Team NEO report

Team NEO report

youngstown

Team NEO’s Regional Economic Development report for the fourth quarter of 2014 provides a regional snapshot of business attraction, expansion and retention activity as reported by JobsOhio, Team NEO, major city chambers of commerce and economic-development organizations in the 18 counties across Northeast Ohio.

Highlights of the report include: 16 attraction, expansion or retention successes in the fourth quarter; 79 attraction, expansion or retention projects for 2014; and fewer than 2,000 jobs in 2014 came from the attraction of new businesses, underscoring the importance of focusing economic- development resources on the growth of businesses already in the region to accelerate the pace of job creation in Northeast Ohio.

Anthem services in wake of data breach

MASON

Current and former Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in Ohio members dating back to 2004 are being offered identity-repair assistance and credit-monitoring services via AnthemFacts.com.

The insurance giant disclosed a massive data breach last week affecting as many as 80 million Americans.

Affected members can start accessing these services before receiving a mailed notification from Anthem, which will be sent in the coming weeks.

Members may access these services at any time during the 24-month coverage period.

The free identity-protection services provided by Anthem include identity-theft repair assistance; credit monitoring and child-identity protection.

Consumers should go to www.anthemfacts.com or call 877-263-7995 for information.

New Visa feature to combat fraud

NEW YORK

Those days of calling your bank to let them know that, yes, you really are in Thailand, and yes, you really did use your credit card to buy $200 in sarongs, may be coming to an end.

The payment-processing company Visa will roll out a new feature this spring that will allow its cardholders to inform their banks where they are automatically, using the location function found in nearly every smartphone.

Having your bank and Visa know where you are at all times may sound a little like “Big Brother.” But privacy experts actually are applauding the feature, saying that, if used correctly, it could protect cardholders and cut down on credit-card fraud.

Credit- and debit-card fraud costs consumers and banks billions of dollars each year, and that figure has been growing as data breaches have become more common. The banking industry had $1.57 billion in debit-card fraud in 2013 and $4 billion in credit-card fraud in 2012, the latest years for which data are available, according to the Federal Reserve.

Facing these high costs, banks and the payment processors have been stepping up their efforts to cut down on fraud, and Visa’s announcement is just one small piece of this drive.

Vindicator staff/wire reports