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"It's actually a big myth that search engines need to track your personal search history to make money or deliver quality search results. Almost all of the money search engines make (including Google) is based on the keywords you type in, without knowing anything about you, including your search history or the seemingly endless amounts of additional data points they have collected about registered and non-registered users alike. In fact, search advertisers buy search ads by bidding on keywords, not people….This keyword-based advertising is our primary business model. "

"Officially, Venmo is an app for transferring money from one person to another. In the US, where most banks do not offer instant free money transfers, it was revolutionary for simple things like splitting the bill on dinner, or sending their roommates half of the rent. But because the Venmo app has a "home feed", an endless scroll that shows payments between users, it's also a sneaky form of social media. You can see how your friends spend their money - and who they spend it with."

"The proto-currency known as RSCoin has vastly greater scope than Bitcoin, used for peer-to-peer transactions by libertarians across the world, and beyond the control of any political authority. The purpose would be turned upside down. RSCoin would be a tool of state control, allowing the central bank to keep a tight grip on the money supply and respond to crises. It would erode the exorbitant privilege of commercial banks of creating money out of thin air under a fractional reserve financial system."

"The showman CEO has argued that with full self-driving capabilities, Tesla cars can make money for their owners. Tesla would additionally make money from operating a robotaxi fleet. If the tests conducted by Consumer Report are anything to go by, this is unlikely to happen soon."

""It's an attack where someone has sent an AI generated image or a fake image and they have said if you don't send me money or don't send me another nude, I will then share this with other people," he said. In one case heard by a Childline counsellor, a 15-year-old girl said a stranger had made a "really convincing" fake nude of her that used her face and bedroom, having been apparently taken from their Instagram account. Childline said the "nude" images were typically made of the victim's face transposed on to someone else's body. In another apparent AI case, a 14-year-old boy sent some pictures of his face to a girl he had met online and they were used to make a deepfake pornography video. "This person has used some sort of deepfake AI thing to make a porn video with my face on it. Now they're demanding money from me, and they said if I don't pay my life will be over. I know it's not me in the video, but it looks so real," the boy told Childline."

"'Profiting from misery': how TikTok makes money from child begging livestreams Exploitation fears as people in extreme poverty perform stunts and beg for virtual gifts"

"A cryptocurrency is only as reliable as the technology that keeps it running, and Ethereum is learning this the hard way. An attacker has taken an estimated $60 million in Ethereum's digital money (Ether) by exploiting vulnerabilities in the Decentralized Autonomous Organization, an investment collective. The raider took advantage of a "recursive call" flaw in the DAO's code-based smart contracts, which administer the funds, to scoop up Ether many times in a single pass."

"Once the image was in my Ethereum wallet, I didn't particularly feel like I owned it any more than the other screenshots in my Images file. But I did feel a nihilistic rush - the thrill of abstract money moving around."

60% of TikTok users and 46% of Instagram users say they feel worse off because of these platforms. 57% and 58% of college students (users and non-users) prefer to live in a world without TikTok and Instagram, respectively. Users would even pay money to see them disappear-$24 on average to eliminate TikTok and $6 to eliminate Instagram.

"Uber knows when your phone battery is running low because its app collects that information in order to switch into power-saving mode. But Chen swears Uber would never use that knowledge to gouge you out of more money. "We absolutely don't use that to kind of like push you a higher surge price, but it's an interesting kind of psychological fact of human behavior," Chen said. Uber's surge pricing uses a proprietary algorithm that accounts for how many users are hailing rides in an area at a given time. Customers are apparently less willing to believe that when the multiplier is a round number like 2.0 or 3.0, which seems more like it could have been arbitrarily made up by a human."

"A financial crime database used by banks has been "leaked" on to the net. World-Check Risk Screening contains details about people and organisations suspected of being involved in terrorism, organised crime and money laundering, among other offences. Access is supposed to be restricted under European privacy law"

"In terms of safety, a 2013 Navigant Research report noted "the potential for greatly reduced accident rates." Such potential rests on the basic logic of driving: Good driving relies on physics calculations; bad driving happens thanks to human physical limitations like intoxication and sleepiness."

"For now, the cost and difficulty of stealing fingerprints or maps of palm veins in any usable format keep most fraudsters away. But as biometrics serve as a guardhouse for more money and other valuables, the systems will become more appealing targets. That means that research into anti-spoofing safeguards will be a critically important factor in the mainstream adoption of biometric systems, according to Ross."

"Ransomware has been in the news repeatedly over the past few years. This is the insidious malware that will lock your data or device (smartphone or PC) and displays a screen-wide message that demands money from you to release it, which it does by sending you an unlock code."

"Poland has become the first country in Europe to introduce a network of "finger vein ID" cash machines, with 2,000 of the new ATMs opening in bank branches and supermarkets across the country this year, backed by a marketing campaign that promises "cash within your finger"."

"In theory, when the conventional financial system is experiencing turbulence, alternative currencies such as bitcoin should have their time to shine. The decentralised nature of the currency means that it's impossible for any central bank to impose controls on it, while the pseudonymity at its core could make it the perfect vehicle to get money into and out of the country while avoiding legal reprisals."

This is interesting, if payments are made over facebook, doesn't that mean that a bigger bang will happen if a data-breach occurs?