CREDIT » Credit Scores & Reports

Following a string of security breaches on three major organizations–Lockheed Martin Inc, Google Inc. and Sony Corp (twice in their case)–Citigroup was next in line as hackers compromised the security of over 200,000 credit card accounts. Along with this comes news that leading economic experts predict a 15% chance the U.S. economy could fall into another recession. An upside amid all the recent bad news is that we’ve experienced a drop in oil prices, which has translated to slightly cheaper gas.

Citi Security Breach Prompts Stricter Standards

Citigroup announced on Thursday that it has discovered a hacker accessed personal information from its customers. The bank said the security breach occurred last month during which time the hacker stole the information belonging to roughly 200,000 customers.

Routine Monitoring Revealed the Breach

Some of the nation’s largest banks are facing the possibility of a downgraded credit rating from Moody’s Investors Service, which the company announced on Thursday. Moody’s says it is making this consideration due to concerns the government may not support banks in times of trouble.

Ratings of Banking Giants Being Reviewed

The recession may be officially over, but Americans are still hurting financially. The Department of Labor reports hiring was down last month, and the disappointing news had a ripple effect on the economy as the stock market fell this week. The good news is it’s national doughnut day, and who doesn’t love doughnuts?

Sony Gets Hacked…Again

Sony may have been hit with the second massive data breach in just over a month, says a group of hackers that claim they were responsible for the attack. The group, known as LulzSec, says it pulled off what it describes as an elementary attack on Sony’s “disgraceful” security.

Sony Faces Second Security Breach

While Sony says that it can’t confirm the breach and will be looking into the situation, LulzSec had already posted the data, including passwords, e-mail addresses, home addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth, on its own website.

Taxpayer identity theft increased five-fold between 2008 and 2010 according to the Government Accountability Office (GAO). The office plans to share this news–provided to them by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS)–during a House hearing on Thursday in hopes of curbing this type of fraud before it gets even more out of control.

Taxpayer Identity Theft Jumps by Nearly 200K in 2 Years

Consumers have managed to lower their credit card defaults and late payments with the top six card companies in April, says a new report from The Associated Press. The report revealed that more card users are in control of their spending than they have been in some time.

Card Issuers See Improvement in Customer Payments

A new study has released its findings that less than 1-percent of consumer credit reports contain errors that lead to significant changes in scores. The report, which was commissioned by the three largest credit-reporting companies, said that after surveying 2,338 people the vast majority of credit reports are accurate.

Significant Reporting Errors Don’t Occur Often

Anisha Sekar is a credit card analyst and staff writer at NerdWallet.com.

Phones are hardly phones anymore: they’re very small computers that happen to have a Skype-like method of communication. Smartphones are making forays into the world of payments, with merchants like Starbucks experimenting with mobile prepaid cards and scrappy startups like Silicon Valley’s BlingNation piloting smartphone-only registers.

Banks and credit card issuers are warning customers that millions of e-mail addresses were possibly stolen from an advertising company last week. As a result, customers could receive fraudulent e-mails that attempt to coax their account login information from them.

Major Banks Affected by the Theft

A number of major banks and financial institutions say customers may begin seeing e-mails that try to trick them into providing login information for their bank accounts and credit cards due to a security breach at a Dallas-based e-mail management company called Epsilon.