| Application for home loan can spur sale of your data
Home-finance companies buy applicant information from the nation's credit bureaus, which track and rate consumers' financial lives. A prospective lender checks an applicant's credit record by contacting a credit bureau, which records the inquiry and then bundles the applicant's name, address, phone number and credit score with that of other recent loan applicants, and sells the lot to anyone who will pay the fee. Because the loan application triggers an inquiry to the credit bureau, these lists of potential borrowers are called "trigger leads." They have become a hot commodity in the past few months, used by some lenders to drum up business in a slumping market, though they rile many borrowers. "Customers are getting mad at their lenders, asking, 'Why are you selling my data?' " said Amy Boyer, chief lobbyist for the Wisconsin Mortgage Bankers Association.
More Wis. Homeowners Face Foreclosure
Creditors filed foreclosure actions against almost 1,600 Wisconsinites last month, an increase of about 6 percent from the same time last year, according to ForeclosuresWI.com. Overall, foreclosure filings are up 19 percent this year. Last year, they increased by 34 percent. And homeowners may not have seen the worst of it yet. Gary Zimmermann, national director of Federal Housing Administration lending for CFIC Home Mortgage, said he expects a number of foreclosures this month, when interest rates on subprime loans issued three years ago go up. Mortgage companies give subprime loans to people with checkered credit histories, often at a high price. "Some allowed the borrower to pay interest only at the start," Zimmermann said. "And that's catching up to people who are seeing rate adjustments now." Catey Doyle, an attorney for the Legal Aid Society of Milwaukee, said she's seen a number of people who face the loss of their home because they can't afford the increases in their mortgage payments.
'Flash is the new publishing tool of the century'
Flash is the new publishing tool of the century, he argues: "We have let more people publish - whether it's blogging or having a MySpace page, or uploading to YouTube." The Flash Player browser plugin may be the single most widely installed piece of software - and it's cross-platform. The reasons are historical: during the browser wars, Netscape hurried to include the plugin; Microsoft caught up, and Flash was included with Internet Explorer 5 and onwards. Now it has become the standard for streaming video. As Tom Green, professor of interactive multimedia at Humber College in Toronto, notes, the development of video in Flash has been rapid - almost from a standing start in 2000 - to dominance. "Adobe can claim that the Flash Player is on 97.3% of all of the internet-enabled computers in use today.
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