Advancements in technology over recent years have made EEG headsets, which read and interpret brain activity into controlling software applications, available to consumers. A recent academic study examined exploiting such technology to obtain personal and financial information by attacking victims while wearing these headsets, and yielded surprising results that showed fraudsters could exploit such technologies
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Facebook recently announced that they uncovered an incident where fraudsters used compromised email addresses to scrape lists of Facebook friends due to a misconfiguration on their site. The fraudsters would then target phishing emails to the owners of the email addresses purporting to be from a Facebook friend. Read More
According to a recent report from security firm RSA, phishing attacks in the first half of 2012 have accounted for more than $687 million in losses while the country hosting the most phishing and pharming sites is by far the United States. Read More
Major financial institutions have invested millions in new top-level domains that will be exclusive to their brand while financial industry groups apply for oversight of the top-level domain .bank in attempts to combat phishing by using exclusive, secure and trusted domains for their customer websites and services. Read More
A hacker recently pointed out that a feature specific to Apple’s iOS operating system leaves a major vulnerability with text messaging where receivers of the text can be misled into believing it came from another party. While this security flaw can encourage phishing attacks via text messages it also has implications for SMS banking, SMS
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More mobile payment methods and wallets are testing and preparing for commercial launch with mobile joint venture Isis starting trials in two pilot U.S markets, Visa testing NFC (Near Field Communication) payments at the London Olympic Games, and PayPal trialing their mobile payment method with McDonald’s fast food restaurants in France. Read More
In a recent report from Juniper Research it was predicted that the total global mobile payment volume will reach $1.3 trillion by 2017 with at least $180 billion of this coming from Near Field Communication (NFC) retail payments. Read More
Discover Financial Services recently announced their partnership with Google Wallet allowing cardholders to use their Discover cards within the Google Wallet application for Near Field Communication (NFC) payments at the point-of-sale as well as through using Google Wallet online. The key feature of this partnership is that Discover customers can login and save their credit
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On July 27 Apple acquired AuthenTec, who provides encryption technology, fingerprint sensors and identity management software, for $356 million. After filing a shareholder notification document related to this acquisition with the SEC it was apparent that Apple was in a hurry to acquire the company’s fingerprint scanning technology, and while this has many potential uses
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The four major wireless carriers in the U.S. along with financial institutions, card associations and mobile wallet providers have formed and joined the Mobile Payments Committee with the Electronic Transactions Association (ETA). The purpose of the committee is to define best practices for mobile payment solutions while educating legislators, merchants and consumers to foster and
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