Home Depot Joins The Data Breach Party, Investigating Possible Hack

(Nicholas Eckhart)

Did you shop at Home Depot recently? Then you will probably want to keep an eye on your bank and/or credit card account. The retailer has confirmed it is investigating the possibility of a data breach that may have resulted in customers’ information being stolen.

Brian Krebs (who else?) is reporting that he had heard from insiders at multiple banks that Home Depot could be the source for a batch of stolen card numbers that recently went on sale on the black market.

A rep for the retailer confirmed that Home Depot is “looking into some unusual activity” and “working with our banking partners and law enforcement to investigate.”

“[W]e are aggressively gathering facts at this point while working to protect customers,” said the rep. “If we confirm that a breach has a occurred, we will make sure customers are notified immediately. Right now, for security reasons it would be inappropriate for us to speculate further but we will provide further information as soon as possible.”

Krebs says the breach may have involved all 2,200 Home Depot stores in the U.S. He also reports that there are indicators that the people behind this breach are the same ones responsible for hacks at other businesses, including Target, Sally Beauty and P.F. Chang’s.

For what it’s worth — and this may be a complete coincidence — I shopped at Home Depot last week and then on Saturday morning someone tried to use the same card to charge $60 to a sketchy online shop selling some Dr. Oz-touted herbal cure. Luckily, my bank flagged this charge as fraudulent and I didn’t have to file a claim. Of course, I am now waiting for a replacement card…

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

More Fast Food Strikes Expected For Thursday

(Bluwmongoose)

Getting a Big Mac, Whopper, Baconator, Double Down, or Chalupa might be a bit of an inconvenience on Thursday, as supporters of the movement for higher pay and union membership for fast food workers say employees will strike in 150 cities.

The full list of cities for Thursday’s protests is not yet known, but there are several that organizers have already announced — New York City, Los Angeles, Oakland, Chicago, Raleigh, Little Rock, Minneapolis, Memphis, and Nashville.

Given the recent unrest in Missouri, the organizers say they have asked that employees in the St. Louis area not protest there, but have encouraged those workers to join protests in other cities.

What remains to be seen is whether Thursday’s actions will be actual strikes, where employees walk off the job temporarily to protest what they believe are unfair working conditions, or if the demonstrations will be manned mostly by union organizers and fast food employees who are not scheduled to work during those hours.

Some have criticized the movement for higher wages as an attempt by labor unions to increase their numbers and take in more dues. They claim that most of the people demonstrating outside of the stores are not actual employees.

The unions counter that the only way fast food employees will be able to increase the general level of compensation is by negotiating en masse as part of a union, and that being a part of a union is no different than a fast food franchisee being part of a larger industry group that works to protect franchisees’ business interests. Additionally, some supporters have said that employees are still too afraid to strike or openly protest their employer for fear of retaliation, in spite of laws prohibiting employers from punishing these workers.

Seattle’s city council recently voted to gradually increase minimum wage in the city to $15/hour over the next few years. But franchisees in the city say they are being unfairly targeted — the law puts franchisees on the same fast-track scheduled as significantly larger companies, regardless of how many employees a particular franchisee might have — and are looking to the courts for resolution.

Meanwhile, earlier this summer the National Labor Relations Board Office of the General Counsel ruled that McDonald’s and its franchisees could be treated as “joint employers” in labor disputes, meaning McDonald’s corporate office can no longer distance itself from any bad behavior by a rogue franchisee. McDonald’s says it will fight that decision.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

London Water Officials Battle Massive Fatberg The Length Of A 747 Blocking The Sewer

(Thames Water)

If you aren’t a believer in the power of the fatberg, perhaps this recent find will strike fear into your toilet’s heart: London water officials had to fight a fatberg made from wet wipes, fatty masses and other debris the length of a Boeing 747 that plugged up the sewer system recently, threatening to flood area homes and businesses.

Getting that clean feeling down below and improperly tossing cooking fats has led to this new behemoth, a fatty, congealed garbage berg that formed under a 262-foot stretch of sewer under a Londom road, officials with Thames Water say.

That meant workers had to get down there and break up the congealed blockage of disgustingness using high powered jets of water, in order to prevent the sewer from overflowing peoples’ toilets.

“We have 108,000km of sewers, and that’s a lot of pipe to keep clear. We spend £12 million a year tackling blockages, most of them formed because people have tipped cooking fats down the drain and wet wipes down the loo,” says Dave Dennis, Thames Water sewer operations manager.

“The sewers serve an important purpose – they are not an abyss for household rubbish. Fat goes down the drain easily enough, but when it hits the cold sewers, it hardens into disgusting ‘fatbergs’ that block pipes.”

Wet wipes love fat, and the two stick together as often as they can, snowballing into fatberg form, grabbing tennis balls and bits of wood, whatever it can subsume, and backing everything up.

It’s not just our neighbors across the pond who aren’t into the whole wet wipes + fat combo — city sewer workers in the United States are also trying to spread the word about what can and can’t go down the drain.

Fatberg strikes Shepherd’s Bush [Thames Water]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

General Motors Reportedly Launching Cars That Detect Distracted Driving

(Ashley)

For years, laws have been put into place to discourage distracted driving: no texting while driving, no talking on the phone while driving, the list goes on. General Motors is taking things a step further by commissioning a vehicle that detects and alerts drivers to their distracted behavior.

The Financial Times reports that General Motors is preparing to launch the first mass-produced vehicles with eye- and head-tracking technology to detect distracted behaviors in drivers.

Officials close to the matter tell the Financial Times that an agreement to supply GM with 500,000 tracking devices over the next three to five years has been signed between device maker, Seeing Machines, and safety-goods maker Takata.

The devices from Seeing Machines can identify features of a drivers’ face, such as the rotation of the head and the frequency of blinks and imposes the data on a three-dimensional map of the car’s interior to see what the driver is looking at. The device can then alert drivers if they are not spending enough time looking at certain areas.

Seeing Machines’ CEO Ken Kroeger tells the Financial Times that the device isn’t just to detect distracted driving but could also prevent it. Eventually the technology could allow drivers to activate apps by simply looking at a certain point in the car and touching a button on the steering wheel.

Additionally, it could be used to detect a driver’s identity as a guard against theft.

Officials with GM declined to provide comment on the product plans to CNBC.

While the new technology could potentially increase driver safety, two companies party to the deal have faced scrutiny this year for vehicle safety issues.

General Motors has been under fire since the first of the year when it was revealed the company knew of a deadly ignition switch defect for more than a decade before recalling vehicles. So far, the company has acknowledged 13 deaths related to the issue and recalled more than 2 million vehicles.

Several months later, Takata found itself in the center of controversy related to millions of potentially defective airbags it supplied to car manufacturers including Honda, Toyota, Nissan, Mazda and Chrysler. According to National Highway Traffic Safety Administration reports, the airbags could possibly deploy abnormally in a crash.

GM to launch cars that detect distracted driving [The Financial Times]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Corvette Museum Decides To Fill In Popular Sinkhole Attraction

(Live from the National Corvette Museum)

A sinkhole that swallowed eight classic cars at the National Corvette Museum in February has become an unexpected hit, drawing in tourists who seem to be as into the gaping pit as they are interested in vintage automobiles. Alas, gawkers must gawk their last soon, as the museum has finally decided to fill in the hole.

The entire hill will be filled in after the museum’s board of directors voted over the weekend, despite a surge in attendance at the Kentucky establishment, reports the Associated Press.

Officials had been toying with the idea of keeping the sinkhole open, complete with a smashed up sports car inside as a sort of memorial for the cars that fell in that day. Attendance shot up 66% and the money was pouring in. Heck there’s even a live webcam of the hole.

But keeping it open would cost quite a pretty penny in order to keep the attraction safe, so the board changed course.

“We really wanted to preserve a portion of the hole so that guests for years to come could see a little bit of what it was like, but after receiving more detailed pricing, the cost outweighs the benefit,” said museum Executive Director Wendell Strode. “It just wasn’t practical to do it.”

Visitors will be able to see the hole through a Plexiglas wall when repairs started in November, but that area will be sealed off otherwise. Guess they’ll have to find another hole to fill the hole left by that hole. Or something.

Corvette Museum to completely fill in sinkhole [Associated Press]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Germany Bans Uber’s Ride-Sharing Service, Threatens $328,225 Fine Per Ride

When your company’s goal is to disrupt the entire livery industry, current taxi and other car-for-hire operators and livery regulators are not going to like you very much. The idea of a car-sharing service that connects non-professional drivers with strangers in need of rides horrifies regulators and existing professional drivers, and now UberPop (similar to UberX elsewhere) has been banned in Germany under penalty of a €250,000 ($328,225) fine.

Why does the government want to impose the ultimate surge pricing fee? Last week, a court in Frankfurt ruled that the UberPop service is illegal. Previously, a court in the city of Hamburg had ruled that while the service was “likely illegal,” but allowed it to keep running anyway, because what the heck.

It’s actually worse than that: while Uber drivers themselves wouldn’t be charged with any crime, the head of Uber Germany could also face a 6-month prison sentence if his company dares to give anyone a lift.

The company’s Uberblack service, which allows anyone to summon a limousine with a few taps of a smartphone (and a credit card, of course) is still allowed to operate in Germany. However, the company knew that the more economical UberPop service would be popular in Germany, a nation that stereotypes and statistics tell us is filled with sensible and frugal people. It’s not just popular with competing taxi services, or with the government entities that regulate those services.

The service is also banned entirely in Belgium. This structure is similar to that of Uber in New York City, where the service is allowed to do business, but only with already-licensed livery drivers.

Germany Imposes Nationwide Ban on Uber’s Cab-Hailing Service

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Dunkin’ Donuts Fulfills Prophecy, Opens Store In California

As it was foretold in the early days (of 2013), Dunkin’ Donuts, the chain once banished from the shores of the Pacific Southwest (okay, so the few that existed closed in the ’90s because of slow sales) has returned to sugar-up the mornings of Californians (or at least those who happen to be near the one open location in Santa Monica).

Yes, Dunkin’ Donuts — a company whose near omnipresence everyone in the Mid-Atlantic and New England has long taken for granted — opened its first official SoCal store this morning in Santa Monica, where some claim that people waited more than a dozen hours for their morning Munchkins at 5 a.m. today.

Of course, there was a material reason for those first 100 folks to get in line — free swag. And the first person in line scored a year’s worth of free coffee from the double D.

That lucky fella tells KTLA that he’d actually been camping out since 9:30 p.m. on Sunday, meaning he put in around 30 hours of waiting outside for his prime spot.

“I’m originally from Connecticut, so I love Dunkin’ Donuts and I’m glad it’s in California now,” said the man, who apparently had nothing better to do this holiday.

Dunkin’ stores weren’t supposed to open in the area until 2015, but the company sped up the launch process earlier this year in the hopes of making up for lackluster sales during the winter.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

If You Bring A Baby With You To Shoplift At Walmart, Don’t Leave Her Behind

(Allison)

While we don’t condone theft of any sort, we are aware of the notion that having a baby with you while you shoplift might help create the illusion that you’re not a petty criminal who needs to be watched by store security. But if you get spotted trying to take advantage of some five-finger discounts, leaving that infant behind is incredibly uncool. It will probably also lead the police right to your doorstep.

TribLive.com reports on a Pittsburgh-area woman who had gone to Walmart with her 1-year-old niece in tow while she shopped at Walmart for laundry detergent and Miracle Whip.

Problem is, she apparently didn’t think to pay for the suds and salad dressing. Store employees say they spotted her and her infant accomplice trying to exit the store with the pilfered products, so they confronted her.

That’s when the woman tried to make a quick exit, attempting to grab her niece from the cart. Alas, the little girl was strapped in and her aunt’s efforts only resulted in the cart tipping to an “unsafe position,” according to the police report.

That’s when the woman left without the kid.

We’re not quite sure how, but the baby’s mom did come to the store to claim her left-behind daughter. The worst aunt in Pennsylvania was later arrested near her home and was charged with retail theft, recklessly endangering another person, use/possession of drug paraphernalia and endangering the welfare of children… All for $87 worth of stuff.

[via PennLive.com]

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Everyone Is Really Into Eating Butter Right Now, Sending Prices Soaring

(Robert S. Donovan)

When it comes to fatty spreads, it seems butter’s popularity is climbing these days. But because the butter industry can’t keep up with the spike in demand, you could be facing higher prices at the store.

Butter futures are at an all-time high, reports Bloomberg, and consumption is projected to rise 0.8% in 2014. That number marks its second-highest since 1965, with shipments up 42% in the first six months of this year already.

But the problem is, there isn’t enough butter getting made to keep prices low for consumers — not as much milk was produced this year as analysts thought, which means all the makers of dairy products have to fight for what milk there is.

“Ultimately, there’s good demand for cream-based products that’s tightening up the market,” Dave Kurzawski, a Chicago-based senior broker at INTL FCStone Inc., told Bloomberg. “We haven’t had a tremendous amount of milk to deal with either, and the quality of fat in milk has gone down.”

Our appetite for cheese could be to blame as well, explains Cameron Thraen, Ph.D., Ohio State University dairy marketing and policy specialist tells the Scranton Times-Tribune.

“Milk follows money,” he said.

Milk gets made into whichever product is the most expensive, he says, which recently, was cheese. When cheese costed more than $2.20 per pound, cheese makers went nuts and bought up all the milk. Butter competitors then had to shell out more money for what milk they could get, and pass it on to the consumer.

There’s some good news in all this buttery sadness: Once all the stores are stocked up with butter for the holiday season, when Americans will need it slathered over all manner of traditional meals, prices should go back down again.

Butter Prices Reach All-Time High Amid Smaller Stockpiles [Bloomberg]

No margarine for error with butter prices at all-time high [Scranton Times-Tribune]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

This Is Getting Old: Another Flight Diverted Over Reclining Seat Spat

See all these people who aren’t beating each other up or demanding an emergency landing? Let’s all be like these people. (photo: Martin Rottler)

First it was that United flight where a passenger used an illegal device to prevent the person in front of them from reclining. Then an air marshal on an American Airlines flight arrested a traveler who wouldn’t give up on his complaint about the woman in front of him putting her seat back. Delta now continues this trend, diverting a flight that was almost at its destination because one passenger thought her tray table was for napping.

WPTV reports that Delta Flight 2370 from LaGuardia in NYC to Palm Beach International in Florida had to be diverted to Jacksonville on Monday night “due to safety reasons in regard to a passenger issue.”

A witness tells the station that a woman on the plane tried to recline her seat, but this didn’t go over well with the woman behind her, who was apparently trying to rest her head on the tray table at the time.

He says the napping passenger “started screaming and swearing and the flight attendant came over and that just exacerbated what was going on, and then she demanded that the flight land.”

According to the witness, the irate passenger began cussing at the flight attendants while demanding to return to terra firma, saying something like “I don’t care about the consequences, put this plane down now.”

The flight, which normally takes fewer than 2.5 hours to complete, then landed after just over two hours in Jacksonville, where the irate passenger was taken off the plane.

According to FlightAware.com, the plane got back up in the air about an hour later, making the 45-minute trip to Palm Beach.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist