Snippets

xxx Bank of America and Wells Fargo are banning cash deposits into others' accounts, citing security concerns. From Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) to ban cash deposits into others’ accounts - Bizwomen . xxx

xxx "Airbnb doesn't even share its data with councils, so how are councils expected to enforce the 90-day limit?" From "How Airbnb bandits rent out properties to prostitutes, drug dealers and party animals | Daily Mail Online" . xxx

xxx "Rossi had posed as a £120,000-a-year cancer specialist and falsified references to rent the £800-a-week flat." From "How Airbnb bandits rent out properties to prostitutes, drug dealers and party animals | Daily Mail Online" . xxx

xxx "That moment when you see a bunch of weird charges on your credit card or bank statement: Cigars in Brazil? Airline tickets in Nigeria? A tank of gas in Las Vegas? Someone has obtained your credit or debit card number, and now you're going to have to suffer months of updating it with all your utilities and other vendors. How did these thieves get your card information? Was it something you did? Should you have done something differently? Today we're going to look at some of the most common ways credit card numbers are compromised, correct some popular misinformation, and point out a few tips to more secure charging habits. For this show, we don't really differentiate between credit cards and debit cards. From the perspective of keeping card info secure, there's very little difference. Either is just as likely to show up in a large database of card data that some thief acquired, and another purchased; that latter one is either making online charges in bulk, o...

xxx "For Apple Pay, Android Pay, Samsung Pay and every other pay, #appandpay is way more important than #tapandpay" From "NFC isn’t the real reason for Apple Pay | Consult Hyperion" . xxx

Hi Brian, My family and I are big fans and long time listeners show and I really enjoyed your pop quiz in episode 654 on 18th December. Your question about card payments caught my attention because I am quite a boring person and this is one of the few things that I know anything about. You asked "Which of these three is the riskiest way to use your card?” and gave the three options Using your card via a phone app such as Apple Pay or Android Pay. Swiping the magnetic strip. Using a chip card. You correctly give the answer B, swiping the magnetic strip, but your explanation is incorrect. Whether you use a strip or a chip, they both pass your card number to the merchant terminal and from there it ends up in the merchant system although it should be encrypted for safety. Chip cards do not have an encrypted connection to the bank and they do not use tokens. The reason for using chip cards is that they cannot be counterfeited: even if I steal your card number, date of b...

xxx Safaricom is being investigated for the Saturday outage of its M-Pesa service that left millions of customers unable to receive or send money. The blackout is estimated to have cost the economy billions of shillings. From Safaricom probed over costly M-Pesa outage - Daily Nation . xxx xxx CA statistics show that about Sh1.5 trillion moved through the M-Pesa platform in the three months to June, translating to an average Sh16.3 billion per day or about Sh679.3 million every hour. M-Pesa agents were among the biggest losers in the blackout that stalled their business for hours. Multiple banks have hooked up their systems to M-Pesa. From Safaricom probed over costly M-Pesa outage - Daily Nation .   xxx Do the math. Suppose there are 100,000 agents with 100 “super agents” (network aggregators) managing 1,000 agents each. Suppose there are 100m customers (there are currently around 20m). Suppose a customer’s M-PESA balance and associated flags/status are 100 bytes. So th...