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21 May 2024

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Banks net taxpayer gift yet give business short shrift
Opinion: Business customers are being treated poorly by banks, writes Steve Stannard.

More people 'drowning in debt' as cost of living crisis bites
A new report shows debt to banks has jumped more than 20 percent and a growing number of whanau are barely scraping by.

AI talent in US & European banks surges amidst sector layoffs
AI talent has grown by 9% in the world's biggest banks over the last six months, led by a recruitment drive towards AI implementation.

Macron Puts French Banks in Play With Plan to Transform Europe

Tiger knocked out in horrific scenes
Richmond's Sam Banks was concussed after being flipped accidentally mid air by Bulldog Tim English.

India's Modi banks on $400bn cash splurge to win election

Best Portable Chargers and Power Banks to Buy for Android in 2024 - CNET
Stay charged on the go with the best portable chargers for Android.

Flood hazard increasing at one of Canterbury’s ‘best’ beaches
The intensity of recent rain events has increased the erosion threat to the banks of the campground at popular holiday spot Gore Bay.

About 200 affected by 'fake funeral plans', says MP
MP Emma Hardy is appealing for banks to refund those who took out policies from a Hull funeral firm.

Lloyds hit as banks compete for mortgage customers
The banking group's results showed it had made less money from loans and mortgages compared with last year.

RBNZ shuns Commerce Commission idea of reviewing banks' capital framework
Instead it is pushing for open banking and "disruption through innovation" to improve competition.

Homeowner pain as major banks hike mortgage rates
Lenders respond over views the Bank of England may not cut interest rates as soon as previously thought.

Banks need to improve risk management, RBNZ says
It comes after RBNZ stress tested the top five banks' ability to cope with drought, floods, and risks that might emerge because of efforts to decarbonise the economy through to 2050.

Russian court freezes assets of two German banks in gas project dispute

China Regulators to Discuss Property Aid With Banks Friday

The Reserve Bank's double-pronged cash plan
The Detail - With banks deserting small towns and leaving just an ATM behind, the Reserve Bank is starting to think about how communities can get better access to money.

Kiwibank, BNZ drop mortgage rates
The banks have made cuts to their six-month and one-year terms, following ASB's move last week.

In pictures: Strikes bring Argentina to standstill
Schools, banks and many shops close across the country, with train and metro services suspended.

Ring of bogus web shops steals 850K credit card numbers
Let me tell you a quick story. I like Johnston & Murphy shoes. I’ve been trying to get this pair for weeks, but since it seems a lot of other people like it too, it’s been out of stock in my very common shoe size. So I did a Google search to see if I could find other stores that had it in stock. And wouldn’t you know it, there was another Johnston & Murphy site, almost the same one with “USA” added to the URL. It looks similar to the other site, but it had every single size of that shoe in stock, ready to buy. And it was half off the original price, what a deal! It must be an overstock outlet for the brand. So I put the shoe in my cart, and prepared to check out. But for some reason, PayPal was the only payment option. No big deal, I often use PayPal and it has a purchase security program. So I went through the PayPal interface…and the very last step in the process, the one that would confirm the order, said “Agree and Subscribe” instead of “Purchase.” It also asked me to pay someone who isn’t Johnston & Murphy, but “Association Islamique Fulado.” That name didn’t return any useful Google results — Its address is somewhere in Luxembourg, assuming it’s the same person or organization. Not pictured: a shoe sale. Not pictured: a shoe sale. Michael Crider/Foundry Not pictured: a shoe sale. Michael Crider/Foundry Michael Crider/Foundry I’ve seen that button before. It’s used when you want to make a recurring payment to a charity or a creator, a la Patreon. Why would I need to “subscribe” for a one-time payment option? To be honest my red flags were raised from the start when I saw the URL, but at that point I went into Arkham Asylum detective mode. Step one was to check out that fishy URL with a Whois lookup. The main Johnston & Murphy domain has been registered for almost thirty years, and though it’s gone through a private registrar, that registrar is based in Florida in the US. If a judge in the US were to issue a subpoena to Johnston & Murphy, they’d have someone to track down. I tried the same lookup with the “USA” alternative site, the one that had the shoe in stock and was ready to sell it to me via a PayPal subscription. This one was registered in January of this year, to a Chinese company, with a Gmail address for the private registrar. Now, since I’m posting this story publicly, I’m not going to flat-out accuse this site of being a scam. But I can’t think of any legitimate reason that a Johnston & Murphy domain for an American company would be using a registrar in China. And I can’t imagine why the PayPal system would only let me “subscribe” to pay for it, especially when the verified site only lets you pay with a credit card. I decided to wait for those shoes. I will say that fake retail storefronts are incredibly common, even showing up highly in Google searches like the one that I did. I’ve seen a lot of similar — and similarly suspicious — sites selling hugely discounted kayaks in Google shopping results. They were likewise new stores, with designs that aped or just outright stole the layout of other stores, and with prices and availability that seemed too good to be true. A recent report from German firm Security Research Labs (spotted by BleepingComputer) found a ring of fake retail sites operating tens of thousands of domains. The “BogusBazaar” ring took in 850,000 orders, mostly from the United States and Germany with the rest of the “sales” going to Canada and Western Europe. Shops are quickly set up and copied with automated WordPress tools, including e-commerce plugins for accepting info from PayPal, Stripe, and other methods. What’s the point? They don’t simply charge the money and try to get away with it — which is often harder than it seems, now that banks, credit card companies, and other payment processors are on high alert for fraud. Instead they’re collecting personal information, especially addresses and credit card numbers. Put all that info together, and it’s a valuable start to an attempted identity theft. SRLabs says that the BogusBazaar system operates with a small team of developers, who then sell their services to other fraudsters in a “franchise” system, mostly out of China. They look for recently-abandoned domain names that have decent search results in order to pull in traffic. It’s a method that’s “low-key” and “highly scalable,” bringing in stable income via information theft. When one ring of stores gets discovered and wiped from the search engines, they’ll just copy and paste with a new set, rinsing and repeating their techniques to gather more data. Remember, in online shopping as in life: If something seems too good to be true, it probably is. Security Software and Services