Author Archives: David Birch

xxx The aim of the texts was really to ‘plunder’ the victims’ bank accounts, Inner London Crown Court was told. The court heard it was difficult to quantify how much money the fraudsters had gained specifically from the texting scheme, but that ‘top boss’ Zhijia Fan, 48, had personally benefited more than £100,000. His co-defendantsContinue reading “Fraudster involved in text message scam targeting Tube passengers ‘laundered £600,000 through gift cards’, court hears | Daily Mail Online”

xxx A fraudster who was part of a scheme to target Tube passengers with scam text messages laundered £600,000 through gift cards, a court heard. A gang of four was sentenced on Tuesday for the plot, where ‘SMS blasters’ hidden inside suitcases were wheeled around the Underground network and sent out phishing texts. Travellers who walkedContinue reading “Fraudster involved in text message scam targeting Tube passengers ‘laundered £600,000 through gift cards’, court hears | Daily Mail Online”

xxx bank-quality payments (backed by central bank money) without being a bank (taking deposits and lending) a step towards separating the payments function from the lending function of traditional financial institutions From: Noelle Acheson (@noelleacheson): “a very big deal… bank-quality payments (backed by central bank money) without being a bank (taking deposits and lending) aContinue reading “Noelle Acheson (@noelleacheson): “a very big deal… bank-quality payments (backed by central bank money) without being a bank (taking deposits and lending) a step towards separating the payments function from the lending function of traditional financial institutions””

Dame Diane Coyle and her fellow authors DAVID EAVES, BEATRIZ VASCONCELLOS have written an insightful piece for the International Monetary Fund (IMF) the topic of digital public infrastructure (DPI). They say, and I could not agree more wirh them, that finance ministries must think about DPI as they do roads and power grids

xxx Last week, a team of researchers from Northeastern University and their colleagues posted the results of a research project in which they stress-tested several OpenClaw agents. Without too much trouble, non-owners managed to persuade the agents to leak sensitive information, waste resources on useless tasks, and even, in one case, delete an email system.Continue reading “Online harassment is entering its AI era | MIT Technology Review”

xxx Verifiable Intent will, over the next few months, be integrated directly into Mastercard Agent Pay’s intent APIs to drive real-world adoption with partners. It is built on widely adopted specifications from the Fido Alliance, EMVCo, the Internet Engineering Task Force, and the World Wide Web Consortium. It is designed to work across agentic protocols,Continue reading “Mastercard unveils trust layer for agentic commerce”

xxx The Riskbank is currently working on improving the possibility of making offline payments by card to strengthen resilience. The possibility to pay offline in Sweden when the Internet is down is currently limited and does not work at all for contactless and mobile wallet payments. From: Swedish central bank urges public to horde cashContinue reading “Swedish central bank urges public to horde cash in case of payments disruption”

xxx The SNB says the the current international situation and Sweden’s high degree of digitalisation may lead to vulnerabilities in the payments system. The Riksbank recommends that all households keep a sum of SEK 1,000 in cash per adult at home. This amount should be seen as a benchmark and is intended to cover aContinue reading “Swedish central bank urges public to horde cash in case of payments disruption”

xxx “Discernment is a must when using AI, as they are coherence generators, not truth generators,” he said. “If we want to use AI safely as a society, we must all understand that one simple fact.” From: The reality of chatbot-induced delusions. xxx

xxx One survey from the UK suggests over one in three adults have used AI to support their mental health. From: The reality of chatbot-induced delusions. xxx