Digital payments

Media in the media

Posted by on October 5, 2020 at 1:40 pm

Not even George Orwell foresaw a time when the topic commanding a large share of media attention would be … the media. No, not the old-style broadcast and print media. Dominating the headlines these days are media the likes of Facebook, TikTok, WeChat, and, just to round things out, Netflix. All except Netflix have implications […]

TBT: Taxes, candidates, and Apple

Posted by on October 1, 2020 at 12:58 pm

MOST AMERICANS would gladly opt out of their long-term relationship with the Internal Revenue Service. To that end, a good many of us pay CPAs to ensure we don’t give the IRS one penny more than we must. So when sundry people and corporations manage to avoid paying billions in arguably due taxes, you’d think we might celebrate […]

Pragmatism and the unwitting fraudster

Posted by on September 28, 2020 at 1:15 pm

With National Cyber Security Month upon us in three days, now seems like a good time to revisit the topic of cyber fraud. But rather than focus on the technically proficient cyber-criminal, today I shall focus on people who unwittingly obtain undeserved credits and refunds, aka friendly fraud. Friendly fraud Memory, or, rather, the lack […]

TBT: The Trouble with Daring a Hacker

Posted by on September 24, 2020 at 2:05 pm

It has become something of a journalistic fad for reporters to invite hackers to, well, hack them. Without exception, they emerge shaken by two observations: Just how vulnerable they are; and just how much sensitive data they’d forgotten about that awaited discovery. TIME reporter Joel Stein is one of the latest to give it a […]

Congrats to Jane Fraser (but equity is still a long way off)

Posted by on September 21, 2020 at 1:36 pm

Like the rest of the world, I’m delighted with Citi’s announcing Jane Fraser as its next CEO. Still, as is often the case with great news, irony underlies the announcement. We are, after all, commemorating the centennial of the Nineteenth Amendment. One would have hoped that by now “major bank names female CEO” would be […]