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Extremely Sad News

It pains us greatly to have to report to you that our PCI Columnist, Walt Conway, passed away on Tuesday (June 26) after a battle with pancreatic cancer. Professionally, Walt had that rare ability to...

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How Much Trouble Could You Be In If Online Customers Can Hide Where They Are?

One of the largest Internet providers in New Zealand is now letting customers pretend they're somewhere else when it comes to buying things online. That's likely to be a thorn in the side of digital...

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As Chain Trials Facial Recognition, Channel Assumptions Flip

A major Russian convenience store chain, Ulybka Radugi, is now running a trial of facial recognition to choose digital in-store ads to be displayed and POS coupons to be offered. But as more chains...

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Why Quarterly Vulnerability Scanning Is An Impressively Stupid Idea

The current PCI DSS quarterly vulnerability scanning requirement is nothing short of ridiculous, given the fact that most operating system vendors and some application software providers release...

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CVS App Brings Home Hard-To-Get CRM Data

When CVS on Monday (July 1) launched a drug interaction feature on its mobile app, it was a classic example of a deep CRM gift that was positioned—correctly—as a truly useful shopper app. In short, it...

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Square Mastering PayPal’s “Don’t Tell Store Associates And See What Happens”...

When a Reuters story this week detailed that retail associates were oblivious about a Square service being offered in their stores, it had a frighteningly familiar ring to it. We have repeatedly run...

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Safeway Self-Checkout Security Hole Illustrates The Importance Of Button...

The self-checkout software at a Safeway chain in California, Vons, lets the shopper move directly to the payment area and then still buy more items. This bit of flexibility likely seemed a good idea at...

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Giving A Thief A Chance To Not Steal

In the loss prevention world of counter-counter-espionage, a California vendor is pitching a silent way to detect shoplifters who have their own silent way of detecting the detectors. Let's slow this...

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Vanity Domains Inch Closer For 23 Big Retailers, But Not Walmart Or Amazon

Vanity top-level domains (TLDs), which seemed like such a good idea a year ago to Walmart, Safeway, Amazon and Google, are slowly grinding their way forward. Last week ICANN, which is selling the new...

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Why Did Merged Channel Fail Barnes & Noble?

Now that Barnes & Noble has lost its CEO and is further exploring "strategic alternatives," it looks increasingly like the last bookstore megachain has reached its last link. On Monday (July 8),...

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Apple Drops Amazon “App Store” Lawsuit, Now That Everyone Knows What The Real...

Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) has given up its fight with Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) over app stores—specifically, its trademark lawsuit over the name “App Store” for an online store where customers can buy apps. All...

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IBM, Google, Best Buy May Have Cracked E-Commerce Pain Point

A group of dozens of tech firms—and two major retailers—are working on a standardized way of storing E-Commerce data for websites as JavaScript objects. IBM, Google, Adobe, Accenture and other IT...

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QR Codes Are A Terrible Idea. Why Is Image Recognition Even Worse?

QR codes are ugly. They're intrusive. Most designers hate them because there's no way to make them look any less like the brick-full-of-blocks they are, especially when they've been slapped next to a...

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Major Chain Loses PCI Compliance When Data Center Moves

One of the nation's 15 largest retail chains had done a tremendous job segmenting its network to reduce the scope of its PCI assessment. All of that was thrown away, though, during a simple data center...

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Best Buy Learns The Downside To Locking Out E-mail Changes

A Best Buy online anti-fraud mechanism has unintentionally created a security hole. I was placing an order with a local Best Buy physical store, using the web site's pickup-in-store option. Because the...

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ICANN’s Vanity Domains Will Break Some Of The Internet And We Won’t Help Fix...

From the Department of What’s The Worst That Can Happen?, Vanity Domains division: ICANN, the organization that’s selling do-it-yourself replacements for .com for $185,000 each, is meeting this week in...

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PCI’s Not-So-Open Global Forum

PCI's Global Forum is an open forum in name only, at least as long as it continues to force changes on members that they are not permitted to even know about until someone who has been briefed chooses...

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Amazon And The Limited May Be Stripped Of Their Brands When It Comes To...

After a week of meetings in Durban, South Africa, focused on vanity domain names, it looks like Amazon's (NASDAQ:AMZN) application to use its own name is still being denied, while U.S. apparel chains...

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A New Retail Twist On Copyright Defenses

Part of any retailer’s effective brand protection strategy has to include an "Open Source Monitoring" program – you know, monitoring social media and webpages for anything that could impact your good...

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A Patent On Clicking Website Images? Nope, Appeals Court Affirms

For once, JCPenney has something to be happy—not just hopeful—about. On July 22, a federal appeals court delivered what should be the final blow to a patent-infringement lawsuit that dates from CEO...

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Changing Terms of Service? Be Ready For A Class Action Lawsuit

Think you have complete control of the terms of service (TOS) of your website? As a retailer, you probably assume that you can dictate terms to customers, especially about any services you offer them...

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Why Did Gonzales Hackers Like European Cards So Much Better?

Last Thursday's (July 25) indictment of five more Albert Gonzalez gang members by federal prosecutors in New Jersey is a reminder of how big that operation was (and may still be) and how far...

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Now Asda, Morrisons And Europe Are Going After Visa And MasterCard Over...

First there was the $7.25 billion interchange settlement that big chains mostly detested, largely because it would outlaw future interchange lawsuits. Then came a flurry of retailer lawsuits against...

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Walmart’s Scan & Go Change Reminds Us How To Make Mobile Work

One of the many advantages of mobile payment is significantly expanding CRM reach, getting to know about a far greater percentage of all of a shopper's purchases. Nowhere is this more attractive than...

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SAP Exec Who Switched Barcodes At Target Cuts Plea Deal

Remember that SAP exec who last year was arrested for slapping fake barcodes on products within a Target—and his defense was that he was simply testing his company’s systems? Seems he cut a plea deal...

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How To Deal With Merged Channel Inventory?

As merged channels (also known as omnichannel) become the default for an increasing number of retailers, the challenge of efficiently handling the supply chain and managing inventory becomes...

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CMOs, Not CIOs, Now Control 11 Percent Of Retail IT Spending

Almost 20 percent of the $60 billion in annual North American retail IT spending isn't under the CIO's control. Who's spending most of that $11.6 billion? The chief marketing officer, according to a...

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Can VeriFone Actually Outsource PCI Problems?

In theory, you can't outsource PCI issues, but VeriFone wants to try. On Monday (Aug. 5), the POS maker announced VeriFone Point, a payments-as-a-service offering that basically takes everything in the...

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Court To Fed: Keep The (Inter)Change

On July 31, a federal court in Washington sent shock waves through the merchant, banking, and credit/debit card industry by overturning the Federal Reserve's rules implementing limitations on the...

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Sephora Buys A Software Vendor. Wait, Can They Do That?

In the kind of move you'd expect from Walmart (NYSE:WMT) or Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) but not a retailer who couldn't make the NRF's Top 100 list, beauty products retailer Sephora has acquired a software...

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Will Warranty Enforcement Be Amazon Marketplace’s Achilles’ Heel?

When it comes to competing against Amazon, eBay or even Japan's Rakuten, one of the more challenging aspects is their third-party marketplaces, which give each a seemingly endless inventory at minimal...

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Is Domino’s Site Getting A Tad Bit Defensive?

Automated Web responses to consumer comments are great time-savers, presuming the programming assumptions End my that irritation, definitely viagra puts. Without little pharmacy without prescription...

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Survey Finds Personal Recommendations Half As Influential As Comments From...

In our ongoing looks at survey stats and why they often don't mean what you might think they mean, here's a fun one. A new report from comScore and Millennial Media has a chart that looked at...

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London’s Recycling Bins Don’t Do Mobile Tracking Anymore. (Until This Week,...

At a time when many retail chains are trying to navigate the public-relations minefield of customer tracking, disclosure and data use, a story from London is a useful reminder that nobody is getting...

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Congress Wants To Regulate Customized Pricing. Yeah, That Will Certainly Work...

If legislation pending before the House Energy and Commerce Committee is passed and signed into law, online merchants will be severely restricted in their ability to use "big data" and behavioral...

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