Latest opinions that Matt White has shared on Finextra

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Matt White

North America editor

Finextra

Member since

27 Nov 2006

Location

Toronto

View Matt White's full profile

Matt's opinions

Intuit demands Mint proves user numbers

As the recession bites, more and more of us are turning to personal finance management tools to keep control of dwindling funds. One of the big boy in the US is Intuit with its Quicken Online offering but it seems to have been spooked by young whippersnapper Mint, sending a nasty letter to its rival demanding evidence to back up published user fig...

24 February 2009 /retail Futuristic Banking

Justice department goes phishing

The US Department of Justice has taken a breather from chasing the bad guys to go phishing. According to the AP, the department sent out an e-mail to its own staff purporting to be from the "Thrift Savings Plan Account Coordinator" directing them to a Web site asking for account information. The more security conscious recipients smelled...

03 February 2009 /security /retail

Desperate banks turn to drugs

An unlikely saviour for the world's banking system has been identified by Antonio Maria Costa, the boss of the United Nations' crime and narcotics watchdog - drugs money. In an interview with Austrian weekly Profil, Costa says the dirty cash has proved a vital form of liquidity for banks during the crisis and the UN has found evidence that interban...

30 January 2009 Whatever...

Lies, damned lies and statistics

Here at Finextra we try to maintain a healthy level of scepticism when it comes to research and surveys commissioned by firms with a vested interest in getting a certain kind of result. We're inundated with them and most get binned. CPP offers card fraud insurance so it's hardly surprising they want to talk up the problem. But they commissioned a s...

30 January 2009 /security

Social networking makes you live longer - official

Social networking sites: apparently they can help you find love, get that dream job and even, we're now told, live longer. That's the claim made in a press release put out today by, you guessed it, a social networking site. The site's for independent financial advisors and it's got together with 'Internet expert and psychologist' Graham Jones to le...

23 January 2009 Whatever...

Intuit makes tax returns easy - unless you're Tim Geithner

Barack Obama's nominee for Treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, has been getting a bit of a hard time at his confirmation hearing over some taxes he failed to pay a few years ago. During questions from the Senate Finance Committee it emerged, to laughter from the chamber crowd, that the supposed finance whizz had used Intuit's off-the-shelf TurboTax ...

22 January 2009 Whatever...

Data cleansing

Barely a week goes by without a data loss story making an appearance on Finextra. A good proportion of these involve staff stupidity so I wasn't particularly surprised when a press release made its way to us claiming 9000 USB sticks are accidently left at UK dry cleaners every year. Data security vendor Credant surveyed 500 dry cleaners and found ...

19 January 2009 /security Whatever...

Twitter and banks - a security minefield?

It's good to see BofA getting involved with Twitter but there do seem to be a couple of associated security concerns. The bank is effectively using its feed as a help desk. Its man at the coalface, David Knapp, communicates through tweets with customers who are having issues with their accounts and then, it appears, normally asks for a phone numbe...

16 January 2009 Information Security

Stocks V gold: the great Christmas present debate

You'd think that with things in a bit of mess, your average punter would be a tad wary about playing the stock market at the moment. But according to a survey from Lloyds TSB's wealth management unit, half of Brits want some stocks in their Christmas stockings. Far from being seen as too risky, the bank suggests share prices are so low at the momen...

18 December 2008

Crunch hit governments turn to eBay

With tough times upon us, state and local governments in the US are looking to make a few quid by auctioning surplus goods online. Businessweek reports that everything from helicopters to armored personnel carriers to deep fat fryers are up for grabs on sites like eBay and specialist outfit GovDeals.com. The Spartanburg County, SC, Sheriff's Offic...

24 November 2008 Whatever...