the world.
While Equifax previously noted that an undisclosed number of customers in the U.K. and Canada were affected by the breach, Krebs on Security reports the fiasco could go further.
However, it’s not the same two-month-long breach at play, but rather Equinox’s allegedly subpar internal security issues.
Krebs on Security reported Tuesday that Argentina should be added to the list of possible breach sites after security researchers found security gaps in the company’s South America operations.
Researchers at Hold Security claim that an examination of Equifax’s South American operations — known as Veraz — found an online portal that allowed Equifax employees in Argentina to manage credit report disputes was essentially left wide open to ne’er-do-wells.
According to the researchers, the portal contained one of the most easily guessed username/password combinations: admin/admin.
Related: 4 Things To Remember To Avoid Getting Scammed In Wake Of Equifax Breach
The site, which has since been taken down, allowed those with access to view the names of more than 100 Equifax employees, as well as their employee ID and email addresses, Krebs on Security reports.
Using this information, the researchers were able to determine the employees’ usernames and passwords, which just so happened to be a variation of their last name, or their last name and initial.
Worse yet, those with access to the site — which could be anyone if they guess the correct password combination — could view thousands of complaints or disputes submitted by customers.
Krebs notes that this information also included customers’ identity number — Argentina’s version of Social Security numbers. However, it should be noted that this number is already publicly available.
Krebs shared the discovery with Equifax, and the company’s law firm contacted the security expert.
“They later confirmed that the Veraz portal was disabled and that Equifax is investigating how this may have happened,” Krebs writes.
A rep for Equifax tells The BBC that the company acted immediately to address the issue.
“We have no evidence at this time that any consumers or customers have been negatively affected, and we will continue to test and improve all security measures in the region,” the rep said.
Related: Equifax Drops Controversial Condition From Free Credit Monitoring Service
It’s unclear if other countries are affected by this same lax security issue; Krebs notes that Equifax has operations in other South American countries, including Brazil, Chile, Ecuador, Paraguay, Peru, and Uruguay.
“To me, this is just negligence,” Alex Holden, founder of Hold Security, tells Krebs. “In this case, their approach to security was just abysmal, and it’s hard to believe the rest of their operations are much better.”
As for the original data breach Equifax disclosed last week, new estimates claim that at least 44 million consumers in the U.K. were affected.
But those customers might not even know Equifax has their information. That’s because they’re used to dealing with actual U.K. companies that do business with Equifax, including BT (a major British telecommunications firm), Capital One, and British Gas.
A rep for BT tells The Telegraph that it is monitoring the situation closely.
“Like many companies in the UK, BT uses Equifax services. We are working on establishing whether this breach has any impact on those services,” the rep said.
The Telegraph reports that The Information Commissioner’s Office in the U.K. has opened its own investigation into the Equifax breach.
ICO deputy commission James Dipple-Johnstone tells the Telegraph that the office is in contact with Equifax to determine the actual extent of the breach in that country.
“We will be advising Equifax to alert affected UK customers at the earliest opportunity,” he said. “In cyber attack cases that cross borders the ICO is committed to working with relevant overseas authorities on behalf of UK citizens.”
As for those affected in Canada, an estimate is unknown. However, CNN reports that Equifax’s largest customer in the country is the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC). The company says it is investigating the situation.
The federal government needs antivirus and malware protection at least as much as any other large organization, if not more. But now, after first stopping new purchases, and then asking private business to cut ties, the feds are officially blocking any government use of Kaspersky Lab products, citing security concerns over the company’s reported ties to the Kremlin.
The Department of Homeland Security today issued a binding operational directive — that’s an order, to most of us — requiring all federal agencies to excise Kaspersky software from their systems.
Agencies have 30 days to identify if they’re using any Kaspersky products, 60 days to come up with a detailed plan how to stop and switch if they are, and 90 days to begin implementing the plan to give Kaspersky the boot.
“This action is based on the information security risks presented by the use of Kaspersky products on federal information systems,” DHS writes. “The risk that the Russian government, whether acting on its own or in collaboration with Kaspersky, could capitalize on access provided by Kaspersky products to compromise federal information and information systems directly implicates U.S. national security.”
Kaspersky isn’t some new startup. The company has been offering its suite of antivirus and security products in the U.S. for nearly 20 years. They’re generally well-regarded, considered to be at least as good as the competition when it comes to features and price.
But there’s one big factor that’s become a big problem, in this deeply weird modern era we’re all living through: The company and its founder, Eugene Kaspersky, are Russian, and the company and its products have recently come under scrutiny as a result.
Since 2015, several reports have surfaced that Eugene Kaspersky has ties to Russian military intelligence. Any potential vulnerabilities related to using the software stemming from those ties were by and large minimized or ignored, though… until recently.
It’s been a rough summer for Kaspersky.
In May, the Senate Intelligence Committee held a hearing at which the heads of several intelligence agencies told Senators they were monitoring Kaspersky Lab and had concerns about the security of its products.
Then in July, on the heels of a report from Bloomberg Businessweek claiming that Kaspersky — both the company and the man — still had ties to Russian intelligence, the feds removed Kaspersky products from the approved list government agencies can buy from.
In August, that was followed by a report that the FBI was asking private-sector companies to stop buying and using Kaspersky products. Then earlier this week, Best Buy became the first major retailer to pull Kaspersky software from its shelves.
There’s no doubt that LaCroix — the comeback kid that transformed from the seltzer your mom drank to a ubiquitous libation treasured anew by the millennial gang — has amassed a dedicated following recently in the U.S. But that devotion doesn’t mean its fans know what the “essence” is in the carbonated drinks — and no one really seems to care.
On every can of zero-calorie fizzy water, “natural flavor” is listed under ingredients, whether it’s tangerine or graprefuit. According to LaCroix’s website, those “natural flavors” are “derived from the natural essence oils extracted from the named fruit” used in each flavor.
The Wall Street Journal embarked on a quest to find out what, exactly, “essence” is — and found it wasn’t easy to nail down.
First of all, “essence” is not a term defined by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, although the agency allows companies to plaster it on products when describing “flavoring constituents derived from a spice, fruit or fruit juice, vegetable or vegetable juice, edible yeast, herb, bark, bud, root, leaf or similar plant material, meat, seafood, poultry, eggs, dairy products, or fermentation products thereof.”
LaCroix wasn’t particularly helpful when the WSJ inquired after the true nature of “essence.”
“Essence is our picture word,” a LaCroix spokesman told the WSJ, adding, ““Essence is—FEELINGS and Sensory Effects!”
Okay then.
Food industry executives and scientists, however, say that essence is a clear, concentrated natural chemical, and has been used in everything from gravy to shampoo over the years.
It’s created by heating parts of fruits or vegetables — skins, rinds, what-have-you — at a high temperature. The resulting vapors are then captured, condensed, and sold in 55-gallon barrels, reports the WSJ.
Despite this mystery, it seems like most people aren’t up in arms about the nature of “essence.”
“I know what flavors I like but I have no idea what kinds of chemicals are in there and I don’t care,” one fan told the WSJ. “I know it tastes good.”
“Essence is fairies in a warehouse somewhere dancing with fruits, and suddenly you have this amazing drink,” another said.
Everyone who flies, but who doesn’t have deep enough pockets to travel exclusively in first class, knows it: Airplanes are increasingly crowded and unpleasant. But is that frustrating lack of legroom actually endangering your life when you fly?
The Daily Beast reports today that based on more than 900 pages of Department of Transportation and FAA documents it reviewed, that coach may simply be so crowded that it’s no longer safe in the event of an emergency.
It’s no secret that coach has steadily been getting more crowded for years.
Seat pitch in particular — the distance between your seat and the seat in front of you — has been putting the squeeze on consumers for decades.
In 1985, that depth measured between 31 and 36 inches on the major airlines; by 2014, it was down to the 30-33 inch range. Budget carrier Sprint crams their seats in even more shallowly, with a seat pitch of 28 inches, while American recently abandoned a plan to drop their economy seat pitch to 29 inches.
Seats are also significantly narrower. Thirty years ago, they measured an average of 19 to 20 inches across; these days, they’re as low as 16.5 inches and average 17-18 inches wide.
In Aug. 2015, an organization called Flyers Rights called on the Federal Aviation Administration to start making rules about seat pitch. Flyers Rights claimed that it wasn’t just a matter of convenience and comfort, but literally one of health and safety: Decreased space could make evacuations more difficult, they argued, as well as increase the risk of blood clots forming in the legs of passengers trapped in tiny seats for long-duration flights.
After a lengthy legal back-and-forth, the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled earlier this year that the FAA needs to at least give serious consideration to the Flyers’ Rights petition, even if ultimately declines to make a rule about minimum allowable seat pitch.
The Daily Beast reports that one of the reasons the FAA may have tried to dismiss Flyers Rights’ claims out of hand is because none of the safety testing actually lines up with the current configuration of planes and passengers.
“All of the tests designed to achieve the fastest possible evacuations were devised decades before” density began to skyrocket and seat size began to shrink, the Daily Beast writes.
As a result, it’s impossible to know if everyone really can evacuate a fully-packed jet under current seating conditions based on the tests that are currently done — especially as many tests are kept proprietary and internal by the airlines and manufacturers that conduct them.
Of particular concern are the individual seat-back TV screens that airlines increasingly use. Sure, they’re convenient for catching an in-flight film or ordering a snack, but the combination of “TV” and “head” is not a healthy one.
Department of Transportation documents the Daily Beast examined revealed that testing seat-back screens for blunt trauma impact destroyed so many screens that the FAA started allowing manufacturers to test with cheaper replicas, instead. Why? Because dummies’ heads were whamming into them with alarming frequency.
For your safety, in a crash or otherwise problematic landing, you’re supposed to put yourself in the brace position to protect your head. But DOT diagrams show that simple geometry means that with low seat pitch, you literally don’t have enough space to do so.
The FAA has until Dec. 28 to respond to the Flyers Rights’ petition with “a properly reasoned disposition of the petition’s safety concerns about the adverse impact of decreased seat dimensions and increased passenger size on aircraft emergency egress.”
In English, that means the agency has to explain why it’s fine for them not to make rules about seat size or pitch, and ignore how densely packed airplanes are getting to be.
You might call them bodegas, corner stores or convenience stores, but you’re probably familiar with that one locally owned store that has exactly what you need at the odd hour when you needed it. They’re more common in cities than elsewhere, but there’s a startup out to replace them entirely — with giant minibars.
Maybe the minibar comparison isn’t quite fair, but that’s how these vending machines, called Bodegas, work. Customers can unlock the box with an app, and then cameras inside the box record what items they take. Those items are charged to the account that opened the box. Simple!
The company launched this week with 50 boxes in and near San Francisco, and aspires to have thousands more.
“Eventually, centralized shopping locations won’t be necessary, because there will be 100,000 Bodegas spread out, with one always 100 feet away from you,” one of the cofounders told Fast Company.
The idea seems perfect for the privileged, super-connected environment of a college dorm, unless you’ve ever spent time around drunk 19-year-olds, who could easily demolish the glass-fronted machine. The company also suggests placing the machines in offices, apartment buildings, and gyms.
What do all of those buildings have in common? They limit access to members, residents, and employees. Vending machines with essential items are something that we need more of, like the planned CVS kiosks, but centralized shopping locations will always be essential for some people. Not everyone even has a smartphone, let alone lives in a building with its own mini robo-store.
While the cofounders say they did research indicating that most Hispanic Americans don’t object to having a tech business use the term, one influential grandson of a bodega owner does object.
Frank Garcia, chair New York State Coalition of Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, told Fast Company that he would consider lobbying to limit the company’s access to commercial properties in New York state.
“To me, it is offensive for people who are not Hispanic to use the name ‘bodega,’ to make a quick buck. It’s disrespecting all the mom-and-pop bodega owners that started these businesses in the ’60s and ’70s.”
While we generally wouldn’t object to a company using a cat as a mascot, in this case it’s controversial, since the business wants to replace the stores where those cats work and live.
Although it’s illegal for a police officer to search your electronic devices without a warrant — even after you’re arrested — the Department of Homeland Security says warrantless searches of digital content are allowed at any U.S. border. Privacy advocates and civil rights organizations are now suing the agency, claiming that border protection officers should also have a warrant before they’re allowed to search through residents’ laptops and phones.
On Wednesday, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the American Civil Liberties filed a lawsuit [PDF] in federal court in Massachusetts against the DHS, claiming that warrantless searches of digital violate the First and Fourth amendments.
The suit was filed on behalf of 11 Americans — 10 U.S. citizens and one lawful permanent resident — who were reentering the country from business or personal travel when border officers searched their devices.
In Aug. 2009, the Department of Homeland Security clarified to [PDF] its Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agencies the government’s official position that warrantless searches of digital content were allowed at the border.
“In the course of a border search, with or without individualized suspicion, an Officer may examine electronic devices and may review and analyze the information encountered at the border, subject to the requirements and limitations provided herein and applicable law,” reads the DHS directive.
Five years later, the U.S. Supreme Court unanimously held in Riley v. California that police must have a warrant to search someone’s phone, even after that person has been arrested. This decision was an acknowledgement of the phone’s changing, now vital, role in daily life.
“Today’s electronic devices contain troves of data and personal information that can be used to assemble detailed, comprehensive pictures of their owners’ lives,” the lawsuit notes, calling government scrutiny of electronic devices “an unprecedented invasion of personal privacy and a threat to freedom of speech and association.”
The lawsuit notes that unlike other belongings travelers have with them, their electronic devices contain a whole lot of personal information including messages to loved ones, private photographs, and sensitive medical, legal, and financial information.
RELATED: Can Border Patrol Agents Search The Data Your Phone Stores In The Cloud?
“The volume and detail of personal data contained on these devices provides a comprehensive picture of travelers’ private lives, making mobile electronic devices unlike luggage or other items that travelers bring across the border,” the complaint says.
Not only is it a privacy issue, note advocates, but warrantless searches could have a chilling effect on free speech: If your phone or laptop could be searched at any time — revealing who you’re talking to or what you’ve said on social media, you might be less likely to express yourself freely.
“One of the concerns here is that when you have a regime of warrantless searches, people will think twice about who they can communicate with if they know the government can look at their phones,” ACLU attorney Esha Bhandari explained on a conference call with media.
She notes that some of the plaintiffs are journalists and artists, who are concerned about the impact of such searches when they may have source information and sensitive work products on their devices.
Requiring border offers to get a warrant will protect privacy and reduce the chilling of first amendment rights, the advocates say.
According to the lawsuit, the number of electronic device searches at the border have been steadily increasing over the last few years: Customs and Border Protection officers conducted 8,503 electronic device searches in fiscal year 2015; in 2016 that number grew to 19,033; and in the first half of fiscal year 2017, they conducted almost 15,000 searches of this kind. That puts the CBP on track to conduct more than three times the number of searches it did just two years ago.
RELATED: Proposed Bill Would End Warrantless Searches Of Cellphones At U.S. Borders
Thus far, the government hasn’t provided any information on how many of those searches were performed on citizens or lawful permanent residents.
To that end, in March, a free speech group called Knight First Amendment Institute filed a lawsuit seeking to compel the DHS to make relevant records about electronic device searches at the border available to the public.
The 11 plaintiffs in this case — none of whom were subsequently accused of any wrongdoing — detailed their experiences with CBP officers in today’s lawsuit, claiming that often their devices were held for hours or even months with no explanation.
Plaintiff Diane Maye, an assistant professor of homeland security at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University and a former Air Force captain who spent a decade working for the defense industry — including an 18-month stint in Iraq — says her phone was searched by CBP officers after she flew into Miami on her way home from Norway last year.
Exhausted after 24 hours of continuous travel, she says she needed to communicate with her husband, who was waiting for her.
She said she was confined in a small room and told to unlock her phone and laptop computer, and that she watched while they searched her devices. They then took her phone for two hours, she claims.
“As I sat in the interrogation room, I felt violated,” she told reporters today, saying she imagined officers going through her photos, banking information, social media, and other information. “This was my life, and a border agent held it in the palm of his hand.”
Akram Shibly, an independent filmmaker who lives in upstate New York, said he was crossing the U.S. border from Canada when he was detained for two hours after CBP demanded he unlock his phone.
“I feared that refusing their demands would result in them holding me at the border indefinitely,” he said today. After two hours, he says he was eventually allowed to leave.
But a few days later, he was once again detained and told to surrender his phone.
“When I refused, three agents used force against me,” he claims: One started to choke him, he alleges, while another restrained his arms and legs, and a third took his phone out of his pocket.
The device was later returned to him “without any explanation,” he says.
“I joined this lawsuit so other people don’t have to have to go through what happened to me,” Shibly said. “Border agents should not be able to coerce people into providing access to their phones, physically or otherwise.”
According to the lawsuit another plaintiff, Suhaib Allababidi, said his locked phone — which he declined to unlock — was confiscated by CBP officers in January after he flew in from Dubai. While the government returned another, unlocked phone he had with him two months after the incident, his locked phone has still not been returned to him.
The lawsuit seeks to establish that the government must have a warrant based on probable cause to suspect a violation of immigration or customs laws before conducting such searches.
The issue of warrantless searches will no doubt heat up as technology continues to advance.
For example — what will happen if a police officer or CBP agent can simply wave your iPhone X in front of your face, enabling its facial recognition technology to unlock your phone?
“There is some question whether or not they could get you to scan your face or your fingerprint,” Susan Hennessey, a fellow at the Brookings Institution and a managing editor of Lawfare, a leading national security blog, told The Washington Post. “Ultimately, this is the next development in the already existing, open legal question.”
Six months after federal regulators accused a group of online marketers of promoting deceptive “free” and “risk-free” trials of golf and kitchen products, the companies have agreed to pay hefty fines and revamp their billing practices to settle the allegations.
The Federal Trade Commission announced today a $2.5 million settlement with a group of online marketers accused of deceiving consumers about the actual cost of supposedly free cooking gadgets, golf equipments, and access to related subscription services.
The FTC’s original complaint [PDF] — which names Brian Bernheim, Joshua Bernheim, Jared Coates, Robert Koch AAFE Products Corp., JBE International LLC, BSDC Inc., KADC Inc., Purestrike Inc., and BNRI Corp., formerly known as Bernheim and Rice Inc., as defendants — accused the companies of luring consumers with “free” and “risk-free” trials that were neither free, nor risk-free.
The companies marketed their products under various names, including Kitchen Advance, Gourmet Cooking Online, Gourmet Cooking Rewards, Medicus Golf, Kick X Tour Z Golf Balls, Golf Online Academy, Golf Tour Partners, and Purestrike Swing Clinic.
According to the complaint, the companies used TV Infomercials, websites, and emails to mislead consumers into believing that the products and services being advertised were free.
In reality, the companies charged consumers’ stored credit cards for the products if they did not cancel their “free trials” or return the “free” products in a certain amount of time, the FTC claims.
For example, the website for Tour Z Golf Balls makes a prominent claim that consumers can try the product for “FREE!” followed by an “Add to Cart” button.
The trial offer, however, was not free if customer did not cancel and return the golf balls within a prescribed amount of time, according to the complaint.
In another instance, the FTC found that the company’s “bundled” offers — which included one product combined with free trial offers for one or more continuity plans — automatically enrolled customers into programs they were unaware of.
For example, one of the company’s websites bundled an offer to sell a Culinary Torch product with free trial offers for two online cooking subscriptions.
The FTC claimed that the marketers failed to provide adequate disclosures or obtain consumers’ consent before enrolling them in an online subscription program on a free trial basis for 30 days to 60 days at a cost of $9.95 per program for each 30 days unless canceled.
Additionally, the complaint alleged that during the purchasing process, the companies sign consumers up for more “free trials” after forcing them to click through as many as 14 upsell pages to reach the final confirmation page.
Canceling the programs and other product shipments was easier said than done, according to the FTC, as the companies often buried the process in the fine print that could only be reached through a small hyperlink.
The FTC claimed that cancellation and return requirements, and other information were not disclosed in a manner that consumers could reasonably see, read, or understand.
Under the FTC’s settlement, the defendants are prohibited from misrepresenting the cost of any good or service, that consumers will not be charged, that consumers can get something for a processing or shipping fee with no further obligation, and that a product or service is free.
The companies must also clearly disclose important details about any online negative option where customers’ enter billing information. The marketers must also get customers’ informed consent before charging them, and offer a simply way to cancel any recurring charges.
The orders also bar them from billing consumers who were first charged before March 1, 2016, and from selling or otherwise benefitting from consumers’ personal information and failing to dispose of it properly.
Finally, the FTC has fined operators a total of $2.5 million. Brian Bernheim and Joshua Bernheim must pay [PDF] a $1.86 million judgment in four installments within one year, while Robert Koch must pay [PDF] $632,000 in three installments over one year.
Earlier this week, several cruise lines sent ships to rescue people stranded on Caribbean islands after Hurricane Irma ravaged the area. Hotel mega-chain Marriott attempted to undertake a similar rescue mission to St. Thomas, but that effort has come under fire, after some stranded tourists claim they were denied boarding simply because they weren’t guests of the hotel.
ABC News reports that about 30 people were denied boarding on a U.S. Coast Guard boat chartered by Marriott for the purpose of picking up guests stranded on St. Thomas.
The guests were unable to leave the island before Irma’s arrival because the island’s airport had closed.
With the island suffering significant damage during the storm, the hotel decided to take matters into its own hands and pick up the guests themselves.
Except, not everyone was welcome. About three dozen tourists were left behind again, when security denied them boarding because their name was not on Marriott’s guest manifest.
One stranded tourist shared a video on Facebook, showing the boat — which they claim had hundreds of empty seats — pull away from St. Thomas.
“We just felt hopeless,” one stranded tourist tells The Washington Post. “We didn’t need a whole lot. But it was really hard to see people with kids and elderly people who don’t have anywhere to stay get turned away by this boat… For some people, that was the only [glimmer] of hope. After the boat left, they just felt hopeless and helpless.”
To make matters worse, those left waiting on St. Thomas’ dock were facing another brewing storm: Hurricane Jose was thought at the time to be approaching the island, exasperating the already desperate situation. Hurricane Jose eventually changed course, sparing the island.
Marriott defended its actions, claiming that tit did not have authorization to take passengers who weren’t staying at the hotel.
The company said that while it wanted to help the other tourists stranded on the island, that wasn’t an option.
“We very much wanted to assist these other travelers to Puerto Rico, however, the Marriott team on-the-ground was told they had no authorization to board additional passengers who were not on the manifest. This was enforced by dock security,” the company told ABC in a statement.
The boat also couldn’t wait at the dock to receive authorization, the company says, noting that with Hurricane Jose making its way toward the island, Marriott was told to leave the port by nightfall.
“We knew that it was in our best interests and in the best interests of our guests to get that ship out of there that night,” Tim Sheldon, president of the Caribbean and Latin America region for Bethesda, Md.-based Marriott International, told the Post.
While we might dream of a day where we can sit behind the wheel of a vehicle reading a book or watching a movie, all while the car drives itself, that day remains many moons away. But here’s the thing about technology — it changes, and it changes quickly. To that end, federal safety regulators are working to ensure that carmakers create safe systems to prepare for the day that self-driving vehicles are actually on the road. There’s a catch, though: It’s all voluntary.
I’m sure you’re thinking, “But what about Tesla’s Autopilot, doesn’t that count as a self-driving car that’s already on the road?”
Tesla’s Autopilot feature is not entirely self-driving. Instead, it is considered a semi-autonomous assisted-steering feature that isn’t totally hands-off.
Currently, Autopilot will let vehicles “steer within a lane, change lanes with the simple tap of a turn signal, and manage speed by using active, traffic-aware cruise control.” It also has other features, like auto-braking, collision avoidance, and automated parallel parking.
Last year, Tesla rolled out a new feature that gives the car the ability to be fully autonomous, but that technology isn’t live right now.
The system will feature eight surround cameras that provide 360 degrees of visibility around the car; 12 ultrasonic sensors that will allow for the detection of objects at nearly twice the distance of the current Autopilot system; and a forward-facing radar that can process driving conditions such as fog, rain, and dust.
Despite launching the pumped-up feature, Tesla said at the time that the system won’t actually be turned on anytime soon.
“Before activating the features enabled by the new hardware, we will further calibrate the system using millions of miles of real-world driving,” the company said.
As we can see with Tesla’s technology and the plethora of self-driving vehicles being tested — with drivers behind the wheel — by automakers and technology companies around the country, it’s clear that one day, maybe in the not-too-distant future, fully autonomous vehicles will be a reality.
To that end, federal safety regulators and lawmakers are already working to craft guidelines and regulations related to these future vehicles.
On Wednesday, the Department of Transportation and National Highway Traffic Safety Administration released “Automated Driving Systems: A Vision for Safety 2.0” [PDF], a guidance that simply gives recommendations for carmakers, tech companies, and state regulators on how to deal with self-driving vehicles.
The guidance, which is a revision of a similar policy released by the previous administration in Sept. 2016, is completely voluntary, and the companies won’t face any kind of action if they don’t comply with the suggestions.
The voluntary guidance contains 12 priority safety elements that carmakers are urged to consider and use in the design of their systems.
The 12 elements include determining where the vehicle can operate safely, how vehicles can recover from errors or obstacles, how vehicle safety is validated, and how to ensure cybersecurity.
But again, if they don’t use these elements, that’s fine too, according to the DOT and NHTSA.
Additionally, the guidance encourages, but doesn’t require, companies to disclose Voluntary Safety Self-Assessments demonstrating their varied approaches to achieving safety in the testing and deployment of ADSs.
While the 2.0 guidance incorporates much of the same points as the previous policy — which was also voluntary — it does eliminate elements related to privacy.
Related: How Much Control Do You Actually Have Over Your Private Data?
The agencies note that “privacy is not directly relevant to motor vehicle safety,” adding that the Federal Trade Commission is charged with protecting consumer privacy.
While NHTSA and the DOT note that self-driving vehicles aren’t arriving in showrooms tomorrow, they are coming.
With that in mind, consumer advocates urge the agencies to take real, tangible steps to oversee automated vehicles.
Our colleagues at Consumers Union called the latest guidelines a weakening in oversight, adding that the guidance is a step backward for consumer safety.
“Self-driving cars have enormous potential to improve mobility and safety on our roads,” David Friedman, director of cars and product policy and analysis for Consumers Union, said in a statement. “But innovation must be accompanied by sensible, strong federal oversight. The Department of Transportation should be asking more of automakers, not less.”
NHTSA should work to protect consumers and ensure that automated systems work as they should, Friedman notes. As it stands, the new guidelines minimize the information carmakers provide, which could prevent the agency from determining when a system puts consumer safety at risk.
“It wouldn’t serve consumers if NHTSA were to be an agency that only takes action once people are being injured or killed,” William Wallace, policy analyst for CU, said in a statement.
NHTSA and the DOT aren’t the only ones working — even in a hands-off manner — to address self-driving technology and safety.
Last week, the House of Representatives passed the Self-Drive Act, intended to bolster and increase the creation of self-driving features and vehicles based on the notion that such vehicles would one day make the roads safer.
However, the legislation promotes the creation of these safety systems by allowing NHTSA to provide companies with exemptions to safety standards. Currently, NHTSA provides about 2,500 exemptions to companies each year; under the legislation, that number would increase to 100,000 exemptions in three years.
Lawmakers believe that such exemption will bolster carmakers’ ability to test and develop new self-driving technology.
Our colleagues at CU, on the other hand, note [PDF] that while the Act would benefit consumer safety there are concerns that it would also open regulatory gaps and fail to adequately protect consumers from vehicle safety hazards.
CU recommends that no exemptions should be made that would undermine impact protection for occupants, and exemptions would be limited to equipment required exclusively for the driving task that can be replaced by automation.
We have a question for Denny’s about its new hat-wearing sausage link mascot: What were you thinking?
The internet has come out with all its best poop jokes after Twitter users started noting that the restaurant’s somewhat new mascot looks an awful lot like an animated piece of human feces.
The derision actually started a few weeks ago but has only recently caused a veritable poo-storm on Twitter.
I had this same thought today 🤦
♂️ http://pic.twitter.com/4QVuNpgE6o
— SeanGallimore (@SeanGallimore) September 10, 2017
The inspiration for Denny's new sausage mascot
@DennysDiner http://pic.twitter.com/nkDkscxviH
— Rosie Russell (@rosierussell123) September 13, 2017
Unsurprisingly, there are more than a few references to Mr. Hanky The Christmas Poo from the show South Park:
Overheard: "How much do you think @DennysDiner paid for a turd-look-a-like mascot?" A: "Millions paid for people not to think." http://pic.twitter.com/dH2YpUalg2
— Ingrid
(@imijmoran) September 12, 2017
We’ve reached out to Denny’s to ask about how it decides what kinds of corporate branding to introduce, and if it has any response to the public’s reaction thus far.
While one of the chain’s regional competitors, Meijer, took the unusual step of abolishing the plus-size department and sorting clothes by style rather than by size, Kmart is trying something different: The retailer is renaming the section “Fabulously Sized,” while expanding how many of its clothing items are available in, um, fabulous sizes.
The idea, Kmart’s chief marketing officer explained to Forbes, is to make more of its items available in a full range of sizes, up through 5X, which usually converts to a size 30 or 32.
This includes wide-width shoes, larger-sized lingerie, and making its whole store-brand Jaclyn Smith and Basic Editions lines available in extended sizes.
“When we reached out to our members on social media, they told us we needed to have a better assortment and that we should we call [the plus-size section] something different,” head marketer Kelly Cook told the magazine.
While a nice publicity stunt, the change does raise questions: Are women who wear smaller sizes less fabulous? Does fabulousness rise exponentially with one’s dress size?
Twitter users, when not making jokes about rebranding adult-onset diabetes as “fabulous,” found this to be kind of a nice move at best, and condescending at worst.
As someone who is plus sized, don't call it fabulously sized. That's ridiculous. Just extended regular sizes from small to 5x. That's all. https://t.co/v9exhJFhfZ
— Lauren
(@stageleftlauren) September 13, 2017
If Kmart wants to be “size-positive” and inclusive, they could just call it all “clothes” without having separate racks or sections. As the number of physicial Kmart stores across the country decreases, customers will be checking out these lines online more often than they’ll be browsing a Kmart store in person.
Yet Cook told Women’s Wear Daily (via Bustle) that the chain’s older customers prefer having a separate section for plus sizes, making it easier to find which items are available in their size.
What the chain should be careful to avoid is churning out clothes that are just items in misses’ sizes scaled up, and make sure to bring in fit models who are actually larger women. Otherwise, it will just end up with racks of larger clothes that don’t flatter anyone.
While it’s convenient to live near the airport when it comes time to take a trip, it’s not always ideal for folks who have to deal with the noise of planes flying overhead day in and day out. That’s why Maryland’s governor is urging his state to sue the federal government: Airport traffic is making the state’s residents miserable.
Gov. Larry Hogan asked Attorney General Brian Frosh to sue the Federal Aviation Administration over the noise from aircraft heading in and out of both BWI-Marshall Airport and Reagan National Airport, writing in a letter [PDF] on Tuesday that many Marylanders are “miserable in their own homes with louder and more frequent flights which now rattle windows and doors.”
Hogan says residents are “suffering from the adverse effects” of the implementation of a program called the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), which instituted new departure and arrival routes from both airports.
Those changes, he writes, “have caused a significant increase in noise pollution for many of our citizens.”
“Instituted at the request of Congress, NextGen, both nationally and in Maryland, was intended to modernize flight patterns in order to save fuel costs,” Hogan says. “Promoted heavily by commercial air carriers, it has been controversial from its inception and widely criticized for insufficient study, notice, and outreach to the general public and the affected jurisdictions.”
Hogan claims that notice to Maryland was “inadequate,” and instead was designated just to ensure speedy approval of the plan, “rather than to promote community input and discussion.”
And on the other side of the state line in Virginia, residents dealing with airport noise from Reagan have also been complaining that the noise is getting worse. Some say their legislators aren’t listening.
“It’s pretty deafening here when they’re flying over here. It’s very disturbing and it goes on past 11 p.m. They start sometimes at 6 a.m. It’s a very loud and disturbing,” one local told The Connection, adding that the FAA is refusing to listen to those living south of the airport, and that her local state lawmakers appear to be missing in action.
It’s not just these airport that are causing noise problems, Hogan notes in his letter, citing a U.S. Court of Appeals ruling in favor of the City of Phoenix. That court found that the FAA’s approval of flight paths over the city were “arbitrary and capricious,” forcing the FAA to return to routes it previously had in place until it conducts a new environmental review process.
“As elected leaders of this state, we cannot allow this situation to stand” in Maryland, Hogan writes.
In a statement to Consumerist, an FAA spokeswoman noted that the agency encouraged the Maryland Aviation Administration to create a Community Roundtable — which it did — “to ensure that all of the communities affected by any existing or proposed flight routes are represented.”
“The FAA is committed to hearing the community’s concerns and to fully and fairly consider any formal Community Roundtable-endorsed changes,” she said.
She also referred to an Aug. 3 letter PDF to Gov. Hogan, wherein FAA administrator Michael Huerta acknowledged that the agency’s community outreach has found that “participating communities believe our methodology for calculating noise is unfair. ”
“Due to their input, we are conducting research and updating tools with the latest methodologies to ensure use of the most accurate noise modeling possible,” Huerta wrote.
However, the process to examine the airports’ procedures is going to take at least a year and a half, he noted, so in the interim, the agency is “also looking at what, if any, shorter term efforts are possible.”
The agency promised to work with the community to find a solution, but said “reverting to the flight paths and procedures that existed prior to the implementation of the DC Metroplex project is not possible.”
Health coverage has been in the news in a big way this year, thanks to Republican-led efforts in Congress to repeal the Affordable Care Act (ACA) throughout the spring and summer. That plan ultimately failed, but both sides of the political aisle do agree on one thing: There’s a lot of room to go on improving health care access and containing medical costs. A new rallying cry has risen up among Democrats: Time for single-payer! But what does that actually mean — and what could it look like?
At its most basic, single-payer healthcare is the idea that one single entity — generally a government body or agency — receives and handles everyone’s healthcare bills. All treatment is paid for from a single body, which in turn is financed by taxes. Basically, there’s one insurer, everyone can use it, and it covers most or all preventative and medically necessary treatments.
That’s in contrast to the multi-payer system we currently have in the U.S., where you and one or more insurance companies split up the bills for any services you receive.
For example, if a physician bills you $1,000 for a procedure, you might be expected to pay anywhere from 10% to 50% of the cost, with your insurer picking up the remaining tab. It gets even more complicated depending what kind of treatment you’re seeking, what the specific terms of your annual deductible and out-of-pocket cap are, and how many entities are involved in providing your care, but the general principle holds.
Related: How surprise medical bills knock consumers down
The term “single-payer” often gets interchanged with “universal healthcare,” but no, the two are not the same. A national single-payer plan would almost certainly be universal (although the law could, for whatever reason, choose to exclude certain groups — limiting coverage to documented citizens, for example), but there are alternative ways to produce universal or near-universal coverage as well.
Germany, for example, has universal coverage through a multi-payer system that operates in a complex public/private partnership. Health care is provided by private doctors and is paid for by “sickness funds” — one of a couple hundred insurance carriers, basically — that get their funding not from taxes but from employer and employee premiums. Conceptually, it’s not unlike the system the U.S. has been heading towards since the ACA took effect in 2014.
But Germany’s plan differs from the United States in that the statutory insurance doesn’t come with enormous, ever-growing co-pays, deductibles, and co-insurance like most private American plans do. When you’re covered, you’re covered, with nominal extra fees.
That’s different from something like the UK’s National Health Service (NHS). In Britain, you can receive care in NHS hospitals with NHS doctors and nurses working directly there, as government employees. Other practitioners may own private practices, but contract with the NHS to receive payment for services rendered.
Canada has something in between: Anyone in the country can apply for public health insurance. Each province has its own insurance plan, which then reimburses providers in private practice for most services they provide.
In the U.S., we do have limited public insurance for qualified groups, through Medicare and Medicaid. One way that some single-payer advocates suggest the U.S. achieve single-payer coverage would be through expanding those programs universally; the rallying cry is “Medicare for all.”
In a broad sense, yes, it’s currently the most popular proposal for implementing single-payer care in the United States. As always, though, the devil is in the details.
Medicare, New York Magazine notes, is not exactly easy to expand. It probably won’t scale very well, and it’s fairly confusing even for the millions who rely on it.
Medicare recipients also still often owe significant co-pays and other out-of-pocket costs, NY Mag adds, which pretty much defeats the goal most of those who rally around single-payer care hope to achieve. What’s more, many critical aspects of care — dental and vision care, among them — aren’t included, and many participants (seniors) supplement their Medicare with private insurance.
Realistically, then, many single-payer proposals being bandied about come closer to being a universal Medicaid expansion rather than a universal Medicare one.
However, the phrase, “Medicare for all” tends to perform better in opinion polls than alternate phrasing, the Kaiser Family Foundation has found. Democrats (the party more likely to act in favor of some kind of universal care) in particular feel negatively about terms like “socialized medicine,” where majorities feel much more warmly about “Medicare-for-all.”
A rapidly-growing slice of the American public, for one thing.
Data from the Pew Research Center, in June of this year, found that overall, 58% of respondents to a national survey felt that providing health care to all Americans is something the government should be responsible for. 33% of respondents overall felt that there should be a single national program, and 25% felt that it should be through a mix of public and private programs.
Among self-identified Democrats, however, the skew now leans toward universal public coverage. By June 2017, a majority — 52% — responded that they favor a single, national government program for healthcare. That’s a marked increase from just one-third of Democrats agreeing with that statement in March, 2014.
Physicians, overall, also seem to be moving in the same direction as the general public. A survey of doctors released in August found that a majority — 56% — supported the idea of moving to a single-payer healthcare system in the U.S. (In 2008, the same organization found that 58% of doctors opposed the idea.)
Doctors largely want to be in the position to do medicine, not paperwork. And the more complicated the health insurance structure is, the more time physicians have to spend on the bureaucratic things they don’t care for — not just billing, but also spending time and energy making sure the tests or medications they prescribe will actually be covered by a patient’s insurance.
“Physicians long for the relative clarity and simplicity of single-payer. In their minds, it would create less distractions, taking care of patients — not reimbursement,” an executive for the firm conducting the survey said in a statement.
Opposition basically falls into two very broad categories: the ideological and the practical.
Many, particularly but not solely on the political right or in the Republican party, oppose single-payer care on philosophical grounds.
That same Pew survey that found 33% in favor of a national single-payer health plan also found plenty of respondents who want no part of it. Overall, 38% of those surveyed said that making sure Americans can access health care isn’t the government’s job.
Most still favor keeping Medicare and Medicaid, since those already exist, but 5% of respondents said that government should not be involved in healthcare in any way — a figure that leaps to 9-10% among self-identified Republicans.
Vox reports that Republican lawmakers are already gearing up counter-attacks to Democrats’ recent embrace of single-player bills, saying that implementing expanding Medicare or Medicaid any further would endanger the Department of Veterans Affairs and the health care veterans receive.
Meanwhile, there’s the business angle to consider. The health insurance industry is massive. In the Fortune 500, UnitedHealth Group ranks sixth, Aetna 43rd, Humana 53rd, and Cigna 70th — to say nothing of the dozens of other small, medium, and large providers in the country.
You would expect insurers to be opposed to the idea of full, federal single-payer coverage that would cut them out of the loop entirely. But insurers may be less hostile to the idea of some kind of compromise approach to universal coverage than you’d think.
Back in May, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said that, “we should have that debate [about single-payer] as a nation.”
He added, “instead of shouting back and forth across the stage, let’s discuss what single-payer means,” and posited (rightly) that there are many, many different ways to approach that goal, if it’s the policy goal the country wants.
Single-payer or universal coverage are certainly not in the cards as a serious policy proposal for 2017 or 2018, with the current Congress and White House we have. But the seeds of potential are being planted.
Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, who retains much of the popularity he gained with his unsuccessful presidential run in 2016, plans to introduce a Medicare-for-all bill on Wednesday, Sept. 13.
Sanders told NPR in early August that he had no expectation that the bill would go anywhere at all. “You’re not going to see it. That’s obvious,” he told NPR. Instead, he wants to use the bill to force a discussion about the merits and potential of single-payer healthcare going forward.
Reports say Sen. Brian Schatz (HI) also plans to introduce a bill this fall that would expand Medicaid (not Medicare), allowing states to let anyone — not just low-income Americans — buy in. Basically, it would be similar to the Medicaid expansion that many states participate in under the ACA, effectively using Medicaid as a “public option” for anyone uninsured who wants it.
Schatz and Sanders each plan to co-sponsor each other’s bills, Vox reports, part of a broader plan to move the conversation forward.
Over the summer, several other high-profile Democratic Senators have joined the choir of voices singing the praises of “Medicare for all,”. Sanders’ bill now reportedly has 10 other Democratic Senators signed on as co-sponsors, including: Tammy Baldwin (WI), Cory Booker (NJ), Kirsten Gillibrand (NY), Kamala Harris (CA), Pat Leahy (VT), Ed Markey (MA), Jeff Merkley (OR), Brian Schatz (HI), Elizabeth Warren (MA), and Sheldon Whitehouse (RI).
It’s also becoming a tenet of some 2018 House campaigns. As Rolling Stone and the Washington Post report, challengers for seats in California, Nevada, and Wisconsin — including House Speaker Paul Ryan’s seat — have already started campaigning with an explicit platform of single-payer, universal health care.
There’s a single-player proposal currently afoot in the House, too. Rep. John Conyers (MI) introduced a bill that so far 117 of his fellow Democrats in the House support.
The Conyers bill basically doesn’t just create a public option, but expands Medicare and Medicaid into one massive public option that would basically become mandatory — and fast.
But that bill Vox notes, is skeletal at best — a sign that it stands absolutely zero chance of ever moving forward in the current Congress. It’s only 30 pages (the ACA, by comparison, famously clocked in at more than 900 pages of detail), most of which say merely that changes should be made, without specifying how.
Setting aside political and ideological obstacles to changing healthcare law at all, transitioning the U.S. from its current system to a single-payer system would come with significant logistical and practical challenges to work through.
The U.S. population is currently more than 320 million people, and changing anything for all of us at once is hard work. Our policy steers more like a stack of boulders than a sports car, with every stakeholder wanting to make their own adjustments. Major changes to federal law and regulation usually require a long, slow phasing-in process, and healthcare is one that touches literally everybody in some way.
But the biggest obstacle facing any single-payer plan is money. Lots and lots of money.
Healthcare, to be blunt, is super duper expensive. It’s not that the costs themselves would go up in a transition to a single-payer system, Vox explains — it’s that the costs are high already. About 16% of our overall economy is related to healthcare, but right now all the spending is scattered. The government pays some, states pay some, private insurers pay some, employers pay some, and end-users — all of us who seek medical care — pay some.
It’s hard to get a solid feel for just how high the spending is when it’s broken up all over. To make all of it come from a single, federal source, you’d need funding… and funding means taxes, which are yet another political land mine in the U.S., unlikely to be quickly or easily resolved any time soon.
