Online Shoppers Must Protect Themselves from Cybercrime Theft

High Profile Data Breaks – Cyber Theft

Online shopping can be very comfortable but most of these shoppers are falling prey to cyber criminals as the fraud rates is on the increase. High profile corporate data breaks have been taking place and a number of the country’s huge corporations from retailers like Target to major web presences such as EBay have conveyed instances of cyber theft which has caused thousands of lost consumer records as well as financial data. Cyber-attacks have not only targeted businesses’ assets and reputations but have also progressively exposed their millions of consumers to identity theft.

This has resulted in making online shoppers a bit apprehensive in indulging in shopping online for fear of cyber theft. Shopping online had become quite popular and convenient from the comfort point of view and also to get to know detailed information of the product intended to be purchased. Recent poll conducted by USA Today, indicated that around 24% of online shoppers are taking a pause on their buying habits due to the possibility of identity theft brought on through submission of their details together with credit card information provided online.

Online Fraud – Biggest Challenges for Payment History

Chris Hamilton, chief officer of APCA commented that online fraud tends to be one of the biggest challenges facing the payment history. He stated that somehow some bad guy tends to get hold of the card number with adequate information to pose to be you and purchase something from an online merchant and consumers should deal with merchants which are reputable that you know. When consumers tend to hand over their details online, by phone or through post, the card-not-present fraud rose by 42% in 2014 reaching nearly $300 million and new figures indicated by the Australian Payments and Clearing Association also found that card skimming at the ATMs is far from dead, had gone up by 17% in 2014 reaching a total of $42.1 million.

The report had outlined that the healthcare and education sectors, together with financial institutions, retailers, government bodies and computer software providers seem to be high objects for cybercrime. This issue has become so serious that the payments industry is now proposing in introducing – tokenisation, which substitutes sensitive information, for instance the use of card numbers with tokens which tend to be useless to a fraudster.

Need to Check Bank Statement Frequently 

The report also indicated the $650 billion worth of transactions that were made on Australian payment cards in 2014, were fraudulent by 0.06% and the average fraud debt was $224. Steven Munchenberg, chief executive of Australian Banker’s Association, said that the customers need to check their bank statement frequently to make sure they are not the victim of fraud.

 He further added that banks are equipped with sophisticated systems in place to detect fraud and if customers are innocent victims of fraud, they tend to bear the loss and not the customers. In 2014, frauds through `tap and go’ payments was comparatively stable around $33 million in lost and stolen fraud which went up by only 2%. In all these situations, fraudsters tend to use cards having contactless payment abilities in making transaction below $100 without the need of a four digit Personal Identification Number.

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Rumor-Detection Software IDs Disputed Claims on Twitter

After the seven days of Boston marathon bombing, a group of hackers release a bogus tweet from the official account of Associated Press which was containing a message that “Breaking News: Two Explosions in the White House and it if found that Barack Obama is injured”. Before some organizations such as; Associated Press or White House could clarify the false statement, the stock market of NYSE responds very fast and within minute it record the drop of 140 pints, where millions of people lose billions of dollars.

Stock market recovered very fast, but analyst stated that there was a chance of long time frame which was enough for hackers to make a good some of money through trading. We all knew that rumors and the negative effects of rumors spread very fast in hyper-connected times as per the statement of Qiaozhu Mei, who is Associate professor in Information and Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of Michigan School. To deal with these kinds of situations Prof. Mei and team of researchers have developed software which will help the society by identifying the rumors and correcting the erroneous claims on Twitter.

This software was introduced at the International World Wide Web Conference, Italy. But in the summers of 2015 they tested it live on the website which they are developing and named it as the Rumor Lens. Sometimes we found there are few posts on the social media which are spreading beyond the control of anyone and due to that our goal is to detect the emerging rumors in very less time, said Mei, who is an expert on text mining process and the processing of natural language.

The whole team demonstrated the capacity of software and for that they had done the analysis of two sets of tweets: First; a random sample of more than 1.2 billion tweets of November 2013 and Second; 30 million tweets related to the Boston Marathon bombing. In the sample testing they collected the second set from Twitter's Gardenhose with 10 per cent of its real time stream however; data was representing the unpredictable as well as high-profile events which was the rumors with less span of time.

In the whole process software correctly detected more than 110 rumors and about the Boston Marathon bombing, so after the testing software find more than 50 per cent accuracy on an average. The percentage of accuracy in both sample testing was higher than the 10 per cent accuracy of hastag and trending topic tracking rumor detection process. Researchers pointed out that there software are so fast in identifying the fishy statements. Prof Mei, stated that our method can detect the rumors 3.5 hours earlier than other methods which use hastag tracking and trending topics.

Rumor Lens is the sites of researches and it is expected that site will be available in the couple of months. In the statement researchers define the rumors as a controversial statement.

How Wearable Will Shape the Future of Mobile Payments

Mobile – Banking & Finance – A Necessity 

The adoption of mobile for the purpose of banking and finance section is no more an option to the users and stats indicate that most of the time is spend in mobile apps than in web with estimates that by 2020, around 80% users in the world would be in possession of smartphone. As per Visa, Australia has been leading the world in adopting contactless payments while Apple Pay will be hurrying over it.

Mobile now, no longer seems to be an option but a necessity and a key channel for delivery of financial services. This seems to be a good opportunity for banking and finance sector and with Apple Pay together with introduction of wearable, developments in mobile technology had given way to various opportunities for financial services businesses in redefining on how consumers could interact with banking as well as financial services. We tend to live in the age of entitled consumer where consumers expect more, trust their peers, have options, a voice, are informed and feel that they are entitled to –

• Access to their financial information whenever they intend to
• Real time and 24/7 banking services
• Real time, secure and convenient transactions
• Intuitive, simple and seamless user experiences

Wearable Technology – Important Part of Companies Game Plans

Executives from Capital One, MasterCard and PayPal participated in an animated discussion on the future of mobile payments at the Wearable World Congress in San Francisco and explained on why wearable technology is an important part of the companies’ game plans. MasterCard’s Vice President of start-up engagement and acceleration, Stephane Wyper commented that MasterCard is aimed on leveraging the latest as well as the greatest gadget which includes wearable, in creating loyal customers.

He added that looking at the future; consumers are interacting with updated devices which extend beyond plastics or the devices in their pocket. The question for MasterCard is that `how to enable all of those connected devices to be payment devices’. Wearable in the market is on the rise and Capital One is of the opinion that it could be used in drawing and retaining customers. Capital One’s Vice President, Angie Moody, of new product innovation, comments that the company is looking to wearable to `reinvent the way consumers interact with finance on daily business’.

Wearable Provide Connectivity when Mobile Apps Unable To Do So 

Capital One intends to extend the experience of payment in order to help consumers with more informed, responsible payment options by using the data that is collected by wearable which include location as well as data it collects as per Moody. It states that wearable would offer new ways in learning who you are, when you are and where you go.

Varun Krishna, of PayPal, Sr. director of its consumer wallet division envisages wearable computing as an opportunity for the company which could give rise tomore connect as well as a personal experience. He states that wearable could provide connectivity when mobile apps are unable to do and by nature they are more connected to the user than a phone.

Progress in data analytics tends to also play an important part in the evolution of wearable based or wearable assisted, mobile payment since they tend to help the financial institutes to make better use of consumer data. Presently, payment companies tend to request data regarding customers and enter information as they wish, in sharing into mobile apps or websites. Future wearable and other devices will tend to automatically collect data when users opt in, delivering relevant and contextual information which will be less of a pull and more of a push according to Moody.

Improve & Extend Process of Payment

He adds further that `wearable could improve and extend the process of payment though there could be balance between ease of use of friction removal with a need in providing all necessary information in making informed financial decisions.

One needs to balance reduction of friction with the need in making people comprehend the process where they tend to spend money without a thought. By eliminating friction one could take the customer away from the tangibility of cash’. Moody quotes the recent decision of Uber in making the customers confirm that they are willing to pay for `surge pricing’ prior to their request of a driver.

This confirmation was added since Uber had removed too much friction making it easy for individuals in requesting a ride in peak hours thereby getting stuck with high charges as per Moody. Moody is also of the opinion that a balance between ease of use as well as providing relevant information defends consumers as well as helps in building trust between them and the service providers and if one tend to break that trust, it does gets difficult to get it back.

The application ecosystem for wearable as well as mobile payments is progressing and providers will learn from their initial mistakes. Capital One is also keenly attempting in establishing itself as a player in mobile payment section through promotional offers and discounts in popular mobile apps which includes Uber.

Google’s Security News: Malware’s Down, and You’re Heeding More of Its Warnings

According to the Google’s security product manager, the company defines their success in simple term- invisibility. As per Stephan Somogyi they are targeting as the main outcome when we encountered a blank browser window appearing in front of him. He was able to give some insight on the status of the online security, during the Google’s I/O conference at the half-hour presentation called the Second annual Google Security update at I/O.

Phishing and Malware Sites: 

He gave some more details on the Safe Browsing service of the company. He calls them as a collection of systems that have the ability to hunt down the badness all across the net. It has the ability to protect the visitors who are searching the web using the Google search site or even Chrome, Safari as well as Firefox. This indicates the total reach to the audience amounting to 1.1 billion people.

According to the reports released by the company, they have located that the Malware is becoming is not a huge problem anymore. But they have also found that phishing sites that are able to fool the customers into entering their details like password and more financial details are increasing in numbers.

During the last week of Mat, they were able to detect nearly 14,977 malware sites and nearly 33,571 phishing sites using the safe browsing. The Malware has shown a big drop and Phishing has shown a bigger increase. Somogyi has given all the credit to the enhanced security in all their operating system in every device. Due to this the Malware authors are now more concentrating on the phishing sites and targeting the software’s.

The much needed push for encryption: 

Google has been among the first companies who were advocating the use of encryption to avoid people from snooping on users online. The acceleration to this push came in the form of the revelations made by Edward Snowden, who confirmed that NSA has been eavesdropping on their traffic from quite some time. He further expressed his anger pertaining to the effort that is being put forth by Google to get other emails providers to try and adapt the TLS, which is the Transport Layer security encryption. Through this all the third party companies care unable to reading the messages when they are transit.

The company is hoping to reach to larger companies that work in sending email and find out the reasons why they are unable to implement TLS. But from the perspective of the company, they do not want to resort to public shaming.

They are not ready to disclose the names of the company who have still not followed or implemented TLS. Compared to TLS, Google has been able to attain much more success in terms of encouraging different websites to implement HTTPS encryption to completely secure the user visit to websites. The company is making all effort to ensure that the users feel completely safe when spending their time online.