Technology Impacts

Bank customers are increasingly being duped into acting as “money mules” for hackers, unwittingly laundering cash stolen from business bank accounts, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation warned the nation’s financial institutions on Thursday.

Using specialized Trojan horse malware, cybercrooks have been intercepting web-banking credentials from the computers of small and midsize businesses, and then initiating wire transfers to mules around the country. The mules are consumers who’ve been lured into fake work-at-home scams, in which their employment involves receiving money transfers and then forwarding the funds to Eastern Europe, either directly or through other mules.

FDIC Warns Banks to Watch for ‘Money Mules’ Duped by Hackers | Threat Level | Wired.com.

The European Commission’s study into feasibility of fitting black box recorders to cars to record 20 types of data in case of accidents looks set to recommend the devices are fitted to all European cars.

Project Veronica, which began in 2003 and cost £2.4m, has dismissed privacy concerns because the boxes only record data in the event of an accident. The boxes will be triggered by sudden deceleration and will only record movement in the 30 seconds prior to an accident, and a few seconds afterwards.

via Europe plots black boxes for cars • The Register.

Washington - Securities exchanges have a sound network back-up if a severe pandemic keeps people home and clogging the Internet, but the Homeland Security Department has done little planning, Congressional investigators said on Monday.

The department does not even have a plan to start work on the issue, the General Accountability Office said.

But the Homeland Security Department accused the GAO of having unrealistic expectations of how the Internet could be managed if millions began to telework from home at the same time as bored or sick schoolchildren were playing online, sucking up valuable bandwidth.

via Homeland Security Could Block Websites During Swine Flu Pandemic — Signs of the Times News.

BANKING giant ANZ has admitted a branch manager breached privacy regulations to access a customer’s personal information.

But the woman whose private details were “inappropriately” viewed by the manager - who is also her next door neighbour - is demanding the man be sacked according to the bank’s own code of conduct regulations.

At the very least, Golden Grove resident Susan Clayton wants ANZ manager Phillip Saredakis transferred from her local Golden Grove branch.

“This is a serious breach of my privacy. I was brought up to believe you could trust a bank manager but I feel violated and he should be sacked,” Mrs Clayton, a 46-year-old hairdressing salon owner, said.

“It’s bad enough to live next door to him let alone having to see him at my local branch after what he did.”

AdelaideNow… Bank customer’s privacy anger.

Asda’s plans to introduce webcams to its factories and stores may anger civil liberty campaigners over the perceived advance of a surveillance society. But it may also lead to a few red faces.

Police this month received a video of a former Asda worker licking and stamping on a raw chicken before putting it back on a shelf.

Webcams are only one tool in Asda’s drive for transparency: a new store in Wales will take that objective to its literal conclusion by using glass bricks.
Read the rest of this entry »

A surveillance state, with cameras on every street is commonplace but now Big Business is also turning to Big Brother.

Face recognition, behaviour analysing surveillance cameras, biometric profiling and the monitoring and storing of our shopping patterns has made snooping into our habits, movements and private lives ever easier.

Dismayed at its shrinking power to market to us via traditional media or even the internet, the private sector is now proposing to reach potential customers in ways that critics say should have us all concerned.

“There is an enormous pent-up demand for personalised location advertising, whether it is on your cellphone or PDA, on your radio in your car, or on the billboards you walk by on the streets and inside stores,” says Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer of BT.

“This is yet another technological intrusion into privacy. And like all such intrusions, it will be taken as far as the owner of that intrusion finds it profitable.”

via BBC NEWS | Technology | Big Brother is watching you shop.

NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. - A Southern California man accused of killing a pedestrian while driving and text messaging has been ordered to stand trial for gross vehicular manslaughter.

Superior Court Commissioner James Odriozola denied a defense motion Monday to lessen the charge to a misdemeanor after determining there was evidence the crash was caused by more than ordinary carelessness.

Authorities say Martin Kuehl struck and killed nanny Martha Ovalle as she walked in an Orange County crosswalk on Aug. 29, 2008.

Man faces manslaughter trial in texting case - Wireless- msnbc.com.

A California federal judge has ordered Google to temporarily de-activate a Gmail account after a bank mistakenly sent sensitive data to the account.

U.S. District Judge James Ware also ordered Google to disclose the identity of the Gmail account holder.

The Rocky Mountain Bank of Wyoming sued Google to obtain the account holder’s name after a bank employee erroneously e-mailed an attachment to the account containing sensitive information on 1,325 individual and business bank customers. The attachment contained customer names, addresses, Tax ID and Social Security numbers and loan information. Read the rest of this entry »

ID cards could be fitted with chip and pin technology to help combat identity fraud.

The head of the Government agency tasked with producing the cards said there were no “technical obstacles” to adding chips to the cards and handing out pin numbers.

James Hall, chief executive of the Identity and Passport Service said adding chips might allow the cards to be used in ATM machines in the future.

Officials are also looking at chip and pin as a possible way to help combat online fraud and help protect internet shoppers. Read the rest of this entry »

Rakuten Inc., operator of the online retail site Rakuten-ichiba, has been selling customers’ credit card numbers and e-mail addresses–at a charge of 10 yen per name–to retailers selling items to those people, it was learned Friday.

Companies that bought the numbers include Joshin Denki Co., an electrical appliance store based in Naniwa Ward, Osaka, that is listed on the First Section of the Tokyo Stock Exchange.

Rakuten said it had not acted improperly because it makes clear in its privacy policy that the personal data of customers who make purchases may be provided to retailers that appear on the site.

Rakuten selling data on customers Admits passing on credit card, e-mail details : National : DAILY YOMIURI ONLINE The Daily Yomiuri.