As the phone hacking saga continues to grip the country, mobile operators are saying that spying on someone’s voicemail messages wouldn’t be possible today as several weaknesses in the systems have been eliminated.
Reporters and private investigators working for the News of the World and Sun, owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., are accused of repeatedly illegally accessed the voicemail messages of more than 4,000 people — from royal family members to an abducted and later murdered 13-year-old girl in 2002 — for information for news stories.
The scandal has led to the arrest of a top adviser to Prime Minister David Cameron and two senior officials at Scotland Yard resigning so far. Murdoch, his son James, and Rebekah Brooks — formerly chief executive of News International and editor of the now-closed News of the World tabloid — are due to answer questions in Parliament this afternoon.
Mobile networks in North America are filled to 80 percent of capacity, with 36 percent of base stations facing capacity constraints, according to a survey by investment bank Credit Suisse.
Networks in other regions also are more than 50 percent utilized, with the global average at 65 percent, Credit Suisse said after surveying carriers around the world. That level of use matches the average “threshold” rate that would trigger the service providers to start buying more network equipment, the report said. Looking ahead, on average the carriers expected their utilization rate to grow to 70 percent within 12 months.
Credit Suisse used the results to predict new sales by makers of cellular equipment, such as Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Siemens Networks and Huawei Technologies. But at a certain level, heavy use of a base station can also affect the mobile experience of individual subscribers. The survey found that 23 percent of base stations worldwide had capacity constraints (defined as a utilization rate over 80 percent during busy hours), while 36 percent in North America were under that kind of pressure.
End-users now will have total flexibility with zero admin or overhead costs providing a mobile security solution to suit the operator’s lifestyle and location: SecurAccess provides an innovative and simple solution to end users requiring more flexible methods of strong authentication without fuss, additional cost or burdening their administration department.
Travelers left behind more than 11,000 laptops, tablet PCs, smartphones and USB sticks in airports in the United States during the past year.
Credant was able to gather survey results from a cross-section of some of the busiest airports across the country, including Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International (ATL), Dallas/Fort Worth International (DFW), Denver International (DEN), Phoenix Sky Harbor International (PHX) and Las Vegas – McCarran International (LAS).
Groupon sent out e-mails to its users this weekend about changes it has made to its privacy statement and terms of use.
Among the most notable changes is more information about the Chicago-based social buying start-up’s collection and use of mobile location information. Said Groupon:
“In short, if you use a Groupon mobile app and you allow sharing through your device, Groupon may collect geo-location information from the device and use it for marketing deals to you (and for other purposes listed in the “How Groupon Uses Personal Information” section of the Updated Privacy Statement).” In other words, if you let them, in order to improve the experience and make the Groupon Now app more useful, you’re being tracked.
“About three years,” says AppNinjas CEO John Waldron, when I asked him how long his group of companies have been providing mobile payments solutions to merchants. Three years. That makes them tribal elders when it comes to the nascent arena of mobile payment acceptance. When I say group of companies, I mean the conglomerate of AppNinjas and MerchantFocus whose services work together to enable Swipe—yet another solution out there that lets you accept credit cards with a mobile device. See my video demo and interview with John below for more details.
We first let you know about Swipe last year during the acquisition of AppNinjas by MerchantFocus and Inner Fence. Since then their iOS app—which now uses a provided card reader to enable merchants to accept credit card payment via mobile devices—has picked up some steam. It will invariably invite comparisons to systems developed by Square, Intuit and AprivaPay among others. Truth be told, there are many companies out there doing this kind of thing. Within retail environments, Apple is the early and most visible leader at accepting credit cards via mobile devices, however even traditional brick and mortar stores like Nordstrom and The Gap are piloting their own scenarios using hardware like the Linea Pro by Infinite Peripherals and others. Apart from the in-store retail experience, Square still seems to have captured the most name recognition for being able to enable “in-the-field” credit card transactions (mostly because of their fast account set-up, which eliminates the need for a traditional merchant account) however small businesses that already have merchant accounts and their slightly better transaction rates still have other options like the previously mentioned Intuit GoPayment solution, AprivaPay and now Swipe by AppNinjas, based right here in beautiful Columbus, OH.
Swipe works as you might expect; you plug a free mag stripe reader into the bottom of your iPhone or iPod Touch (Android coming soon) and use their $ 0.99 app to accept credit cards, sign and email receipts. Easy-peasy.
Things to consider:
Customer Service – John characterized one of the company’s biggest benefits to merchants as customer service. In our video interview, he indicatated that AppNinjas strive to provide a high level of customer service with regard to transactional needs.
Rate – You get a low rate for your interchange fees at around 1.7%. Therefore, the more volume you are doing, the more this scenario might make sense.
Fees – While there are no setup fees there are monthly fees to have a merchant account with AppNinjas. This is not unusual for merchant account providers and again, depending on your volume, could be a really small price to pay for the Customer Service.
Set Up – You fill out a few forms online and should be up and running in two days (or whenever your reader gets to you in the mail). There will be at least one phone call that takes place for security purposes.
NFC – This is an obvious question and John and I discussed this a bit offline. As a processor, he says they are planning for integration when it makes sense to do so (probably whenever enough issuers are on board to cause a demand). He sees small merchant adoption of NFC being 3-5 years out. I tend to agree with this. Even though there have been many “announcements” lately within the sphere of large retailers considering NFC for enabling mobile transactions—Google Wallet, ISIS, etc—anyone in the payments industry will tell you there are still many practical features and value propositions missing from this ideal scenario. It’s still a few years out.
Seeing another processing service like Swipe come to market…what means to me, systemically, is that mobile payments systems are becoming part of the norm. Companies already in the payment processing business are seeing and meeting consumer and merchant desire for a solution. I think we will see more variations of this from other companies and will begin to think of it less as fringe or even the vanguard and more as a capability channel required for doing business.
According to the latest Goode Intelligence report, “Mobile Phone Biometric Security Analysis and Forecasts 2011 2015″, mobile phone biometric security products and services will generate just over $ 30 million in 2011 and that the market will grow to over $ 161 million in revenue by 2015, which represents an increase of over $ 130 million.
The report shows that the key drivers behind this mark Security Park
Interception equipment is becoming more accessible and affordable. Cyber-attacks on government agencies and global corporations are happening more and more frequently. These attacks may include interception of voice calls, which is often undetectable as it typically leaves no trace.
During 2010, hackers published a how-to guide for building an air-interface interception device with open source Security Park
The JCB Site Security Mobile CCTV Tower, a new rapid-deployment CCTV tower, has been designed to protect construction sites and other such environments requiring temporary but reliable security 24/7.
The new JCB Site Security Mobile CCTV Tower is a fully-integrated security system that combines REDWALL V detectors with an external CCTV infra-red camera to deter and prevent construction site cri Security Park
“About three years,” says 
