News & Analysis
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Apple Pay remains secure, but the banking support call centers it relies on have proven easy targets for fraud
Security is a never-ending juggling act between preventing unwanted accessibility and delivering an easy, enjoyable user experience. Often, when companies overly prioritize the latter, the unintended consequence is marked increase in incidences of fraud. So has been the case with the banking industry’s adoption of Apple Pay. With the popularity and rapid adoption of the new iOS payment platform, card issuers have had to authorize and provision encrypted card details for more than 2 million US consumers (and more individual… -
Study: It’s easier for teens to buy e-cigs online than to get real cigarettes in a store
It’s hard for teenagers to buy cigarettes. Most stores are required to check someone’s ID before selling them any tobacco products, and new driver’s licenses are getting harder to fake. Barring help from someone who can legally buy them — which seems disturbingly easy to get, unfortunately — many teenagers won’t be getting cigarettes any time soon. A new study in North Carolina, the heart of tobacco country, shows that it isn’t nearly as difficult for teens to buy… -
Venmo still hasn’t apologized for — let alone addressed — its security issues
Venmo isn’t responding to criticism of its security practices as well as some might like. Its security was questioned last week when Slate revealed that it doesn’t inform users when their passwords are changed, nor when new email accounts are connected to existing Venmo accounts, which allowed one thief to make off with about $2,850 of a Venmo user’s money. The service usually informs its users when money has been transferred. In addition to adding a new email address… -
PayPal plans $280M acquisition of Paydiant
PayPal is planning to acquire Paydiant, the company behind CurrentC — retailers’ answer to Apple Pay — for a reported $280 million. No word yet on how the companies will mix, nor if Paydiant’s relationship with the industry group behind CurrentC will remain intact. [Source: Re/code] -
Barry Silbert’s BIT wins the race to become the first publicly traded bitcoin investment vehicle
Even for those investors interested in finding exposure to bitcoin, you could forgive them for feeling skeptical about even the most high profile of exchanges within the category. Bitcoin exchanges have proven a high profile target for hackers and internal fraud, with many of the most widely traded platforms falling victim to such attacks. But thanks to a new investment vehicle hitting a major US stock exchange, these bitcoin-specific exchanges are no longer an investor’s only option. Bitcoin Investment Trust… -
Islamic State supporters threaten Twitter employees
Supporters of the so-called Islamic State have called for attacks on Twitter co-founder Jack Dorsey and other Twitter employees as retribution for shuttering its propaganda accounts. BuzzFeed was the first to translate the threat from its original Arabic. It reads, in part: You started this failed war … We told you from the beginning it’s not your war, but you didn’t get it and kept closing our accounts on Twitter, but we always come back. But when our lions… -
Microsoft reportedly wants to acquire Prismatic
Microsoft is in talks to acquire Prismatic, a news aggregation service that uses natural language processing to recommend content in which its users might be interested, according to a report from TechCrunch. Apple, Yahoo, Google, and Facebook are all said to have expressed similar interest in the company. (Which is surely a sign of actual interest and not at all an attempt by someone at the company to make it seem like a hot commodity — right?) [Source: TechCrunch] -
“Just wanted to confirm that the rumors are true — I’m excited to be running Google’s Photos and Streams products! It’s important to me that these changes are properly understood to be positive improvements to both our products and how they reach users.”
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Samsung announces Samsung Pay
Samsung has announced Samsung Pay, a competitor to the Apple Pay product included in Apple’s latest iPhones, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. The feature will allow new Samsung Galaxy S6 owners who use MasterCard to pay for goods with their phones. It’s not clear when other credit card companies will be supported. [Source: The Guardian] -
Google’s mobile network to be unveiled in ‘coming months’
Google’s product head, Sundar Pichai, said during the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona today that the company’s wireless network will debut in the United States in the “coming months.” Asked about the network’s features, Pichai said that it wants to “experiment” like it has with Android, and that it has carrier partners with which it’s working. [Source: TechCrunch] -
Internet privacy, funded by spooks: A brief history of the BBG
For the past few months I’ve been covering U.S. government funding of popular Internet privacy tools like Tor, CryptoCat and Open Whisper Systems. During my reporting, one agency in particular keeps popping up: An agency with one of those really bland names that masks its wild, bizarre history: the Broadcasting Board of Governors, or BBG. The BBG was formed in 1999 and runs on a $721 million annual budget. It reports directly to Secretary of State John Kerry and… -
Meet Pierre Omidyar! A handy primer for new First Look hires
Early last week, Ken Silverstein — former Harpers editor and founder of Counterpunch — quit Pierre Omidyar’s First Look Media, citing management incompetence. [UPDATE: An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Silverstein as co-founder of Counterpunch with Alexander Cockburn; Silverstein sent me an email correctly noting that he founded Counterpunch four months before Cockburn joined, one of those small but not insignificant errors I know all too well as the sole founding editor of The eXile—M.A.] By the end of the… -
Fair warning: Pandoland is not that kind of conference
Most people take for granted that the 21st century Western world believes women should have a voice. And yet, as America starts to become a place where white, straight men are a minority– a small but significant group of those men are doing everything they can to smack women back down. You know some of the men I’m talking about: Brogrammers in Silicon Valley, those who send death threats to female games journalists in the name of “ethics”, anyone who… -
Uber database breach compromises the name and drivers license data of 50,000 drivers
Uber revealed in statement today that the names and driver’s license numbers of as many as 50,000 of its current and former drivers may have been compromised. Approximately 21,000 of these drivers were based in California. The company identified the responsible database vulnerability in September of last year, and said that the unauthorized access occurred in May of the same year. The company began notifying the affected drivers today, while also notifying the California attorney general’s office of the breach. [via LA Times] -
Read all 13 recaps from our sleepless House of Cards marathon
We also gave each review its own separate article page. To browse through those, click here. Netflix just flipped the switch on Season Three of House of Cards, and with a pot of coffee brewing and a freezer full of popsicles (nothing but the coldest snacks for the coldest show on television) I’m staying up all night to watch it. Follow all the outrageous political machinations here (and on my Twitter feed) as I recap each episode. Note: This isn’t a live blog…
