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FCC Releases Massive Study On Mobile Phone Theft, Asks Wireless Companies To Start Making Changes

Smartphones are amazingly convenient: tiny little hand-sized computers that make it easy to organize our lives on the go. They’re also amazingly good targets for theft: tiny, portable, expensive, and full of personal information. Mobile device theft is on the rise, just as mobile devices are, and the FCC has been trying to find ways to protect consumers when their devices get yanked from their hands.

The commission formed a working group earlier this year, which has been churning their way through all of the data on mobile device theft for months. This week they came up with a final report (140-page PDF) on the matter. The report had a few key findings on reducing and handling smartphone theft.

First: it’s really hard to know just how many phones are stolen. There is no national-level data. With approximately 18,000 separate law enforcement agencies operating in the nation, the aggregation of data is “a significant challenge.” On the one hand, the actual number of incidents may be lower than the best estimates consumer advocates have come up with so far. But on the other hand, a significant number of thefts may be going unreported.

Second: It’s really hard to know what happens to phones after they’ve been stolen. Where are they sold? To whom? Who’s making money? Nobody really has any clear data. Anecdotally, the report says, it seems likely that significant numbers of stolen phones are resold in nations “that are both geographically and politically remote from the U.S.” That means that addressing the problem top-to-bottom in any meaningful way will require a lot of international cooperation.

Third: Tech and telecom companies can’t exactly stop someone from running up and snatching an iPhone from a passenger waiting on the subway platform, but they can take steps to make those phones a lot less useful to re-use or resell. And those steps will help to protect consumers.

In that third bucket, the working group ultimately came up with a few recommendations for things that mobile companies can do:

Making lock/wipe/restore functions enabled by default on all devices they sell

Making the electronic “fingerprints” (unique identifiers) of phones secure so that thieves can’t “re-flash” them

Making sure that wireless company retail store employees double-check appropriate databases to make sure the consumer-owned phones they’re activating aren’t stolen property, and

Making sure those databases about stolen phones are actually up to date with accurate information.

These changes are not exactly optional: FCC chairman Tom Wheeler yesterday sent letters to the top executives of AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile, US Cellular, and Verizon giving them thirty days to respond to the report with a list of “measurable steps” that the companies will take. The goal is to have the mobile companies begin implementing the changes by the end of next year’s first quarter.

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Secret Santa Gifts $15K To Pay For Strangers’ Walmart Layaway Items

It’s that time of year again, when generous folks around the country pop in to their local retailers and plunk down a pile of cash to make strangers’ holidays happier by paying for their layaway purchases. This time, some secret Santa in Ohio left a substantial $15,000 gift under shoppers’ trees.

“Don’t say miracles never happen,” says one customer who had her layaway purchases at a Moraine, OH, Walmart paid for by the mysterious benefactor. “Whoever did this, they’re great.”

The surprise was even sweeter for her family as it comes shortly after her husband had been laid off from his job. They decided the safest route was to put Christmas gifts for their grandkids on layaway until they could pay for them.

Then someone who didn’t want to be identified offered to pay off $15,000 worth of layaway purchases.

The Walmart manager tells WDTN-TV that others have paid off layaway bills for strangers at the store before, but never in this amount. He describes this anonymous donor is “Just someone wanting to do that for someone they don’t know, it’s more the spirit of Christmas.”

In this case, the secret Santa told the manager that they wanted the money to go primarily toward toy purchases and other gifts for kids.

We’ve always been curious how someone could try to ensure that their generous gift isn’t just going to pay off TVs or other big-ticket purchases that shoppers are making for themselves. And the manager tells WDTN that “There’s a computerized process we can do where we can put in certain parameters and pull those layaways forward.”

One shopper had her grandkid’s bike paid for by the gift.

“There’s an angel out there,” says the shopper. “We’re so appreciative. It’s awesome. I actually cried. It’s amazing.”

While $15,000 is a significant chunk of change — and can buy an awful lot of gifts — it’s not the largest one we’ve written about. In 2011, when these “layaway angels” began showing up everywhere, a California man paid nearly $16,000 for shoppers’ purchases.

And then a year ago, an anonymous donor in Florida paid $20,000 to brighten up the holidays for Walmart shoppers.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Lazy Trendsters Can Take The Easy Way With Tweed Jacket Already Imbued With The Scent Of Whiskey

(.sanden.)

Picture yourself in a tweed jacket. Are you leaning against a shelf, sipping whiskey and quoting that line from Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy about having “many leather-bound books” and how your apartment smells of “rich mahogany”? Are you also very lazy? Boy, someone out there’s got you pegged.

Spirits purveyor Johnnie Walker has teamed up with clothing company Harris Tweed Hebrides to create the trendster’s shortcut to acting like some kind of classy gentleman/academic/ultra cool intellectual/hipster/grandpa anymore with a new line of tweed jackets that arrive already smelling of whiskey, reports Metro UK.

Because it’s just so hard to buy whiskey and spill it on yourself (actually, wait…), the textile reportedly features rich malt and dark chocolate tones with golden vanilla. Jackets come with blue, pink or yellow highlights and can be dry cleaned without losing that manufactured whiskey scent.

“The process we have devised for Johnnie Walker means that this scent is layered into the fabric throughout the finishing process and is permanently imbued in the tweed,” explains Donald Mackay, head of the finishing department at the Harris Tweed mill.

Meanwhile, someone has yet to invent bed sheets that smell like cheddar cheese. And taste like it. Edible sheets, is that so much to ask?

Designers create a tweed jacket that naturally smells of whisky [Metro UK]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Chick Fil-A Customer Sues Chain Over Milkshake She Claims Led To A Heart Attack

(frankieleon)

How can a milkshake lead to a heart attack? Not through the arteries in the long run, but by way of a maraschino cherry, according to one Chick Fil-A customer’s new lawsuit.

A woman who visited a Texas Chick Fil-A in May claims in a lawsuit filed in a State District Court in Dallas County that biting into an “improperly de-pitted” maraschino cherry that came on top of her milkshake, reports the Houston Chronicle.

She says biting the pit caused damage to two of her teeth, fracturing them below the gum line. An unspecified short time later, she developed gum infection and sepsis, followed by a heart attack that she claims is related to the tooth trouble. The teeth in question were recently removed.

She’s also suing the company that provided the cherries, a New York businesses, claiming that the company, “as a producer, supplier and distributor of maraschino cherries to restaurants or food establishments throughout the United States, including Texas, failed to use that degree of care that would be used by a marschino cherry de-pitting owner or company of ordinary prudence under the same or similar circumstances.

She’s seeking damages between $200,000 and $1 million.

Chick-Fil-A milkshake blamed for woman’s heart attack [Houston Chronicle]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Teen-Targeted Retailer dELiA*s Is bANkruPt. Will Close Stores, Liquidate Merch

Clothing retailer dELiA*S — a store best known for its complete disregard for capitalization and punctuation — has announced today that teenage girls have moved on to other retailers, leaving it in d33p n dEbT and having to file file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while it closes stores and liquidates its assets.

The NYC-based company said this morning that it will begin selling off its merchandise as soon as today, with the intention of paying off its creditors, but without any hope that the store will be resurrected.

In its announcement, dELiA*s says that it had failed to find a merger partner or convince any larger retailers that it should be acquired.

So people who live near any of the 100+ soon-to-close dELiA*s stores may be able to get some decent deals as the company liquidates its merchandise.

However, as we’ve seen in other liquidations of chain stores like Borders and Circuit City, the prices on these items are not always that great — and remember that you can’t return them.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Amazon Dangles The Option Of Upscale Diapers To Lure New Premium Customers

(DJHeini)

It’s not always easy convincing people to pay $99 a year for anything, but if you can tap into an existing need, the customers will often come running. And in the case of Amazon Elements, the new program rolled out to lure in new Premium subscribers, that prize it’s dangling is upscale diapers and baby wipes.

Amazon announced its plan to herd customers through its Premium sign-up plan yesterday, touting Amazon Elements as a program that’s exclusive to Premium subscribers and full of all the magical wonder and delight that ethically sourced baby products can bring.

So what makes these diapers so special? Amazon says they’re “ultra-absorbent and have a breathable outer cover, advanced super-absorbent polymers, stretchable waist band and leg elastics for better fit, an umbilical notch on Newborn diapers, and a pocketed waist band in sizes newborn through 2.”

Diapers and wipes are just the first offering to roll out under the Elements flag, with Amazon pushing the project as “a new line of premium, everyday essentials with transparent origins.”

“Our obsession with customers and drive to continuously innovate on their behalf has led us to create Amazon Elements. The two things customers told us they want are premium products that meet their high standards, and access to information so they can make informed decisions, Amazon Elements offers both,” said Sunny Jain, Amazon.com Consumables Vice President in a press release. “We’ve leveraged our strengths in technology to bring customers an unprecedented level of information about these products, all with just the click of a button. We’re excited to offer Amazon Prime members added selection, beginning with diapers and baby wipes.”

Basically, the products page for each item has a bunch of information included about where the items come from and why they were made the way they were. Each package comes with a scannable code that can be fed into the Amazon mobile shopping app, so customers can track its ingredients and their origins, as well as date and place of manufacture, date of delivery, “best by” date and other things.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Nationwide Data Breach Hits Clothing Retailer Bebe, Payment Card Info Stolen

(don’t buy-now)

It’s the most wonderful time of the year: when consumers nationwide can find out that their credit and debit card information has been lost to hackers right when they’re trying to get all of their holiday shopping done. This week’s unfortunate victims? Consumers of women’s clothing retailer Bebe, found in malls nationwide.

The report comes from security expert Brian Krebs, who in the past year has broken the stories of the Target and Home Depot breaches as well as many others. Krebs heard from banks about a new pattern of fraudulent transactions. The banks looked for a pattern in the fraud and sure enough, found one connecting thread: all of the affected cards had been used at Bebe stores in November.

Today, Bebe stores confirmed the breach.

The breach affects customers who shopped at Bebe locations between Nov. 8 and Nov. 26 of this year. Data that was stolen includes cardholder name, account number, expiration date, and verification code. The breach appears to have affected all 200 of the chain’s retail locations in the U.S., but not the company’s international stores or web storefront.

In a statement, company CEO Jim Wiggett said, “Our relationship with our customers is of the highest importance. We moved quickly to block this attack and have taken steps to further enhance our security measures.”

As is now typical for this sort of thing, the company is offering free credit monitoring protection services to their customers. The company’s statement also includes a state-by-state breakdown of additional actions that affected consumers can take in some areas.

The retailer is working with their payment processor to notify the banks that issued affected cards but in the meantime, standard advice applies: retail hacks are inevitable. Assume your card can be compromised, and always keep a close eye on your statements.

Banks: Credit Card Breach at Bebe Stores [Krebs on Security]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

Here are eleven of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last two weeks, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

(m01229)

(Derelict Compositions)

(Paula S)

Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr Pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist