devitry.com

Tech in the country. Programming & Technology inovations.

Friday, April 27, 2007

Continued Security Problems with HSBC online banking

While HSBCDirect will offer you a great rate for online savings account, I can not recommend them. Over 6 months ago I noticed a serious security problem with their online banking site. I notified them immediately , and I received a response that they'd look into the problem. While they quickly attempted a Band-Aid(tm) fix for the problem, the have not fixed it to my satisfaction. It also should not be satisfactory to their security team. It may be that they are just incapable of fixing the problem. At this point I don't know what else I can do besides steering people away from their site. More banking security holes here. (Disclosure: I used to work for on several online banking sites, including HSBConline, but not on this portion of the site)

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Auction off your loan. Get better rates

There is a huge and growing community of lenders and borrowers at Prosper.com. If you want to consolidate credit card debt, (a very good idea, you should never carry a credit card balance) or just need funds for other things, you can go to this site and tell your story and request a loan. People will bid on your loan (in $50 increments) and as more people bid, you interest rates falls. There are some real restrictions, and don't plan on skipping out on your loan because it's backed up with collection agencies. It also might be for you if you have money to lend. Instead of getting a few percent at your bank, lend it out for 10% or more.

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Thursday, April 26, 2007

Coffee and Cash at Gold Cafe

I'm typing and posting this message from a bank, and a coffee shop. This strangeness is brought to me by Gold Cafe, an integrated coffee shop and bank. It's more of a coffee shop where they try to sell you banking products, or a bank where they try to sell you coffee. They have weird video tele tellers that look like atm machines, but act more like a drive up bank, but on foot. Well, at least they have free wifi.

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Wednesday, April 25, 2007

AutoPay Credit Cards

Today's rant is on how hard credit card companies make it to set up AutoPay or other form of automated bank payment of your credit card balance. It is very important to pay off your full balance of your credit cards each month, and automated payments from your bank account make this super easy. However, banks generally make you fill out a form, send it in and wait a few months. I recently found this out when I went to change my designated bank to make auto payments. They'd rather you miss a payment or just make direct monthly payments online. Still, it's worth the effort. You'll never miss a payment again, and it always gets pushed back to the last possible day.

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Site Updates

I've been lax in publishing new updates, mainly because the connection with blogger was broken. With this post, it should hopefully be working again. I'll be changing the focus of the site off the myspace junk and more towards personal advice and happenings.

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