Effective immediately, seven federal agencies have rescinded a four-year-old piece of federal guidance that gave banks and lenders legal comfort to run credit programs targeted at specific underserved groups. Seven federal agencies pulled their support for the 2022 statement in late August, arguing that parts of it no longer match the law it was interpreting.…

Walmart has agreed to pay $50 million to resolve a Justice Department and Drug Enforcement Administration case built around how the retailer’s pharmacies handled opioid prescriptions for nearly a decade. The deal, announced August 28, closes out a civil lawsuit federal prosecutors first filed in December 2020 in Delaware. It also locks in new compliance…

Heights Finance Holdings Co., a South Carolina-based consumer lender that operates installment-loan branches under brands including Heights Finance, Southern Finance, Covington Credit and Quick Credit across roughly a dozen states, disclosed this month that hackers broke into a third-party cloud platform holding customer records. The exposed data includes Social Security numbers, tax identification numbers, driver’s…

The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau said on August 14, 2026, that it would stop posting the written descriptions people submit about their banks, credit card companies, and debt collectors, along with the charts built from that text. The change ends a practice that dates back more than a decade, when the bureau first let consumers…

One of the strongest defenses against identity theft is also completely free, and most people never turn it on. A credit freeze locks down your credit reports at the three nationwide bureaus so that no new lender can pull them — which means a thief who has your name, birth date, and Social Security number…

When the Supreme Court struck down a large block of import tariffs earlier this year, it set up one of the biggest tax refunds in recent memory. The government has already returned roughly $100 billion in duties it was not allowed to keep. But there is a catch for ordinary households: the money is going…

When a debt collector calls, the person on the other end holds a quiet piece of leverage that few people use. Federal law gives anyone contacted about a debt the right to demand written proof that the debt is real, that the amount is correct, and that this particular collector has the right to pursue…

The FTC and Connecticut secured a $4 million stipulated order over allegations a dealership charged buyers to certify cars advertised as certified pre-owned.

For more than a decade, anyone choosing a bank, a credit card or a mortgage servicer could read, at no cost, what other customers said happened to them in their own words. That free record stopped growing this month. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau announced it is no longer publishing the written narratives consumers attach…

One of the strongest tools for stopping identity theft costs nothing and takes about 15 minutes to set up. A credit freeze locks down your credit reports so that no one, including a thief holding your Social Security number, can open new credit in your name. Federal law makes it free to place and to…