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xxx Abu Dhabi police are warning local residents that money may be stolen from their bank balances through “electronic magnetisation” and exploitation of contactless payment technology. The warning comes after widely shared videos emerged on social media purporting to show contactless payment technology being used to steal funds from victims without their knowledge. In a statement, Colonel Amran Ahmed Al Mazrouei, Abu Dhabi’s director of criminal investigations, said that although such thefts were possible, none has so far been recorded in the emirate. From Abu Dhabi police warn of contactless card thefts - ArabianBusiness.com . xxx

xxx I had asked my financial adviser at Brewin Dolphin for the relevant bank details and he sent them by email. From If you’ve been sent bank details by email, be warned | Money | The Guardian . This is dumb, pure and simple. If someone sends you sensitive personal information using unencrypted e-mail then you must assume that they are at best reckless and at worst utterly uninformed. What the financial adviser at Brewin Dolphin should have done, of course, is refuse to engage in such absurdly risky behaviour and asked the customer to contact them using a secure messaging application (eg, Signal).

xxx Start-up bank Monzo said its phone lines are regularly inundated with calls from suspected scammers complaining that their accounts have been frozen. The bank will shut down accounts it suspects of being fraudulent but, not wishing to tip off a potential criminal, will not inform its owner why. Oblivious criminals often then ring up to complain, with elaborate sob stories reportedly involving audio recordings of babies crying and desperate pleas of needing the account unfrozen. From Why your fraudster could be getting better customer service at the bank than you are . xxx

A generation back, in the July 2000 edition of Harper’s Magazine, Dennis Cass wrote ( in an article on Silicon Valle y) about “the kinds of things you’ve heard bores like Nicholas Negroponte drone on about in Wired magazine, like shoes that can send e–mail to other shoes”. I wrote this down at the time, because I had previously met Nicholas (who wasn’t boring at all) and remember thinking that Dennis' was an interesting perspective from a non-technologist looking at what technologists were doing. And it was a funny example. Shoes that can send e-mail to other shoes! Ridiculous. And yet a couple of years ago, through the miracle of Twitter, I found a piece on bluetooth connected “smart” shoes . The dystopia is here. It’s only taken a couple of decades to get this point, but it’s something to celebrate. I can confidently predict that our shoes will be getting hacked from now on. After all, if the makers of bluetooth connected sex toys are unable to keep them secure , the makers of s

xxx The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) took over policy responsibility for the digital identity market in June and is working on a plan to stimulate an ecosystem of providers based on government-backed standards for interoperability of digital identities, and opening up application programming interfaces (APIs) to public sector databases such as passports and driving licences. From Government to end investment in Gov.uk Verify digital identity system . xxx

The original business case for Verify was predicated on its use in major departments such as HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) and the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP). But no-one made them use it. In fact, they blew it off totally and developed their own alternatives. As Computer Weekly noted , HMRC is developing a new version of its existing Government Gateway, while NHS England is developing its own identity system (after saying Verify is not secure enough for the health service), the Scottish government is pressing ahead with its own digital identity and DWP has had to create an additional identity system to support Universal Credit after finding that hundreds of thousands of benefits applicants could be unable to register successfully on Verify. Oh well.

xxx Which?’s survey found that over 75% of low-income households rely on cash, as well as over 80% of elderly households. From Move to Cashless Society Will Disproportionately Affect Pensioners & the Poorest in UK . xxx

xxx Britain's Royal Mint has frozen plans to launch a digital gold token after a partnership with U.S. exchange group CME failed and the government vetoed a plan to have the tokens trade on a cryptocurrency exchange, three sources told Reuters. From Wary of crypto, UK government blocks Royal Mint's digital gold | Euronews . xxx

xxx Victoria Police earlier this month warned against falling for a scam that saw four people lose a total of AU$50,000 after depositing funds into a bitcoin ATM. The Maribyrnong Crime Investigation Unit said the four victims from the eastern suburbs were told that they owed a tax debt and that if they did not pay up, they would be arrested. From Australian woman arrested over AU$450,000 Ripple theft | ZDNet . It’s easy to dismiss people as being victims of their own stupidity 

xxx Fraudsters are now using ‘contactless skimming’ machines to read credit card information right out of your pocket, then use a merchant account to make contactless payments. In a 2013 study published by the University of Surrey, a team managed to ‘successfully receive contactless transmission from distances of 18 to 31 inches’ using a skimming device. From Contactless payments hit record levels as contactless fraud follows | The Paypers . xxx

According to a number of press report, the Abu Dhabi police are warning local residents that money may be stolen from their bank balances through “electronic magnetisation” and "exploitation of contactless payment technology”. I’m pretty sure that I would be concerned about electronic magnetisation too (if I knew what it was) so I will take this warning to wary to heart the next time I visit. The magnitude of the problem must be such that there is general panic amongst the contactless crazy residents of the… oh, wait. It turns out that Colonel Amran Ahmed Al Mazrouei, Abu Dhabi’s director of criminal investigations, has said that "although such thefts were possible, none has so far been recorded in the emirate". To the best of my knowledge, none have so far been recorded anywhere else either. When I went to look for evidence of criminal enterprise, I came across yet another alarming statement. According to The Paypers , fraudsters are now using ‘contactless skimming’ m

xxx The suppliers are Barclays, Digidentity, Experian, Post Office and Secure Identity From Government to end investment in Gov.uk Verify digital identity system . xxx

xxx "This isn’t anonymity in the sense of real names versus fake names. The names we use are irrelevant. This is about a mental detachment from physical reality. The design of our devices acts to transport us into an alternate universe." From "A Unified Theory of Everything Wrong with the Internet" . xxx

xxx "Digital forms of identity systems, when fully developed and deployed, are expected to be more powerful and efficient tools of identification than legacy paper systems. The power and efficiency proffered by such tools, both pose and mount a great urgency to identify, and to mitigate modern risks associated with system breach and the compromise of vital information in those identity systems, and to ensure that digital identity systems do not become tools of suppression, oppression, exclusion, or discrimination." From "A Failure to “Do No Harm” – India’s Aadhaar biometric ID program and its inability to protect privacy in relation to measures in Europe and the U.S. - Technology Science" . xxx

xxx "A repeat of the failed attempt to roll out the Australia Card threatens to follow Coalition efforts to create digital IDs for web-users, unless the government makes changes protecting privacy, a defence think tank warns in a new report." From "Govpass on brink of becoming the next Australia Card debacle: report" . xxx

xxx Age verification (AV) regulations presented to parliament by the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) last week do not include websites on which less than a third of content is pornographic material and where it is provided free of charge. From Millions of porn videos will not be blocked by UK online age checks | Technology | The Guardian . xxx

xxx More startling is that the demand for $100 bills has exceeded that for all other denominations, growing at an annual rate of about 8 percent since 1995, double that of most other notes. In 2017, the $100 bill passed the $1 denomination as the most widely circulated Federal Reserve note. From Cashless society not here yet, with $100 gaining | Coin World . xxx

I notice that Facebook has been hacked. Apparently, some 30 million people had their phone numbers and personal details exposed in a "major cyber attack" on the social network in September. Around half of them had their usernames, gender, language, relationship status, religion, hometown, city, birthday, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or Pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches all compromised. Wow. Now, I don’t really care about this much personally. Like all normal people I have Facebook and enjoy using it to connect with family and close friends, but I don’t use my “real” name for it and I never ever gave in to their pleading for my phone number. Not because I was unsure that it would at some point get hacked (I assumed this to be the case) or because I thought that if I used it for two-factor authentication  they might use it for advertising purposes , but on the ge

xxx Work by Grant Thornton has been called into question after bosses at Patisserie discovered a £28.8million black hole in the accounts, an unpaid tax bill and two ‘secret’ overdrafts totalling nearly £10million. The auditor has worked for the company since 2006 and most recently signed off the books for the year to September 30, which said the balance sheet was strong and contained no borrowing. From Auditors face probe over Patisserie Valerie crisis following discovery of £28.8m black hole | Daily Mail Online . xxx

xxx In the UK, at more than £80 billion ($104 billion), the value of notes and coins in circulation is in real terms one-third higher than in 2007, when the UK got its first contactless payment cards. From What is driving the drop in UK cash volumes? - Central Banking . xxx

xxx I don’t think there are many people left in government who understand digital identity.” From Commercial concerns push two IDPs away from Verify as it heads towards private sector delivery - Government Computing Network . To be honest, there weren’t that many to begin with.

xxx "Of these, 15m had their names, phone numbers and email addresses accessed. An additional 14m also had usernames, gender, language, relationship status, religion, hometown, city, birthday, device types used to access Facebook, education, work, the last 10 places they checked into or were tagged in, website, people or Pages they follow, and the 15 most recent searches." From "Facebook warns 30m users exposed in cyber attack - how to check if you were affected" . xxx

xxx In 2017, the $100 bill passed the $1 denomination as the most widely circulated Federal Reserve note. From Cashless society not here yet, with $100 gaining | Coin World . xxx

xxx "Zelle P2P Volume Grew To $28 Billion In Q2, Against Venmo’s $14 Billion" From "Venmo, Zelle Book Q2 Growth, Good Signs for P2P | PYMNTS.com" . xxx

xxx "When Berners-Lee and his team were building the world wide web and designing HTTP and HTMP standards, they included error codes such as ‘500: internal server error’, or ‘404: page not found’. In the early 90s, they were trying to realise Licklider’s vision and setting out the rules for how we were all going to interact over this information network. One long-standing error code is ‘402: payment required’. The original intention – the reason 402 is reserved for future use – was that this code would be used to transact digital cash or micropayments. It has never been implemented – and the Collisons argue this is the reason tech is turning from an equal access opportunity to an oligopoly controlled by five companies now worth more than $3 trillion." From "The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook | WIRED UK" . xxx

xxx "‘The annual cost of financial intermediation in the US is roughly 2 per cent – the same as it was in the late nineteenth century. The US finance industry has showed no efficiency gains at all over 130 years.’" From "The untold story of Stripe, the secretive $20bn startup driving Apple, Amazon and Facebook | WIRED UK" . xxx

I was very happy to note that Starbucks has decided to go the extra step and get rid of cash. Well, in one of its stores at least. The coffee chain is conducting an experiment at a branch in Seattle, Washington, by having it go completely cash free to explore the the dynamic. It hasn’t yet spread - the last Starbucks I was in I wanted to pay using my app but I’ve forgotten the password so I just used a contactless card (like pretty much everyone else in the line), but I’m sure I saw someone pay with cash while I was waiting - but I’m sure it will as the meme is speaking. Credo tested a cash-free policy at its San Francisco and Brooklyn stores and “it went off without a hitch” so the chain opened its first cash-free establishment in Boston and never looked back. Cafés are following suit in other developed nations. A new one in Singapore had the proud title of the first cashless restaurant on the Island.  Interestingly, as well as taking the usual payment cards (including NETS, th

xxx "The European Central bank has no plan to issue a digital currency because the underlying technology is still fragile and the use of physical cash still high in the euro zone, the ECB president said on Friday." From "ECB has no plan to issue digital currency - Draghi | Reuters" . According to Reuters, the President of the European Central Bank (ECB) Mario Draghi has reiterated that there are 

xxx "Venture capitalists, such as Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures, who was an early investor in Twitter, now talk of a ‘kill-zone’ around the giants. Once a young firm enters, it can be extremely difficult to survive." From "American tech giants are making life tough for startups - Into the danger zone" . xxx

xxx "The lack of an incumbent giant is one reason why there is so much investor enthusiasm for crypto-currencies" From "American tech giants are making life tough for startups - Into the danger zone" . xxx

Meanwhile, in Nigeria "Every few days, Tasiu Abdurrahman takes the money he makes from selling spices and buries it in his yard. The 55-year-old closed his bank account eight years ago after growing disillusioned with standing in long lines for hours to deposit or withdraw cash." From "Nigerians bury cash in backyards as mobile banking stumbles" . xxx xxx "Less than 6% of Nigerians use their handsets to transact using mobile money, compared with 73% of Kenyans, where more than two-thirds of adults have a bank account" From "Nigerians bury cash in backyards as mobile banking stumbles" .   xxx xxx "Cellular phone operators would invest more if they were allowed to lead the way, said Emeka Oparah, a spokesman for Bharti Airtel Ltd.’s Nigerian unit, which has 40 million subscribers." From "Nigerians bury cash in backyards as mobile banking stumbles" .   xxx

The Bank of Canada published an interesting working paper on retail payment transaction times (" How Long Does It Take You to Pay? A Duration Study of Canadian Retail Transaction Payment Times ", Working Paper 2018-46, September 2018). The author finds that "cash is more efficient in terms of time than cards, allowing for the processing of more payments... it helps explain the continued use of cash to pay for low-value retail purchases, despite the increase in payment innovations. This is a useful contribution to the discussion about cashlessness and I was thinking about it when I went to the fish and chip shop recently. Now, I haven't used cash in the fish and chip shop for years. Like most normal people, I pay by contactless, and it seems pretty quick to me, even allowing for the time taken for online authorisation. So while I was waiting for the haddock and chips, I watched the couple of people behind me in the queue. One used contactless but the other used a £10