Author: mdsnead

Apple is speculated to announce the newest redesign of the iPhone Smartphone series potentially called the iPhone 8 or iPhone Edition during Apple’s Keynote on September 12. This will be premium phone with all new technologies being introduced in this phone like the all new Organic LED display with an almost bezel-less design at a new premium $1000 price tag. I expect pre-orders to fill up, it will be a win just to get a pre-order through since I heard they’re behind in production. Here are some of rumored specs:

• Expect T-Mobile, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint to have switch & save or trade-in offers and Apple to have unlocked models
• Stainless steel (More rigid than aluminum) and glass body
• Curved 5.8″ edge-to-edge OLED display (larger than iPhone 7 Plus)
• Improved vertical dual rear lens camera + improved front camera

• All new Apple A11 chip (no longer made by Samsung)
• Facial recognition technology to unlock display; virtual home button
• Wireless charging; Apple Pencil Support; New iOS 11; AR capabile
• 3 colors: Jet Black, Silver, New Gold color (image from VenyaGeskin1)
• Refreshed once every 2 years (unlike annually with the S models)

September 8, 2017 | 10:41pm

Under extreme pressure on Friday, embattled Equifax folded on its “no-sue” demands.

The credit-monitoring company, which revealed on Thursday a massive cyberattack on its national database, took heat from a host of elected officials for offering to help victims of the attack — but only if they gave up their right to sue the Atlanta company.

Equifax said personal information, including Social Security numbers, on up to 143 million Americans were stolen in the May cyberattack.

The company, which said it discovered the hack in July, set up a special site to offer free credit monitoring to victims of the attack.

It is offering the service, called TrustedID, for a year.

But buried in the fine print of the site — and on a page that wasn’t immediately obvious — was an agreement that customers would “resolve all disputes” through “binding individual arbitration.”

In other words, if you get any help, you can’t sue us.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), who’s backed a government rule that would limit arbitration, tore into Equifax on Twitter.

“.@Equifax is forcing you to give up your right to join a class action against the company if you want their credit protection product,” Warren wrote. “That’s right: @Equifax fails to protect your data and then they demand you give up legal rights if you want to limit the damage they caused.”

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman separately opened an investigation into how the hack happened, and claimed that 8 million New Yorkers could be affected.

The pressure seemed to have worked on Equifax.

On Friday afternoon, the company quietly added to its Web site an FAQ that says its arbitration agreement applies only to TrustedID, and not the cyberbreach.

The hack appears to be one of the largest ever in history. The scope of the data that have been accessed — which includes birth dates, addresses, credit card numbers and driver’s license numbers — has the potential to ruin people’s credit and lead to a large scale of identity theft.

While Equifax claims that it is beefing up its cybersecurity, it also blamed the breach on a software flaw from a vendor.

Hackers were able to breach the company through a flaw in software created by the company Apache, Equifax said, according to Jeffrey Meuler, an analyst at Robert W. Baird, who said he was told as much in a phone call.

“My understanding is the breach was perpetuated via the Apache STRUTS flaw,” Meuler told The Post.

STRUTS is a widely available software system that’s used by many of the nation’s largest companies, including Lockheed Martin, Citigroup, Vodafone, Virgin Atlantic, Reader’s Digest, Office Depot and Showtime — plus the Internal Revenue Service, according to lgtm, a software development group.

Equifax has not publicly said how the cyberattack happened.

STRUTS has been under attack by hackers since at least March, according to Ars Technica, which has reported on the software’s vulnerability.

Apache has put out several patches — or software fixes — for its STRUTS system since March. It’s unclear if the company had patched its systems since then.

Representatives for Equifax and Apache weren’t immediately available for comment.

 

On Thursday credit bureau Equifax said a data breach put personal information of 143 million people at risk. Now its response is drawing more outrage, as lawmakers and others accuse it of encouraging consumers who come to it seeking answers to sign away their chance to seek recourse in the courts.

Following the breach, which compromised tens of millions of Social Security numbers and other valuable data, Equifax set up a website to help worried consumers determine whether or not their information was at risk. That website encouraged visitors to sign up for a program known as TrustedID Premier, the company’s credit monitoring service, which provides automated alerts to credit changes and up to $1 million in ID theft insurance.That’s where the trouble began.

TrustedID’s terms of service include an arbitration clause, insisting that customers agree “all claims, disputes, or controversies…shall be finally settled by arbitration” rather than a court of law. Such clauses aren’t unusual for credit monitoring services — or indeed many other consumer products. But in this circumstance, it created the impression that Equifax was asking consumers it had harmed to surrender their legal rights — including becoming part of a class-action law suit — before it would agree to help them.

The deal with arbitration

The current scuffle over Equifax’s terms of service should come as no surprise. It’s a skirmish in a long-running battle that consumer advocates have been fighting against what they call “forced arbitration,” nearly ubiquitous clauses in contracts for products ranging from cell phone plans to financial advice.

Arbitration, when two parties settle disputes in front of a mediator, rather than in court, isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Advocates, including business groups, say it is faster and cheaper than going court. Still consumer advocates, including Warren’s brain child the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, complain proceedings are opaque and that arbitrators deciding cases may be biased in favor industry. The CFPB issued a rule over the summer that would have banned arbitration clauses from certain financial institutions, though it was later blocked by the House of Representatives.

One key legal avenue that arbitration clauses typically close off for consumers is the class-action lawsuit. That could be significant for Equifax — at least on one proposed class-action lawsuit was already filed against the company late Thursday, according to Bloomberg.

Your options

Imre Szalai, a Loyola University New Orleans law professor who reviewed the TrustedID terms of service at the behest of MONEY on Friday, says consumers who might want to join a suit against Equifax should probably stay away from the program, despite the spokesman’s assurances. That’s because the language is broad enough Equifax’s lawyers could conceivably argue it covers more than just any future incidents.

“If you look at their general terms of use, it just says that any claims involving their credit services are bound by arbitration, but it’s really silent as to timing,” he says. “I think if you are representing Equifax you would say that the arbitration clause is so broad it applies to claims even before you sign up.”

If you’re worried about waiving your rights, the good news is there are plenty of other credit monitoring services out there. Credit Sesame and Credit Karma two popular options.

In the meantime, here are other steps you should take now if you think you may have been affected by the breach.

Alicia Adamczyk

time.com/money