Today I head to Northern California, home of plenty of technology. The other day I went to the doctor and the receptionist handed me a tablet and said, “Please fill out these medical forms on the screen, which are identical to the ones you filled out earlier online, and have the exact same questions your doctor will ask you later in the exam room.” Great. There’s nothing like old-fashioned printed things. I am sure that menu Quick Response (QR) codes are fine, but plenty of other QR codes are not: beware! “The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) warned the public against scanning any old QR code in a consumer alerts blog last week. Naturally, the warning comes down to security and privacy: bad actors can put QR codes in inconspicuous places or send them via text or email, then just sit back and wait for a payday in the form of money, logins, or other sensitive information. Lord knows that the mortgage industry has enough challenges from lousy characters without m
Lenders and vendors alike are emerging from Thanksgiving and looking ahead to which day they have off for Christmas in the U.S., the 23rd or the 26th. An informal Chrisman poll shows the 26th, but there is definitely a noticeable percentage who are taking both days off. It is good to keep things in perspective and appreciate what we have in the United States. Here in Mexico (yes, that Mexico; down here for a short visit) the daily minimum wage in pesos is $172.87 MXP (approximately $8.06 USD) for the countryside, slightly more in cities and tourist area. Yes, you read that correctly: 8 smackers. With a Gross Domestic Product of $1.4 billion, Mexico’s economy is about the same as Florida’s. Wages aside, in terms of interest rates, across the Atlantic, Ghana, which most people would be hard-pressed to identify on a map of Africa, the latest rate hike to combat inflation puts rates at a19-year high of 27 percent! Not a lot of rate and term refis there, that’s for sure