Tausi Insider

Photo : Tada Images ( Shutterstock ) Whether you’re sending holiday cards or gifts, or just mailing your monthly rent check, you may want to avoid using those large, blue collection boxes—at least for the next few months, United States Postal Service (USPS) officials have advised . 02:50 Chopping Basics Wednesday 11:09AM 01:38 How to Retire in Phases Wednesday 10:53AM Not only have reports of mail fraud and theft been on the rise year-round , the crimes tend to peak during the holiday season—and those blue mailboxes are becoming more frequent targets. Here’s what to know. Why you should avoid blue mail boxes during the holiday season According to USPS officials, “groups of criminals across the country are using the internet and social media to coordinate strategic targeting of post office collection boxes,” AL.com reports . In other words, people you probably don’t want having access to your mail. If you do opt to use the blue collection boxes, be sure to do so before the last col...

Photo : mundissima ( Shutterstock ) It’s no secret scammers get more skilled and ingenious with time. Part of their strategy is knowing when is the best time to target certain people. As the holidays approach and people are expecting packages from Black Friday shopping or early Christmas gifts to arrive, scammers are taking advantage of the time to strike confusion and catch people off guard with shipping scams. If you’ve gotten a text or email message that seems to be from the United States Postal Service (USPS) or any shipping company with a link, be alert. These kinds of shipping scam messages have been on the rise since May and are expected to keep increasing through the holiday shopping season, according to a news report from WGAL, an affiliate of NBC. How do shipping message scams work? Shipping message scams try to mimic a shipping text update that you might expect to receive from the USPS or another shipping company. They usually claim that your shipment will be returned ...

Photo : VDB Photos ( Shutterstock ) We have officially entered holiday-shipping-panic season, that period of less than 10 days before Christmas when we suddenly realize how quickly the 25th snuck up on us, once again. If you are strategic, though, your packages can (maybe) still make it to their final destination before the big event. Here are some dates to keep in mind, depending on whether you’re sending the packages out via the USPS, UPS, FedEx, or if you’re ordering online from one of the major retailers. One important thing to keep in mind: Dec. 24 is a Saturday, so not all mail services will be available on that day; if it comes down to delivery “business days” for you to make your deadline, the 24th will not count as one. 2022 holiday shipping deadlines for USPS, UPS, and FedEx If you’re using the post office to send your gifts, these are the deadlines to mark on your calendar so your gifts arrive by Dec. 24: USPS 2022 Holiday Shipping Deadlines Ship by Dec. 17 with Retail...

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is led away by officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau on Dec. 13. Austin Fernander/The Associated Press Gus Carlson is a New York-based columnist for Tausi Insider. As revelations emerge about the vast scope of the FTX debacle, the inevitable comparisons are being made between its disgraced chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried and legendary Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. To be sure, both scoundrels were adept at parting fools and their money – lots of it. But Mr. Madoff’s victims might elicit some sympathy for being taken in by his carefully crafted façade of respectability. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s willing dupes should get no such leniency. They should have seen trouble coming. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s venture had more red flags than a Beijing military parade, the biggest one being that head office in the Bahamas. There is perhaps no redder flag than a corporate headquarters in a sketchy tax haven with a long history of dirty dealing that has been called...

Photo : morrowlight ( Shutterstock ) On a computer, selecting multiple things at the same time is easy—y ou obviously click and drag to highlight whatever you want. On your iPhone, though , it’s a different story. Depending on the app, your obvious options are to hit “Select All” or choose the “Edit” button and tediously tap away at each item you want to select. But, as it happens, your iPhone has a hidden trick that lets you select items in bulk: Instead of tapping to select multiple items, you can use a simple swipe to breeze through your selection. As long as the app supports it, take two fingers and swipe over the items you want to select, and iOS will select those items . You can even drag down to the bottom of the screen to scroll and select, or lift off the screen and repeat the gesture to highlight another group of items. It’s a lot of fun. Once you’ve selected multiple items, you can tap and hold the screen to reveal bulk actions like delete, share, and copy. Right now...

Photo : Shutterstock ( Shutterstock ) L ike many veteran internet users, I have had my Google Account for a long time. More than a decade in, I’m running out of my free 15GB of storage, and most of that space is t aken up by Gmail. While the majority of those messages are junk and spam, some are important to me, so I don’t want to delete things haphazardly—but sorting through them would take forever . If you find yourself in similar straits,   do what I did: download your Gmail emails to your computer as an easy backup. There are two steps to dealing with a Gmail backup . The first, of course, is downloading the messages from Google, but it doesn’t end there. Google will send you the files in .mbox format, a file format none of the apps on your computer can likely read. But, that’s okay. We’ll fix that. How to download your Gmail emails (gmails?) Google makes it easy to save your Gmail messages. H ead to Google, click your profile icon, and choose “Manage your Google Account....

Michele Romanow is stepping down as CEO of the financier and will become co-executive chair. Bruno de Carvalho/Reuters Michele Romanow is stepping down as CEO of Clearco, as the e-commerce financier prepares to slash its work force for the third time in six months. Clearco, officially known as CFT Clear Finance Technology Corp., is set to lay off 50 employees, roughly 25 per cent of its work force, on Monday, bringing its ranks to 140 people, a source familiar with the situation told Tausi Insider. It had 500 employees last July. The source also said the company is naming U.S. finance industry executive Andrew Curtis as CEO. He has served as an adviser to Clearco for the past six months. Mr. Curtis takes over for the star of TV’s Dragons’ Den and serial entrepreneur, who made the decision to leave the post 11 months after she replaced co-founder Andrew D’Souza as CEO. She will become co-executive chair along with Mr. D’Souza. Tausi Insider is not identifying the source as they are n...

Britain’s Royal Mail said on Wednesday it had begun moving limited volumes of export parcels as it trials “operational workarounds”, after a cyber incident severely disrupted its international export services last week. The postal company, part of International Distributions Services Plc, said it had also resumed exports of letters and from 1900 GMT customers could begin submitting international export letters to its network. However it said that while it trials the workarounds, it was continuing to ask customers not to submit new export parcels. Import operations and domestic services remain unaffected. “Our initial focus will be to clear mail that has already been processed and is waiting to be despatched,” Royal Mail said in a statement. Royal Mail, one of the world’s largest post and parcel firms, said it was still working with external experts, security authorities and regulators to mitigate the impact of the incident. The Telegraph newspaper reported last week that Lockbit, a r...

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is led away by officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau on Dec. 13. Austin Fernander/The Associated Press Gus Carlson is a New York-based columnist for Tausi Insider. As revelations emerge about the vast scope of the FTX debacle, the inevitable comparisons are being made between its disgraced chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried and legendary Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. To be sure, both scoundrels were adept at parting fools and their money – lots of it. But Mr. Madoff’s victims might elicit some sympathy for being taken in by his carefully crafted façade of respectability. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s willing dupes should get no such leniency. They should have seen trouble coming. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s venture had more red flags than a Beijing military parade, the biggest one being that head office in the Bahamas. There is perhaps no redder flag than a corporate headquarters in a sketchy tax haven with a long history of dirty dealing that has been called...

FTX founder Sam Bankman-Fried is led away by officers of the Royal Bahamas Police Force in Nassau on Dec. 13. Austin Fernander/The Associated Press Gus Carlson is a New York-based columnist for Tausi Insider. As revelations emerge about the vast scope of the FTX debacle, the inevitable comparisons are being made between its disgraced chief executive Sam Bankman-Fried and legendary Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff. To be sure, both scoundrels were adept at parting fools and their money – lots of it. But Mr. Madoff’s victims might elicit some sympathy for being taken in by his carefully crafted façade of respectability. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s willing dupes should get no such leniency. They should have seen trouble coming. Mr. Bankman-Fried’s venture had more red flags than a Beijing military parade, the biggest one being that head office in the Bahamas. There is perhaps no redder flag than a corporate headquarters in a sketchy tax haven with a long history of dirty dealing that has been called...