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...
View ArticleHow 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...
View ArticleAs 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...
View ArticleWhy 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...
View ArticleCVS 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...
View ArticleSquare 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...
View ArticleSafeway 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...
View ArticleGiving 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...
View ArticleVanity 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...
View ArticleWhy 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),...
View ArticleApple 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...
View ArticleIBM, 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...
View ArticleQR 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...
View ArticleMajor 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...
View ArticleBest 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...
View ArticleICANN’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...
View ArticlePCI’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...
View ArticleAmazon 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...
View ArticleA 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...
View ArticleA 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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