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"The study by US-based thinktank the Technology Policy Institute (TPI) is the first that attempts to quantify the value of online privacy and data. It assessed how much privacy is worth in six countries by looking at the habits of people in the United States, Germany, Mexico, Brazil, Columbia and Argentina."

"The system is designed to solve the an often-ignored problem of 75% of the earth's population, an estimated 4 billion people, who have no address for mailing purposes, making it difficult to open a bank account, get a delivery, or be reached in an emergency."

""History sniffing" promises a nose full of dust or, you're talking about web browsers, a whiff of the websites you've visited. And that may be enough to compromise your privacy and expose data that allows miscreants to target you more effectively with tailored attacks. For example, a phishing gambit that attempts to simulate your bank login page has a better chance of success if it presents the web page for a bank where you actually have an account."

"Xiao Long, or "Little Dragon", is not your typical employee - she's a robot at China's first fully automated, human-free bank branch. As guardian of the bank, she talks to customers, takes bank cards and checks accounts (she comes complete with a PIN pad) and can answer basic questions. After a quick initial chat with Xiao Long, customers pass through electronic gates where their faces and ID cards are scanned. On future visits, facial recognition alone is enough to open the gates and call up customer information."

"Serious security flaws that could let attackers steal sensitive data, including passwords and banking information, have been found in processors designed by Intel, AMD and ARM. The flaws, named Meltdown and Spectre, were discovered by security researchers at Google's Project Zero in conjunction with academic and industry researchers from several countries. Combined they affect virtually every modern computer, including smartphones, tablets and PCs from all vendors and running almost any operating system."

"Marcus Hutchins, the 23-year-old British security researcher who was credited with stopping the WannaCry outbreak in its tracks by discovering a hidden "kill switch" for the malware, has been arrested by the FBI over his alleged involvement in another malicious software targeting bank accounts."

"Experts now believe that criminals could 3D-print hands complete with fingers and fingerprints to defeat security precautions at banks, airports and police stations."

"IDFC Bank has launched an app called Aadhaar Pay that aims to help millions of its citizens without a smartphone to pay for their purchases digitally with just their fingerprint.  Merchants will be able to download the app on their Android smartphones and attach a fingerprint scanner device. To make payments, buyers will only have to choose their Bank name, input their unique Aadhaar number and scan their fingerprint, which acts as a password to make the payment directly from their Bank account linked to their Aadhaar card."

"Fidelis malware mangler Jason Reaves says the TrickBot malware has strong code similarities to the Dyre trojan, a menace that ripped through Western banks and businesses in the US, the UK, and Australia, inflicting tens of millions of dollars in damages through dozens of separate spam and phishing campaigns since June 2014. Dyre stole some US$5.5 million from budget carrier Ryanair and fleeced individual businesses of up to $1.5 million each in substantial wire transfers using stolen online banking credentials."

"The Bank of England has previously highlighted the impact of trading algorithms. "Some markets appear to have become more fragile, as evidenced by episodes of short-term volatility and illiquidity over the past couple of years," Threadneedle Street said last December, warning of a move towards "fast, electronic trading." "

"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"

"The bank had no firewall and used second-hand routers that cost $10 to connect to global financial networks. Better security and hardware would have hampered the attackers, Reuters said, quoting an official investigator."

"Quantum computing may offer potential benefits to the financial services industry, but it also poses risks. Banks rely on encryption to keep their transactions and customer data secure. This involves scrambling and unscrambling data using keys made of very large numbers - tens, if not hundreds, of digits long."

"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."

"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."

"Halifax's system, which is currently at the proof-of-concept stage, uses a piece of wearable technology known as the Nymi band; it monitors and stores a user's heartbeat via an electrocardiogram (ECG). Users must wear the Nymi on one wrist, and touch its top sensor with the opposite hand for it to work. The Nymi pairs with a smartphone via Bluetooth, using a companion app for Windows, Mac, iOS and Android. Removal of the wristband invalidates biometric authentication."

"The 120-centimetre-tall android already works as a shop assistant at SoftBank mobile phone outlets in Tokyo - a move its chief executive, Masayoshi Son, described as a "baby step on our dream to make a robot that can understand a person's feelings, and then autonomously take action"."

"Unskilled manual laborers have felt the pressure of automation for a long time - but, increasingly, they're not alone. The last few years have been a bonanza of advances in artificial intelligence. As our software gets smarter, it can tackle harder problems, which means white-collar and pink-collar workers are at risk as well. Here are eight jobs expected to be automated (partially or entirely) in the coming decades. Call Center Employees call-center Telemarketing used to happen in a crowded call center, with a group of representatives cold-calling hundreds of prospects every day. Of those, maybe a few dozen could be persuaded to buy the product in question. Today, the idea is largely the same, but the methods are far more efficient. Many of today's telemarketers are not human. In some cases, as you've probably experienced, there's nothing but a recording on the other end of the line. It may prompt you to "press '1' for more information," but nothing you say has any impact on the call - and, usually, that's clear to you. But in other cases, you may get a sales call and have no idea that you're actually speaking to a computer. Everything you say gets an appropriate response - the voice may even laugh. How is that possible? Well, in some cases, there is a human being on the other side, and they're just pressing buttons on a keyboard to walk you through a pre-recorded but highly interactive marketing pitch. It's a more practical version of those funny soundboards that used to be all the rage for prank calls. Using soundboard-assisted calling - regardless of what it says about the state of human interaction - has the potential to make individual call center employees far more productive: in some cases, a single worker will run two or even three calls at the same time. In the not too distant future, computers will be able to man the phones by themselves. At the intersection of big data, artificial intelligence, and advanced

"Going from small data analytics to Big Data analytics or to predictive and prescriptive analytics is trickier. Expanding in both dimensions is human capital intensive, requiring talented data scientists. A McKinsey report (2011) estimates that by 2018, there will be a shortage of 140,000 to 190,000 workers with "deep analytical" experience and a further 1.5 million data-literate managers in the US. Technology giants such as Google, Facebook and Amazon, and large investment banks and top hedge funds can afford such employees, however even now the competition is fierce, as is evidenced by the ongoing talent war in Silicon Valley. The data scientist is indeed a sexy job in the 21st century."

"But Computercop isn't security software -- quite the opposite; it's classic malware. The software, made in New York by a company that markets to law enforcement, is a badly designed keylogger that stores thingstyped into the keyboard -- potentially everything typed on the family PC -- passwords, sensitive communications, banking logins, and more, all stored on the hard drive, either in the clear, or with weak, easily broken encryption. And Computercop users are encouraged to configure the software to email dumps from the keylogger to their accounts (to spy on their children's activity), so that all those keystrokes are vulnerable to interception by anyone between your computer and your email server. "