Snippings

xxx

World of Warcraft in-game markets are going insane this week after Blizzard opened up an exchange for players to use real money to buy WoW Tokens.

From How Trump strategist Steve Bannon wasted $60m on World of Warcraft | afr.com.

xxx

xxx

“A total of £236m was lost last year, with banks unable to return nearly three-quarters (74%) of the money lost. Victims think they are transferring money to someone official, such as a solicitor. They often occur when people transfer money during a housing transaction, or when paying an invoice for work done on the home. The fraudsters may have intercepted mail or hacked emails, then pose as the legitimate business by sending a payment demand. Legal back-up This is the first time such calculations have been made by UK Finance, showing that there were 43,875 reported cases of these scams. Nearly nine in 10 (88%) of these were consumers, who lost an average of £2,784. The rest were businesses who lost on average of £24,355 per case.”

From “Payment fraud: Millions lost in money transfer trick – BBC News”.

xxx

xxx

As a source of capital for business, equity markets no longer register on the radar screen. In both Britain and US, funds withdrawn through acquisitions for cash and share buybacks have recently routinely and considerably exceeded the amounts raised in rights issues and IPOs.

From Equity markets are thriving but are they relevant?

xxx

xxx

» View all newsNext story »591012APP scam data published for first time14 hours ago  |  2499 views  |  0UK consumers lost £236 million to authorised push payment scams in 2017, the first year that Britain’s banks have reported data on the fraudulent activity

From APP scam data published for first time

xxx

xxx

Why is it that a single savvy security guy can uncover a giant botnet with, essentially, the work of an afternoon, but Twitter has failed to detect it for going on ten years?

From Suspicious likes lead to researcher lighting up a 22,000-strong botnet on Twitter | TechCrunch

xxx

xxx

A total of £14million was stolen from contactless cards and devices in 2017. The total amount spent using the tap-and-go system doubled from £25.2billion in 2016 to £52.4billion last year.

From Contactless boom fuels 51% surge in tap-and-go fraud | Daily Mail Online

xxx

xxx

BIS found that the proportion of payments made by card rose from 13 per cent of GDP in 2000 to 25 per cent in 2016. People are also holding more cards and using them more for smaller transactions.

From Cash is not dying out, despite rise of cryptocurrencies and contactless payment, report finds | The Independent

xxx

xxx

Yet, while bitcoin and its cousins are something of a mirage, they might be an early sign of change, just as Palm Pilots paved the way for today’s smartphones.

From Bitcoin not the answer to a cashless society

xxx

xxx

One 86-year-old Telegraph Money reader discovered fraudsters had stolen her Facebook profile picture and set up a Messenger account with her name. The scammer messaged all of her friends to inform them of a “united nation tax refund” [sic]. In order to release the money, £200 of Amazon vouchers were required.

From Facebook flaw: fake Messenger accounts can’t be reported

xxx

xxx

Overall, 72.4 per cent of those who were infected with ransomware were able to get their data back. Most of those, however, were companies that simply ignored the ransom demands, then restored their systems with uninfected backup copies.

From Less than half of paying ransomware targets get their files back • The Register

xxx