http://www.isnare.com/?s=author&a=Robert+F.+Brennan%2C+Esq. Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Wed, 21 Dec 2011 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=665136&ca=Legal Fact: If you apply to lease or rent an apartment, a condo or a home, chances are better than 95% that the owner or landlord will run a “background check” on you. Fact: if you apply for insurance of any kind, chances are greater than 99% that the insurance company will run a “background check” on you... Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Sat, 06 Mar 2010 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=493207&ca=Legal In response to the growing scourge of identity theft, California enacted its own Identity Theft Law in 2001. The law provides civil remedies to consumers in addition to the criminal remedies against the actual identity thieves. As a practical matter, there is frequently little point in bringing a ci... Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Fri, 25 Dec 2009 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=461447&ca=Legal Shrouded in mystery for years, the Fair Isaac Company has finally let consumers have a slight peek into the vault of their credit scoring model which is responsible for “FICO Scores,” otherwise known as your credit score. (FICO, by the way, is a shortened version of “Fair Isaac Company”.) FICO’s rev... Finances Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Sat, 14 Nov 2009 00:00:00 -0800 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=438485&ca=Finances On August 17, 2009 federal prosecutors charged Albert Gonzalez of Miami Florida, a former federal government informant, for allegedly stealing 130 million credit and debit card accounts. This was one of the largest know identity theft cases in US history. Gonzalez, the ring leader of an internationa... Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=421085&ca=Legal Forbes Magazine recently published a good article entitled "How to Hold off Debt Collectors." This article is very helpful for consumers. The article includes a section entitled "Six Consumer Rights Every Debtor Should Know." Here is a summary of the article. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recei... Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Mon, 12 Oct 2009 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=421087&ca=Legal Mortgage servicers are middlemen who process the mortgage payments from homeowners and direct the money to the banks or investors who hold the loans. With the current problems in the mortgage market, banks and the federal governments have reached consensus to help homeowners, but often the mortgage... Finances Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Tue, 23 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=378472&ca=Finances Debt collectors prey on consumers who do not know their rights and who do not know how to handle calls from debt collectors. This article gives just a few short and simple tips for handling debt collector calls, since these are becoming ever more common as the market for “junk debt” booms among unsc... Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=378440&ca=Legal My firm handles a lot of personal injury litigation, so, at the suggestion of friends and former clients, I am writing this blog on a regular basis to give readers info on how to handle their personal injury cases. I will go over several topics. My topic for the first post is: “Go Organic!” By “orga... Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Wed, 17 Jun 2009 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=378470&ca=Legal Here’s an email exchange I believe should be helpful to a lot of you out there. This is a situation where a debt collector contacts a consumer after serving a summons on the consumer for a very old debt, one likely past the statute of limitations. As with all business dealings, DON’T PAY ANYTHING UN... Legal Robert F. Brennan, Esq. Thu, 23 Apr 2009 00:00:00 -0700 http://www.isnare.com/?aid=373058&ca=Legal I’m continuing to get calls from people who believe they have had their identities stolen or who may have been the subject of one of the big “data thefts” that have afflicted so many companies. These cases likely are not yet ripe for handling through litigation because there are really no serious da...