| Volume 144 Number 20 |
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The People’s Lawyer’s Tip of the Day
The Coronavirus pandemic has not only had a dramatic health impact, but also an economic blow as many Americans are now unemployed — and uninsured. As a result, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has re-opened HealthCare.gov for a “Special Enrollment Period,” from February 15, 2021 – May 15, 2021. Click here for more.
Over 3 billion emails and passwords hacked in possibly the largest breach ever
Hacker harvest 2021 has begun. According to CyberNews, 3.27 billion unique pairs of emails and passwords were leaked on a popular hacking forum, aggregating past leaks from Netflix, LinkedIn, and other platforms.
The current breach, dubbed “Compilation of Many Breaches'' (COMB), doesn’t appear to be a new breach; rather, as the name suggests, it’s a compilation of multiple breaches. Nonetheless, COMB contains more than double the unique email and password pairs as the Breach Compilation of 2017, in which 1.4 billion credentials ranging from financial data to the personal information of every U.S. voter was pilfered from a collection of 252 previous hacks. Click here for more.
Your Money
The Setting Every Community Up for Retirement Enhancement (SECURE) Act was passed in December 2019 and became a law as of Jan. 1, 2020. The legislation created changes for long-term retirement savings and has financial impacts for Americans at every age. The SECURE Act changed a variety of retirement account rules, including who is eligible to contribute to retirement accounts and when withdrawals are required. The new legislation also adds a new exception to the early withdrawal penalty. Important retirement account changes from the SECURE Act include: Click here for more.
For the Lawyers
Creditor's action may both violate the Bankruptcy automatic stay and create liability under the FDCPA. Nothing in the structure of the FDCPA suggests that the same conduct can't violate specific prohibitions in multiple sections. The Southern District of Texas considered whether a consumer may bring a claim under the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act based on conduct that violated the Bankruptcy Code, and whether specific conduct may be actionable under more than one section of the FRCPA. The court answered both questions in the affirmative. Houser v. Ltd. Fin. Servs. LP, No. 4:19-cv-01552 (S.D. Tex. 2021) Click here for more.