Paul Penrose Head of Research at Finextra
Quality PR from Sophos. I couldn't put it better myself: IT security and control firm Sophos is calling on Twitter to enforce the use of strong passwords by its members following the recent publication of details on how a hacker managed to gain access to Twitter's internal systems earlier this week. According to reports, the teenage hacker, who u...
08 January 2009 /security /retail Finance 2.0
It's the flu season again, so time to dust off some research first published back in May last year in which researchers discovered that the human flu virus can survive on banknotes for up to 17 days. Discussing the results ahead of publication, Yves Thomas, head of the National Influenza Research Centre at Geneva University Hospital, told Reuters...
07 January 2009 /retail /wholesale
US bank Wells Fargo is taking its experience with social media into unchartered territory (for the banking industry) with the launch of a new blog designed to keep customers up-to-speed with progress on its merger with Wachovia. The Wells Fargo - Wachovia blog will feature regular contributions from five team members - including CEO John Stumpf - ...
05 January 2009 /retail Finance 2.0
Henry Blodget, the former star techstock analyst who knows a thing or two about investment fraud, posts an interesting insight to the Madoff affair on his Clusterstock blog. "Specifically, we're hearing that the smart money KNEW Bernie had to be cheating, because the returns he was generating were impossibly good. Many Wall Streeters suspect...
19 December 2008 /regulation
Some choice quotes from squeaky-clean Bernie Madoff on the trials of doing business in the modern financial system. "Whenever I go down to Washington and meet with the SEC and complain to them that the industry is either over-regulated or that the burdens are too great they all start to roll their eyes just like our children do when we talk ab...
18 December 2008 /regulation /wholesale Video extravaganza
A variation on this stat has been doing the rounds for a few weeks now, so forgive me if you've seen it before. I picked this up from the aptly-named Doomsday Report blog. In October last year, RBS paid $100 billion for ABN Amro (80% cash), and faced a fair amount of shareholder opposition to the valuation. If they were to use that money today, ac...
10 December 2008 /retail /wholesale Finextra50 fintech index
Merrill Lynch CEO John Thain has a reputation as the smartest guy on Wall Street. But his request to the bank's board for a $5-$10 million bonus for rescuing Merrill Lynch from a fate worse than Lehman was not only crass and insensitive, it was also just plain dumb. Does Thain - a multi-millionaire from his days at Goldman Sachs - really need the...
09 December 2008 /wholesale
The Washington Post's Security Fix blog has dug a little deeper into the attack on CheckFree's bill payment Website last week. CheckFree has admitted that hackers had, for several hours, redirected visitors to its customer login page to a Web site in Ukraine that tried to install password-stealing software. But the company has said little else abo...
08 December 2008 /security /retail
The Finextra news desk is groaning under the weight of Christmas-themed press releases, as companies desperately try to generate some extra seasonal income during the economic crisis. One of the more bizarre examples to hit the newswires this week was an urgent dispatch from the American Peanut Council, which advises cash-strapped consumers to beat...
02 December 2008 /retail /wholesale Whatever...
The Indian government has asked for live Twitter updates from Mumbai to cease immediately. "ALL LIVE UPDATES - PLEASE STOP TWEETING about #Mumbai police and military operations," a tweet says. At least, that's what the BBC's Mumbai Live Events page is reporting. The potential use of Twitter and other communications technologies by terror...
27 November 2008 Finance 2.0
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