Ecommerce News Europe writes that ecommerce fraud is becoming a real problem in Germany.
The reason is the preferred payment method of German shoppers.
A common form of ecommerce fraud is when the scammer orders something online, chooses to pay on account, provides a false or found name and account number, and gives a certain address where he can then pick up his order. The fraudster runs off with his expensive, but free product, while an innocent person is stuck with the bill.
Only getting someone’s name and date of birth can sometimes be enough to trick online shops.
A television crew spoke with the head of a gang of about 200 fraudsters. He’s currently in prison as he got arrested after six years of investigation. He and his network stole about 13 million euros, generated through about 26,000 online orders.
According to the Russian fraudster, he deliberately chose Germany after trying to commit fraud in several other countries. “Compared to other countries, the security system in Germany is the weakest”, he says.
The fraudster blames the companies that make their payment mechanisms available to online retailers in Germany.
German online shoppers like to buy on account as it is easy. Most retailers have little choice but to offer the risky invoice as a payment method. A spokeswoman for service provider Ratepay admits that if they make paying too difficult, nobody buys anymore and then they don’t make any more sales.
There are always additional security measures like two-factor authentication. But most consumers see these things as a hurdle as well. For the online retailer, it’s weighing security against sales.
Consumers are also hurt by the crime. For example, in a woman’s name there were goods ordered with a total worth of 6,000 euros, leading to trouble with debt collection agencies and possible Schufa entries (credit record in Germany).
And there is a simple, but painful reason she didn’t notice anything about the supposed orders until the reminders came. For many online shops, it’s sufficient to get a real name and date of birth in order to offer purchase on account. A customer would also have to provide a home address and e-mail address, but these won’t get checked. They can therefore be set up by the fraudsters themselves.
According to Stefan Keller from the law enforcement agency in Berlin, there were over 19,000 cases in the city-state alone last year. And the clearance rate is only 12 percent.

Elon Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, is confident that a chip implanted in the brain will enable people to listen to music without other devices, monitor their health and compete with artificial intelligence according to LADbible.

Musk is sure the technologies developed by his startup Neuralink should improve people’s lives. For example, a new brain chip will direct music directly to the brain.

The inventor also spoke about the possibilities of chipping in medicine. He states that Neuralink can help control hormone levels. This, in turn, can increase mindfulness and concentration and relieve anxiety. In addition, Musk does not exclude that the chip will be able to fight addictions and depression.

Initially, the technology can be used to help people with brain diseases, including Parkinson’s disease. The main goal of connecting the human brain to a computer, according to Musk is to enable people to compete with advanced artificial intelligence.
The entrepreneur compared a Neuralink implant installation to laser eye surgery.

Testing of the new technology has already begun on animals. Human trials are planned for the end of this year.

Neurotechnological company Neuralink was founded by Musk in 2016 and has attracted more than $150 million in investment. The company’s current goal is to adapt the technology to treat patients with quadriplegia (partial or complete paralysis of all limbs) usually resulting from spinal cord injury.

Neuralink technology was officially introduced in 2019. From the presentation, it is known that the company is developing a special chip N1. It is assumed that four of these chips will be installed in the human brain. Three will be located in the area of the brain responsible for motor skills, and one in the somatosensory area (responsible for our body’s perception of external stimuli).

Each chip has very thin electrodes, no thicker than a human hair, which will be implanted into the brain with laser precision using a special technology. These electrodes will be used to stimulate neurons.

The chips will also be connected to an inductor, which will be linked to an external battery installed behind the ear. The final version of the Neuralink device will be connected wirelessly via Bluetooth. Thanks to this, paralyzed people will be able to control their smartphones, computers, and advanced prosthetic limbs.

Musk said last year that the prototype chip was successfully installed and tested on a monkey and a mouse. The Primate experiment involved leading experts from the University of California. According to Musk, the result was extremely positive.

Earlier, Musk also explained that the brain consists of two systems. The first layer is the limbic system, which controls the transmission of neural impulses. The second layer is the cortex system, which controls the limbic system and acts as a layer of intelligence. Neuralink can become the third layer, and once on top of the other two, work with them together.

Musk believes Neuralink will one day enable people to communicate with each other without words on a telepathic level. According to him, Neuralink will be able to restore lost vision even if the optic nerve is damaged. In addition, the technology will also to return hearing.

The Neuralink founder added that there is still a lot of work ahead. The technology has not been tested on humans, but it will happen soon.

As pressure builds to provide an increasing number of services online, the demands on security have begun to play a significant role within companies of all sizes. Organizations need to maintain reliable and highly trusted networks not only to safeguard all business functions but also to be able to meet specific confidentiality and privacy regulations.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) can meet the demand for authentication and encryption throughout the enterprise.
Did you know that Private PKI allows you to secure and manage devices and applications as diverse as: web servers, IoT devices, mobile devices, cloud/multi-cloud applications.

PKI is indeed gradually becoming an indispensible part of a modern enterprise. From that perspective, PKI consists of roles, security policies, communication protocols and procedures needed to generate, manage, distribute, and revoke digital certificates, while also managing public-key encryption to make secure and trusted communications between different entities both inside and outside an organization or business.

Therefore, PKI aims to aid in the secure electronic transfer of information for many networking tasks, from secure email to internet banking, or any activity in which passwords are deficient for authentication purposes, and to enable stricter and better verified proof of identity required to validate the information that is being transferred.

Cloud infrastructure is currently agile and secure and a new wave of highly reliable, cloud-based PKI offerings are now available for enterprises to use, known as PKI-as-a-Service (PKIaaS), which make it possible for IT departments to maintain control while all the complexity that comes with managing their PKI setup is contracted out to the service provider.

PKIaaS unites the necessary automation, infrastructure, control, billing, and distribution of certificates while also simplifying and centralizing client certificates’ management.

One more benefit of outsourcing PKI to the cloud is in having a centralized account. With a PKIaaS a company would be able to be vetted once, in contrast to each time that a certificate is issued, which is costly due to how time-consuming the vetting process is. This will make it possible for pre-vetted companies to be issued certificates from a single account while selected administrators have the authority to be able to issue any type of certificate on demand.

The use of a centralized account to control and manage all certificates also makes reporting and monitoring of the costs involved much easier.

For businesses that are considering deploying and managing client certificates internally, there are a few challenges to overcome: software licenses, operational capacity, maintenance costs, and the infrastructure required to support PKI.

An organization would need to build, maintain, update, and support everything themselves, and the employees must be trained and certified to keep up with the security compliance requirements. However, IT leaders insist that the ultimate effect from using PKI is worth giving the technology a try.

Cash will not always rule the world. Applications and cards are gaining popularity and central banks are considering whether their countries actually need a digital currency, and if yes, how to create one.

The usual way to pay for purchases is rapidly changing. Visa and MasterCard strengthen their positions in many parts of the world. At the same time, companies such as Apple, Chinese Ant Financial, Swedish Swish and Kenyan M-pesa are conquering the market through mobile applications. Facebook also had some ambitious plans, but faced governmental restrictions.

Technical innovations are pushing out cash payments, and the governments start to wonder how to replace obsolete banknotes and coins. According to the data provided by the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), dozens of countries are studying, testing or implementing digital currencies in central banks.

But the issue persists: there is a significant difference between physical money and electronic wallets. Banknotes and coins are issued by the central bank, the basis of the country’s financial system, while digital money depends on the stability of commercial structures and as a result is more vulnerable.

Government agencies and health services around the world are working together to find ways to counteract the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus in order to protect people and help society return to its normal life.

Software developers also contribute by creating technical tools to contain the virus and save lives.

Following the spirit of worldwide collaboration, Google and Apple have begun to jointly develop technology that will help governments and health services use Bluetooth to combat the spread of the virus. The basic principles of the new technology are the security and privacy of users.

As long as COVID ‑ 19 coronavirus can be transmitted from infected people to those near them, health authorities have come to the conclusion that contact tracing is one of the most effective ways to contain the pandemic. The world’s leading healthcare services, universities and nonprofit organizations from around the world are already developing technologies for voluntary contact tracing. To support these efforts, Apple and Google will soon launch a comprehensive solution that will include application programming interfaces (APIs) and operating system-level technologies to help launch contact tracing. Given the urgency of this issue, this solution is planned to be implemented in two stages. First, in May, the two companies will jointly release an API to ensure compatibility between Android and iOS devices when using applications created by health services. Users will be able to download these official tools from their respective app stores. Then, in the coming months, Apple and Google will jointly launch a broader Bluetooth-based contact tracking platform by integrating the relevant functionality into their operating systems. This is a more robust solution than the API: it will give users the ability to enable contact tracing and will provide for interaction with a wider ecosystem of healthcare applications and services.  Confidentiality, transparency and voluntariness are the main priorities in the development. Besides, all necessary information on the project will be publicly available.

Video conferencing has never been popular until the pandemic broke out. In the 2010s it was the exception rather than the rule and businessmen all over the world were more likely to go on a business trip rather than to meet at a virtual event on a regular basis.

Already today there are numerous applications and platforms for video conferencing and collaboration. Some, such as Cisco WebEx, are industry standards but can be expensive. Others are growing in popularity and may even be offered free of charge or at a low cost, such as Zoom, Google Hangouts, GoToMeeting, etc.

Video conferencing is used here and then for various purposes, including webinars, product demos, team meetings, and even job interviews.

We suddenly realized that a virtual conference is indispensable to interact and to do business and it requires high-quality audio and visuals.

Furthermore, the vendors creating these solutions will be hearing more and more complaints about interoperation, the inability to have side conversations, and security of conferences.

Thus, video conferencing still remains problematic and the developers are forced to look at it from all perspectives. But we assume that they should be able to field several potential solutions to tackle all known issues by the end of this year and sure virtual conferencing will play a major role as means of communication in the post-pandemic world.

We would like to address to you in this hard time of the worldwide pandemic, self-quarantine, and isolation to inform you that we fully share the same feelings of surreal and uneasiness. Most of us are being asked to work from home. Social media are full of disturbing posts. But despite all this, we must not forget that after the storm comes nice weather. So what we suggest doing right now is to lie low, try to stay calm and we will be informing you about interesting trends in the world of information technology that always appear.

Hopefully, you’ll have plenty of time to check out what we keep offering to you. Thanks for your understanding and patience, keep washing your hands and — events or no events in the digital world — we’ll see you very soon.