One of the features of the massive stimulus package passed by Congress earlier this year gave people across the nation a temporary break from paying off their student loan debt during the coronavirus pandemic. Unfortunately, many of those same people have had their...
The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently reported to Congress on its efforts to inform consumers about the right to dispute and correct errors in credit reports. As regular readers of our Minnesota Consumer Rights Blog know, erroneous credit report information can...
It is undoubtedly an understatement to say that these are uncertain times. But one of the few things we can count on is that there are people trying to illegally profit from the uncertainty. Scammers are taking advantage of fears of the pandemic, along with massive...
Sometimes people think of debt collector harassment as U.S. Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart wrote of obscenity: “I know it when I see it.” The phrase simply means that the definitions of “harassment” and “obscenity” can vary from person to person, and are not...
The life of a member of the U.S. military is often difficult with deployments far from home, sometimes in hostile places. Their lives are further complicated when they are victims of identity theft – an increasingly likely occurrence. Much more likely than average The...
Those of us in the Twin Cities metro who spend significant portions of our workdays on computers know how easy it is to misspell even the simplest words. Typos are simply an unavoidable part of typing. While autocorrect features and old-school copy editing will catch...
It’s baffling to find yourself targeted by creditors for a debt you’ve already paid off or for a purchase you never made in the first place. Ideally, you’d be able to politely point out their mistake and put an abrupt stop to the matter. Of course, things are rarely...
Minnesota residents have enough issues concerning bills past due without the phone ringing off the hook. Most people would pay their bills if they could. They don’t need someone calling them, insisting on payment and telling them what they owe every day. Many people...
Identity theft is a terrifying prospect, and unfortunately, all too common. In 2018 alone, 14.4 million people were victims of identity fraud in the United States. But surprisingly, of those 14.4 million victims, 3.3 million of them had some responsibility for the...
It’s not in your head – robocalls have become out of control in the last several years. In the U.S. alone, there were an estimated 58.5 billion robocalls in 2019, 44% of which were from scammers. While it’s already illegal in the U.S. to fake caller ID numbers or...