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Social Payments Pose New Security Threats

In todays ever changing world of new technology, companies
are constantly trying to provide the newest innovations, products, and services
to survive. Consumers and businesses alike want everything, and they want it
now. Two of the newest trends in payments are mobile and social. Both of these
means allowing consumers to purchase from just about anywhere on the go. This
new convenience may tempt consumers to proceed without caution and ID verification.
Social payments, while cutting edge and easy, pose some serious security
threats.


What Mark so cleverly refers to as social security in her
article, Social Security, Can You Marry Social Media and Payment Security? is a new issue
in the payment processing industry. Applications on devices that are used for
social payments allow users to store their personal information on the device
itself and then are transferred to the application. Merchants believe this is
safer because personal accounts are less of a target than a bank of servers.
As mentioned in EVSs blog Fraud Prevention Ricks For Banking Industry, this is not always true. Leaving
personal information open for application breeches as well.


Allowing a database, application, or smart device to store
any type of personal information will greatly increase the chance of identity
theft and fraud. Using ID verification and authentication through vendors such as EVS, allows
transactions to happen real time without ever storing or associating personal
data with an identity. Hopefully in the future, these types of technology can
come together to form the ultimate solution. Until that time comes, making sure
transactions are passed through ID authentication is the best way to decrease fraud.

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