A library of snippets
xxx
In the future, social networks such as Facebook will become a new type of bank – a bank of your social credit. If you have poor social credit scores, people will be less likely to do business with you. Those with positive social values or high Klout scores will get better deals or superior rates of lending.
xxx
xxx
Reputation will become a real social currency.
I couldn’t agree more. It’s almost as if your identity was a new form of, well. money.
xxx
Facebook user Aaron Thompson has exposed an online thief who gained access to his account simply by sending the support team a fake passport to unlock the account.
From Facebook ‘hack’ victim exposes passport scam – BBC News
As Bruce Schneider wrote about this, “demanding an easy-to-forge copy of a hard-to-forge document isn’t a good solution”. Now, I don’t doubt that the algorithms used by Au10tix and others will continue to improve, but the real solution (yawn, here he goes again) is a digital passport. One of the key differences between a digital passport and a mundane passport is that while a mundane passport is a passive item, digital passport should be able to check the validity of other digital passports.
xxx
It estimated there were two million computer misuse offences and 3.8 million fraud offences in the 12 months to the end of March – suggesting fraud is the most common type of crime.
Most related to bank account fraud.
From Nearly six million fraud and cyber crimes last year, ONS says – BBC News
xxx
xxx
You’ll need to send in some info as part of the application, like your birth date and phone number, and you need to have an actual photo on your profile. Twitter may require more verification, too, like a copy of a government-issued ID.
From Do you want a verified account on Twitter? Now you can apply. – Recode
Surely these will end up on wikileaks at some point. A much better idea is not give your sensitive personal data to yet another place where it can be lost from but to instead provide Twitter with proof of attributes from a third party.
Now, you may remember that I have said one or two mildly critical things about the Current Account Switching Service (CASS) now and then. In fact, when it was launched, I said that it wouldn’t make a difference to the number of people switching accounts.
“This will make not the slightest difference,” said David Birch, global ambassador at IT consultancy Consult Hyperion. “35,000 people switching every week for the next 12 months won’t change anything. True competitiveness means new competitors. Even if we reduce the process from 12 days to seven, who cares? We still haven’t taken out any cost. There are far better ways the money could have been spent.
From UK account switching a “complete waste of time” claims bank panellist » Banking Technology
As it turns out, I was wrong. The number of people switching accounts has gone down. The service cost £750m to launch and it’s probably cost in total around a billion quid by now.
The UK Payments Council-backed current account switch service (CASS) has gone live, promising to enable customers to move between banks in seven days or less.
From £750 million current account switching service launched | IT Business | Computerworld UK
By the way, I never understood what this has to do with the UK Payments Council or why it was in there (generally excellent plan).
xxx
The small Calabrian town of Gioiosa Ionica, population 7,000, is currently home to a group of asylum seekers, who are given the imitation bank notes, or “tickets” as they are known, as part of a voucher system.
The refugees can spend the cash on whatever they like, but only in the town, so that local businesses benefit.
From The Italian town that legally gives fake money to migrants – BBC News
xxx
Daniel Buchner wrote a very interesting blog post a few days ago. In it, he says that
Most non-monetary blockchain use-cases can be accomplished off-chain using a combination of blockchain-anchored identity, cryptographic signatures, and traditional storage systems – all while retaining the features developers desire and avoiding the scalability issues of on-chain transactions.
From Scaling Decentralized Apps & Services via Blockchain-based Identity Indirection – Back Alley Coder
This idea of “blockchain-anchored identity” is what I presented at TechDaysMunich 2016, where I had been invited to talk about identity and the Internet of Thing. Naturally, I couldn’t resist using the example of my pants get the audience to think about some of the key concepts (although I did put in some new jokes). Anyway, the slides are here if you are interested:
As an aside, I have to say that TechDaysMunich was a novel event. First of all, it was held on what appeared to be a Herzog film set:
I was honoured to be the keynote speaker. I had no idea that they would have a band on stage playing before I was invited up. Very fun and very different!
But back to the point of this post. I told the audience… well, you can see here.
So what does putting pants on the blockchain actually mean? Well, like Daniels says in his article, I think means link the mundane entity to a virtual identity (via a serial number or some other attribute or collection of attributes).
xxx
A novel design feature of MedRec is the way records are validated and added to the blockchain. The miners for MedRec are medical researchers who are rewarded with access to census-level data of the medical records.
xxx
xxx
A cash machine has been stolen from the main arena area at the T in the Park festival.
From Cash machine stolen from main arena of T in the Park site
My son went to this pop festival, as I believe they are known, last year. I armed him with Barclaycard bPay wristband to pay for essentials whilst bopping along to the variety of popular beat combos on show. This turned out to be completely pointless because a) no-one of the stall look cards, let along contactless and b) he lost the wristband on the first day. I’ve written before about cashlessnees in these environments (e.g., my expedition to the Roskilde Festival in Denmark) and I don’t want to go over old ground again, but the advantages of getting cash out of these environments are many and varied.
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
I have been to many of these “festivals” myself
They should ban cash completely from this sort of event. It is nothing but trouble. From tax-evading criminal gangs running some of the pitches to thefts and losses, to massive queues for ATMs, it is a hassle from beginning to end. The only reason to take cash to pop festivals, at least as far as I can recall, was to buy drugs.
//embedr.flickr.com/assets/client-code.js
We didn’t have mobile payments in my day
Nowadays the kids have Venmo and PingIt and debit cards and iZettle and what not so there’s no need to put them in the vulnerable position of carrying cash. Perhaps the Scottish authorities should step in and follow the trail blazed in Ohio. Since banks and card companies won’t provide a convenient and safe alternative to cash for the purchase of mind-altering chemicals other than alcohol and Night Nurse, the state should.
Ohio’s new medical marijuana law proposes a new way around the bank problem. The law allows state officials to set up a “closed loop” payment processing system, similar to prepaid debit and gift cards.
From Cashless payment system proposed for Ohio medical marijuana program | cleveland.com
There was a very good edition of “In Business” on the BBC recently where Peter Day visited Colorado and noted the problems associate with the use of cash (“armoured cars full of cash a common sight”). This is all because of the bizarre situation in the US where marijuana is legal in some states but you can’t use electronic payments to buy it.
Alex Batlin raised this point in a discussion about digital passports for financial services, noting that the mutual acceptance and regulatory acceptance depends on being able to see that the right verifications have been performed.
regulators will not excuse an FI providing money transfer services to terrorists because they blind trusted another FI.
From Crypto 2.0 Musings – Digital Identity Passport | Alex Batlin | Pulse | LinkedIn
xxx
Snippings