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Lego has unveiled Smart Bricks – tech-filled versions of its small building blocks – which it says will bring sets to life with sound, light and reaction to movement.
From: Lego unveils tech-filled Smart Bricks – to play experts’ unease – BBC News.
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The Apple credit card had about $20bn in loans and JPMorgan would pay a roughly $1bn discount to the par value of the portfolio, according to a person familiar with the matter. Apple and JPMorgan will also work together on an Apple-branded savings account.
Moving the portfolio over to JPMorgan, the largest US bank with more than $4tn in assets, will be a test of the relationship between two of the biggest names in corporate America.
Apple often sets demanding terms in its business partnerships, while JPMorgan chief executive Jamie Dimon has repeatedly called out the iPhone maker as an emerging competitor as banking becomes increasingly digital.
From: JPMorgan to take over Apple’s $20bn credit card portfolio from Goldman Sachs.
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Transcript between Lloyds employee and customer who’s fallen victim to a romance scam
From: Man begged bank to send his £10,000 to ‘woman on oil rig’ | Wales Online.
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Roblox Corporation (NYSE: RBLX), an immersive gaming and creation platform, announced that starting today, users in the U.S. will be required to complete an age check to chat with others. Over the next week, this requirement will roll out to all regions where chat is available.
From: Roblox – Roblox Requires Users Worldwide to Age-Check to Access Chat.
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Roblox Corporation, the company behind the popular online game platform Roblox, announced today that age verification will now be required for any users wishing to use in-game chat in all regions where the feature is available. This comes after mounting pressure to protect underage players and lawsuits from multiple state attorneys general like Louisiana and Texas.
Starting January 7, players in the US and abroad will need to submit to facial age estimation via a selfie. Users 13 years of age or older may opt for ID-based checks. These features were given a trial rollout late last year in Australia, New Zealand and the Netherlands, where Roblox says half of the daily active users have already completed verification. The company says facial estimation is done via its third-party vendor Persona and that images are deleted immediately after processing. Age verification remains optional to play the game itself and is only required to use chat for now.
Once a player’s age is verified, they will be placed in one of six age groups, the youngest being under 9, and the oldest being 21+. Players in these groups can only chat with their own group, as well as age groups directly below and above theirs. Roblox says players who are 13 or older can still chat more freely with players beyond their immediate age group by using the “Trusted Connections” feature within Roblox. This feature is intended for friends imported via a user’s phone, or contacts added by QR codes shared outside of Roblox. Age verification is still required by both parties to use this feature.
From: Roblox now requires age verification to use in-game chat.
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In 2026, there will be a striking shift in how people plan to shop. With more than half of consumers preparing to buy through third-party apps rather than brand websites, the traditional model of directing shoppers to owned channels is eroding. As Google, Amazon and ChatGPT become competing conversational storefronts, high-quality, consistent product information has effectively become a brand’s frontline salesperson. “A shopper may now discover, evaluate and purchase your product without ever visiting your website,” Fouache said. “If your product data isn’t complete and consistent, you simply won’t show up.”
Looking further ahead, Akeneo expects agentic AI to begin playing a far more active role in purchasing itself. With a third of US consumers already open to the idea of allowing an AI assistant to make purchases on their behalf, the company predicts an immediate future in which shoppers describe their needs conversationally and delegate the entire purchasing process to an AI agent. Fouache warned that in this environment, brands will only be recommended if their product data is structured, detailed and trustworthy.
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2026 could well be the year agentic commerce goes mainstream, a trend that will only reinforce the industry’s consolidation. Ever more payment transactions will flow through ever fewer processors. Agentic commerce is likely to favour a small number of global players with the scale to build relationships with the emerging AI giants.
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Recent data highlight the growing scale of fraud harms. The FBI reports that Americans aged 60 and older lost more than $3.4 billion to scams in 2023.2 Industry analyses also indicate that deepfake-enabled fraud attempts increased by roughly 3,000 percent between 2022 and 2023 as generative AI tools became more widely available.3 Globally, the Global Anti-Scam Alliance estimates that scam losses exceeded $1 trillion over a recent 12-month period.4
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Jan 3, 2026, 10:36 AM GMT
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Bitcoin ATM fraud hit $333 million in losses in 2025, the FBI said.
Over 10,000 people have fallen victim to bitcoin ATM scams, with older adults being the most affected.
Bitcoin ATM fraud losses have more than doubled since 2022, according to FTC data.
Bitcoin ATM fraud reached new highs in 2025, with scammers reportedly stealing $333 million from victims, the FBI said.From: Bitcoin ATM Fraud Rises As FBI Reports $333 Million Stolen in 2025 – Business Insider.
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In December 2024, criminals stole thousands of dollars from Steve Beckett at a Circle K convenience store in Indiana. The robbery happened in broad daylight.
The thieves didn’t use a gun or a knife. There was no getaway car. The instrument of the crime was a machine, much like an ATM, owned by Bitcoin Depot and placed in the convenience store as part of a nationwide agreement with Circle K.
Beckett, 66 at the time, had been paying bills at home when his computer froze and a message directed him to call what turned out to be a phony Microsoft service hotline.
On the phone, a man named “Josh” told Beckett that someone had hacked his computer and used his credit cards and bank accounts to purchase child pornography. Soon, Beckett was speaking to another man, who claimed to work at his bank, and then someone else, who said he represented the Federal Reserve. His life savings were at risk, the men said, and there was only one way to protect them: converting the money into bitcoin.
Over the course of two days, the men cajoled and threatened Beckett, warning him he could go to prison. He had spent years working in management at a casino and selling securities and felt something was wrong, but he was terrified.
“My heart was racing, my blood pressure’s going through the roof,” he said.
Panicked, Beckett withdrew $4,000 from his bank and, at the men’s direction, drove to a Circle K with a Bitcoin Depot ATM. Beckett had never bought bitcoin and knew little about it, but he didn’t ask too many questions. On the phone, one of the men walked him through how to deposit the funds. “I was shaking like a leaf,” he said. The next day, he deposited another $3,000.
The machine, often called a crypto ATM or bitcoin ATM, converted the cash into bitcoin and transferred it to a digital address the men provided. For completing the transaction, Bitcoin Depot received about $2,000 in fees.
From: Retailers keep cashing in on crypto ATMs as scams surge – ICIJ.
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An 80-year-old man in Sunrise was the victim of a fraud that cost him and his family nearly $60,000, according to police.
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After his son reported it to police, the victim told a police officer that he was on his computer when a pop-up window opened and he clicked on it.
“He began receiving messages and phone calls from unknown numbers,” a police officer wrote after meeting with the victim on Oct. 6, according to a police report.
The scammer manipulated the victim into making withdrawals from JPMorgan Chase, driving to a Bitcoin ATM at 10129 West Oakland Park Boulevard, and using it to send $57,420 in Bitcoin to two wallets, according to a police report.
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In a lawsuit against Bitcoin Depot filed in early 2025, Iowa’s attorney general wrote that an analysis of transactions conducted in the state on the company’s machines between October 2021 and July 2024 suggested that more than half involved scams.
From: Retailers keep cashing in on crypto ATMs as scams surge – ICIJ.
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It emerged that, in this case, Lloyds had done a really good job of not only spotting the potential fraud but alerting James to it.
The bank blocked a number of transactions, it spoke to James on the phone to warn him and even called him into a branch to speak to him face-to-face.
However, the scammer’s hold over James was so strong after being indoctrinated to this supposed plight, he insisted the payments went through.
After our investigation began, though, Lloyds carried out a thorough review of James’ case.
In a statement it said it had a great deal of sympathy for James and his family.
“Sadly in this case, our customer did not take appropriate steps to verify that the person he met online was genuine. We blocked a number of the transfers and provided warnings about the risk of this being a scam, however he chose to proceed with the transactions.
“Given the complexity of this case and his personal circumstances at that time, we have now provided a full refund of the money he lost to the fraudsters.”From: Fraud victim gets surprise £153,000 refund despite rules – BBC News.
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Integrating separate hardware components and implementing a higher level of segregation for critical use cases, including key management, provides greater protection than mobile devices’ general-purpose hardware and operating systems, or general-purpose cloud infrastructures.[32] This is why DIWs should be deployed in devices that contain dedicated secure elements (SEs), which provide a physically separate secure environment, and/or platform-specific trusted execution environments (TEEs) for isolating cryptographic operations and sensitive data storage.
An SE contains a microprocessor chip engineered in a way that can store sensitive data and perform critical operations while offering lower exposure to threats. It acts as a vault, protecting the applications and data from typical malware attacks on the host operating system. Examples of secure elements for mobile devices include external hardware devices specifically designed for cryptographic operations, such as security tokens or smart ID cards. Secure elements such as SIMs, embedded SIMs (eSIMs) and embedded secure elements (eSEs) can also be integrated within the mobile device’s architecture. Current versions of mobile operating systems offer APIs to support operations with SEs, including embedded ones.
A TEE is an isolated environment within a device’s main processor[33] designed to protect sensitive operations and data from the rest of the device processing components, including the operating system and other applications. Often TEEs are used in combination with SEs, and some authors use the term TEE as already encompassing the integrated solution.
In cloud infrastructures, the solution may be provided by an isolated environment supported by dedicated hardened servers.[34] Hardware Secure Modules (HSMs) and other secure elements can also be deployed within a cloud infrastructure and connected to servers. A cloud-based architecture can relieve the mobile device of the burden of security management, enabling features such as credential recovery in the event of a lost device. However, it can present challenges in terms of availability and use in an offline context, where the device is not connected to the internet and proximity-based protocols are used instead.
From: TechDispatch #3/2025 – Digital Identity Wallets | European Data Protection Supervisor.
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Less than a day after staking over $30,000 on Venezuela President Maduro’s exit on a new Polymarket account, a trader reportedly earned $400,000 as US authorities moved against the South American leader.
His winnings have already drawn the attention of the online community and even Congress. Some lawmakers have shared their frustrations about insider trading.
From: Betting on Venezuela President Maduro’s exit, a trader earned over $400,000.
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