Fraud & Security

Fraudsters have caused 1,202 data breaches this year as of Nov. 29, up nearly 18% from the same period a year earlier, and they’ve exposed 172.4 million records, according to the latest figures from the Identity Theft Resource Center. Some 156.4 million Social Security numbers were compromised in the breaches, …

PayPal Holdings Inc. has restored some service in its TIO Networks bill-pay operation but pressing questions remain about the security vulnerability that spurred PayPal to shut down the service and about how TIO’s problems will affect PayPal chief executive Dan Schulman’s strategy to serve the underbanked population. The incident also …

The underground market for personally identifiable information is flourishing, with criminals paying as little as 20 cents to as much as $15 for verified credentials across the dark market. That’s the latest from RSA Security LLC, a data-security company. The Bedford, Mass.-based firm released the 2018 Cybercriminal Shopping List Tuesday, …

Just days before the holiday shopping season begins in earnest, yet another indicator emerges that merchants, especially those selling electronics, should be ready for the onslaught of both legitimate transactions and those perpetrated by criminals. That’s because the recently released Forter/MRC Fraud Attack Index found that attacks against electronics retailers …

The Clearing House’s much-anticipated real-time payments system, dubbed RTP, went live late Monday afternoon, ushering in a new era of faster electronic payments in the United States. The transaction between The Bank of New York Mellon Corp.’s BNY Mellon subsidiary and U.S. Bancorp’s U.S. Bank was completed at 4:59:40 p.m. …

More younger consumers than older ones prefer using debit cards for online shopping, finds the “Holiday Shopping Consumer Survey Results” released by Vantiv Inc. In the survey of more than 1,000 consumers, 32% of Millennials and 27% of Generation X said using a debit card was their preferred online-shopping method. …

PayPal Holdings Inc.’s planned integration of its TIO Networks bill-pay operation hit a major snag late Friday when PayPal said it had shut down TIO’s system after the discovery of a security issue. Neither PayPal nor TIO released details about the issue. In a statement, PayPal said it involves “security …

It’s not a pretty picture, but then anything detailing the proliferation of cybercrime isn’t likely to have a bright side. ThreatMetrix Inc., in its “2017 Q3 Cybercrime Report,” says it detected and stopped 171 million attacks in the third quarter, a 100% increase from the 2015 third quarter. The report, …

The fourth-quarter holiday shopping season may be a big present in the form of more sales for retailers, but it may also bring with it a lump of coal in the form of amped-up cyberattacks and fraud attempts. Two of the most beneficial measures retailers can take to secure their …

Data breaches have grown so frequent that at least some observers have begun to question whether cybersecurity staffs within corporate and government entities are up to the challenge of stopping them. “You just have to look at the continued ubiquity of breaches in the headlines to know that we’re losing …