Snippings

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arly on a sunlit summer’s morning in Japan, with the last cherry blossoms fading and the wisteria in bloom, more than 100 fraudsters strolled into convenience stores all around the country.

With fake credit cards cloned from the information of 1 600 South Africa Standard Bank customers, they made 14 000 transactions, drawing in total the equivalent of R300-million in Japanese yen from 1 400 ATMs in just three hours, between 5.00am and 8.00am local time.

The authorities, the bank and its customers in South Africa, still asleep, were none the wiser. The thieves had probably already skipped the country with the small fortune in yen, the most tradable currency in the world after the US dollar.

It was only a week later that a Japanese paper, Mainichi, reported on the theft, citing investigative sources. On Monday, Standard Bank confirmed it had been the victim of a sophisticated, co-ordinated fraud.

The bank said it had incurred a total R300-million loss,

From Standard Bank scam: R300-million ATM heist ups the ante | Business | Africa (Business) | M&G

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o discourage ticket scalping, event organizers ReedPOP required fans to authenticate themselves online before ticket sales began. Would-be buyers were asked to put down a number of credentials — including phone numbers, addresses, and credit card information — in what was dubbed the “fan verification process.”

From Comic Con Controversy Highlights Digital ID Opportunity for Banks | American Banker

This is precisely the sort of nonsense that perpetuates in the absence of a working digital infrastructure.

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In order to engage with our customers, ENOC in partnership with Beam, has rolled out Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) beacons at our service stations to enable payment for fuel and convenience store transactions, allowing consumers to pay through their mobile phones,”

From Beam Wallet and MasterCard team up to offer an innovative and rewarding mobile payment experience in the UAE | Global Hub

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This is what I said about it back in 2008.

Some time ago, I pointed out that sensible retailers would use ID cards to cut payment schemes out of the transaction loop, by using ID cards as payment tokens and using the ACH network rather than Visa or MasterCard

From Digital Identity: I’m sure banks have a strategy for this kind of thing

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There’s now some evidence that police cameras reduce complaints and violence, which has led to editorial boards calling for more cameras on officers and some civil libertarians calling for every officer to wear a lapel cam while on duty.

From The ‘right to record’ is not a question of technology, but rather power and policy – TechRepublic

Note, however, that 

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Surprisingly, we found that the use of wearable video cameras is associated with a 3.64% increase in shooting-deaths of civilians by the police. We explain that video recordings collected during a violent encounter with a civilian can be used in favor of a police officer as evidence that justifies the shooting.

From Study Links Police Bodycams to Increase in Shooting Deaths – Law Blog – WSJ

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The paper also looked at the use of smartphones and in-vehicle laptops that allow police officers to obtain crime data and suspect information on the fly. In contrast to their findings on body cameras, “smartphone use by officers is also associated with a 2.46% reduction in the shooting-deaths of civilians,” the study said.

From Study Links Police Bodycams to Increase in Shooting Deaths – Law Blog – WSJ

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Wells’ tiptoeing into open APIs by offering them to commercial customers is typical of banks, which see such clients as the test case. Consumer applications hold the greater opportunity, but also carry more risk given cybersecurity and data issues.

From The Drumbeat for Open APIs Is Getting Louder | American Banker

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Hendrik Kleinsmiede, the director of Visa Europe’s innovation arm Collab, which is backing Sthaler, said the Fingopay technology was less immune to problems such as wet and dusty fingers or fraud. “People are ready to accept biometrics as a secure authentication mechanism,” he said.

From Era of plastic credit card to end soon

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It turns out machine vision algorithms have an Achilles’ heel that allows them to be tricked by images modified in ways that would be trivial for a human to spot. These modified pictures are called adversarial images, and they are a significant threat.

From Machine Vision’s Achilles’ Heel Revealed by Google Brain Researchers

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Integrated into the company’s main app, CVS Pay lets customers combine payment, prescription pickup and loyalty programme access all in one quick scan at checkout.

From CVS follows Walmart with own mobile payments service – BayPay Members Blogs

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The new rules from the Competition and Markets Authority are designed to promote transparency and clarity while providing an incentive for customers to switch providers. The model is taken from the UK’s deregulated electricity industry.

Security experts, however, remain concerned over the potential of greater risk to customer data inherent in the new approach.

From Funny story, this. UK.gov’s ‘open banking app revolution’. Security experts not a fan of it • The Register

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