The Federal Trade Commission has filed suit in federal court to halt an effort that drained millions of dollars out of thousands of consumers’ checking accounts for “discount pharmacy cards” the consumers didn’t know about, didn’t order, and didn’t get. The Washington Post reports on this story in Friday's edition.

Merchant acquirer National Processing has announced it is reviewing strategic alternatives for the company, perhaps including the sale of the company. National Processing is 83 percent owned by National City Corp.

Jeremy Wagstaff reports in today's Wall St. Journal on the evolution in sophistication of phishing attacks (subscription reqd.) -- and the people that develop them.

By the way, Jeremy is also a very prolific weblogger. Check out his "Loose wire" blog.

Experian-Scorex and TSYS have announced an expanded partnership with the implementation of a new transaction fraud scoring model which is now embedded in the TSYS CardGuard fraud detection system.

Experian-Scorex designed the transaction fraud model using existing CardGuard members. The design process included the study of over 2000 attributes and extensive segmentation analysis. The score uses a combination of up-to-date historical information and a long-term profile of each customer to ensure accuracy and reliability.