In a move that has riled British and European air travelers, foreign passengers who have used a credit card to book a flight could have their credit card and email accounts inspected by the Department of Homeland Security.

The extent of the demands were disclosed in “undertakings” given by the US Department of Homeland Security to the European Union and published by the Department for Transport after a Freedom of Information request. [read more...]

However, foreign travelers are not alone. The US government has been quietly assigning US citizens who travel internationally a “terrorist risk rating.”

Virtually every person entering and leaving the United States by air, sea or land is scored by the Homeland Security Department’s Automated Targeting System, or ATS. The scores are based on ATS’ analysis of their travel records and other data, including items such as where they are from, how they paid for tickets, their motor vehicle records, past one-way travel, seating preference and what kind of meal they ordered. [read more...]

Many of the details of the program are unknown. While privacy groups fret, the government asserts that the programs are vital to national security. For better or worse, it seems one thing is certain: If you’re traveling to or from the United States, you’re not the only one watching how you spend your money.

Providian was once one of the leading credit card issuers in the United States. Since the merger between Providian and Washington Mutual, policies for card holders have gradually changed. In short, Washington Mutual charges 1% more than Providian charged for foreign transaction fees. While Providian cards were among the most competitive credit cards in the industry for low foreign transaction fees, now they’re just average. Click here for more information.

Our new forum works a little differently than most other forums out there. Mainly it is speedy, simple, clean, and fun to use. Developed by some of the same people who worked on WordPress, the new Travel Guide for Your Finances forum runs on bbPress. One of the things that make this forum stand out from the rest is the way that it allows people to dynamically categorize their posts. The topic of this site is simultaneously broad and narrow. While we cover topics financial topics such as credit cards, international banks, and dynamic currency conversion — we also discuss VoIP, mail forwarding and computer technology. What ties it all together is the emphasis on managing financial accounts while traveling. Traditional forums, while I think they work great for a lot of topics, forced us to try to manipulate posts into narrow, rigid categories. Secondly many posts would fall into multiple categories, but could only be placed in one.

The new forum allows people to categorize their own posts by using keywords call ‘tags.’ Once you’ve written your post, just type a few words that you feel best categorize your post. These words will be added to the left sidebar in what is called a ‘tag cloud.’ The most commonly used words will be bigger than the less common words. If your writing about receiving credit card statements in England using a mail forwarding service, no problem. Great tags for the post would be England, mail and credit card. These words will be used to help automatically categorize your post for other visitors.

At the end of the day it’s more dynamic and flexible. It also give you more control over the site.

If this is all old hat for you — great! Happy posting!

Click here to see it in action…