Information, Knowledge, Science & Technology

silicon.com : Two US newspapers, the Boston Globe and Worcester Telegram & Gazette, have mistakenly sent out slips of paper with the credit card data of up to nearly a quarter of a million subscribers. The credit card numbers were printed on routing slips attached to 9,000 bundles of newspapers sent to retailers and carriers last weekend, according to the two Massachusetts newspapers owned by the New York Times Co. Richard Gilman, publisher of the Boston Globe, said in a statement: "Immediate steps have been taken internally at the Globe and Telegram & Gazette to increase security around credit card reporting." The credit card data of up to 240,000 subscribers may have been exposed, they said. The blunder comes amid heightened concern over the security of consumer data in the wake of several incidents of lost or stolen personal records involving companies such as Bank of America, data broker ChoicePoint, and shoe retailer DSW. So far, the newspapers had not received...

thestar.com : Visa International has introduced a new credit card design with enhanced security features that make counterfeiting more difficult while opening new business opportunities for its member financial institutions, the company said in a statement. “The new holographic magnetic stripe and EMV (Europay-MasterCard-Visa) chip card had been endorsed by International law enforcement agencies,” Visa said. The company said the new security component combined the “easy to recognise, difficult to reproduce'' hologram with the functionality of the magnetic stripe, making the card more difficult for fraudsters to reproduce and easier for merchants to recognise. Apart from that, Visa has also enhanced the signature panel with a tamper-evident element and a “VOID'' pattern underneath to provide extra levels of security. “Cardholders will now find the three-digit security code (CVV2) easier to read when they shop online or over the telephone,” Visa said, adding that the new...

theaustralian : AUSTRALIA'S fiercely competitive $30 billion credit-card market has claimed its first casualty, with the pioneering Bankcard throwing in the towel yesterday after more than 30 years. Bankcard, which introduced middle Australia to the cashless society with the first credit card, said it would "progressively withdraw" its credit cards this year. For Bankcard Association of Australia general manager Garry Moffatt, who has been part of the credit card market for more than 30 years, the past 10 of them at Bankcard, it was a "sad day". "Bankcard changed the Australian financial services landscape forever when it launched more than 30 years ago, but an Australia-only credit card is simply not attractive in the current credit-card market," Mr Moffatt said. At its peak, Bankcard had more than five million cards on issue. But it has struggled since the arrival of international credit card operators Visa and Mastercard in the early 80s. Without a...