credits

People who use Blippy want to share information with friends about their online purchases, but some users found that the site was sharing a lot more than their purchases with a lot more than just their friends.

Credit card numbers for four Blippy users were found in Google search on Friday, Blippy co-founder Philip Kaplan acknowledged after VentureBeat reported on the data leak.

The problem stemmed from an oversight during the company's beta test months ago when Blippy didn't initially realize that raw credit card data was viewable in the HTML source of its pages, Kaplan said in … Read more

Quicken Essentials offers numerous useful tools to track your finances on the Mac, but it falls short by leaving out some important features found in Windows versions. The interface has been rebuilt from the ground up to make Mac users feel at home by following the design and navigation schemes of other Mac programs like iTunes. All of your accounts, transactions, credit cards, reports, and program tools are easily accessible from the left sidebar (what they call the Source List), showing all the information for each in the main register window. Like iTunes, you can click and drag to expand … Read more

Facebook's virtual currency, "Facebook Credits," is getting very close to its full launch: a post on the Facebook developer blog explains some of the full terms of the system and what developers can expect as the currency continues to roll out slowly.

"Today more than 500,000 applications exist on Facebook, and the virtual goods within those applications (particularly games) have become an increasingly valuable part of the user experience," the post explained. "By providing a single, cross-application currency, our goal is to [make] transactions simpler for users, leading to a higher conversion rate … Read more

The body that oversees the technology behind chip-based payment cards is to investigate chip-and-PIN security, following claims that the protocol has been broken.

The specification body, EMVCo, said it will analyze a paper by researchers from Cambridge University, who demonstrated an attack with a valid payment card that did not require a valid PIN to be entered to complete a transaction.

EMVCo, owned by American Express, JCB, MasterCard and Visa, said those debit- and credit-card payment companies will also scrutinise the paper.

Read more of "Chip-and-PIN flaw to be investigated by industry body" at ZDNet UK.

Chip-and-PIN readers can be tricked into accepting transactions without a valid personal identification number, opening the door to fraud, researchers have found.

Researchers at Cambridge University have found a fundamental flaw (PDF) in the EMV--Europay, MasterCard, Visa--protocol that underlies chip-and-PIN validation for debit and credit cards.

As a consequence, a device can be created to modify and intercept communications between a card and a point-of-sale terminal, and fool the terminal into accepting that a PIN verification has succeeded.

Read more of "Chip and PIN is broken, say researchers at ZDNet UK.

iCash bills itself as a simple program, a financial management tool for people who don't know anything about accounting. Unfortunately, the program did not seem to bring either intuitiveness or outstanding features to the table, making it a pretty mediocre choice among similar programs.

iCash's interface looks nice enough, with attractive buttons and tabs that organize its main features. However, the way that the program attempts to organize things--both accounts and transactions--doesn't always make sense. The program comes with a 13-page Word document Help file, and it does seem that with careful studying a user could figure … Read more

Could stacking your Twitter or Facebook contacts lists with financially-responsible friends help improve your chances of getting a loan?

The answer could be yes, according to a report out this week from CreditCards.com. In a story entitled, "Social networking: Your key to easy credit?" reporter Erica Sandberg writes that, "In their quest to identify creditworthy customers, some (creditors) are tapping into the information you and your friends reveal in the virtual stratosphere."

The idea here is that banks, credit card companies, mortgage issuers, and other lenders may have stumbled onto what they think is a … Read more

U.S. President Barack Obama unveiled a $2.3 billion tax credit on Friday to boost jobs by promoting clean energy, as new data showed the country's unemployment rate remained stuck in the double digits.

Obama said the credit, from funds earmarked under a $787 billion stimulus package he signed last February, would create 17,000 U.S. jobs and be matched by an additional $5 billion in private capital.

"Building a robust clean-energy sector is how we will create the jobs of the future, jobs that pay well and can't be outsourced," Obama said.

"… Read more

WASHINTON--Two U.S. senators pledged on Tuesday to take up legislation early next year to extend the biodiesel tax credit as it looks likely action will not be taken on it this year.

An industry group complained that if a bill was passed by Congress early next year to extend the credit, it would not be enough to stop plants from closing after the credit expires on December 31.

Sen. Max Baucus, a Democrat from Montana who is chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, and the panel's top Republican, Sen. Charles Grassley of Iowa, said they would take up … Read more