Love Selfies? Now They Can Keep Your Credit Card Safe
MasterCard is appealing to America’s obsession with selfies in an effort to reduce credit card identity theft.
The credit card company is launching a new program that will allow consumers to approve online purchases with a facial scan. At the checkout page, you’ll be asked to take a picture of yourself using your phone instead of entering a password.
Currently, customers can stop hackers from using their credit card on the Web by setting up a “SecureCode,” which requires a password when shopping online. The password system was used in 3 billion transactions last year.
This fall MasterCard will launch a small pilot program involving 500 customers using fingerprints and facial scans. If the test is a success, the company plans on rolling it out publicly afterward. The company is also looking ahead to one day apply voice recognition technology.
To use the new selfie system, customers need to download the MasterCard phone app. Once you pay for something, a pop-up will appear asking for your authorization with either a fingerprint or facial recognition. Using facial recognition, customers stare at the phone, blink once — and bam! All done. The blink is a security measure so thieves can’t just hold up a photo of you. A fingerprint only requires a touch.
Passwords are easily forgotten, stolen or cracked, so the new system is a way to prove your identity using biometrics. Critics of the new system are uncomfortable that the photo or fingerprint a customer puts into his or her phone will transmit to the company’s computer servers. Cybersecurity experts worry the transfer of such information across devices is too big of a privacy risk.
MasterCard wasn’t the first company to develop a facial recognition app — Chinese shopping brand Alibaba demonstrated one in March, but had to postpone the technology’s launch because of security risks found by China’s central bank and police ministry.
Map of the Day: Navigating the IRS
The Taxpayer Advocate Service – an independent organization within the IRS whose roughly 1,800 employees both assist taxpayers in resolving problems with the tax collection agency and recommend changes aimed at improving the system – released a “subway map” that shows the “the stages of a taxpayer’s journey.” The colorful diagram includes the steps a typical taxpayer takes to prepare and file their tax forms, as well as the many “stations” a tax return can pass through, including processing, audits, appeals and litigation. Not surprisingly, the map is quite complicated. Click here to review a larger version on the taxpayer advocate’s site.
A Surprise Government Spending Slowdown
Economists expected federal spending to boost growth in 2019, but some of the fiscal stimulus provided by the 2018 budget deal has failed to show up this year, according to Kate Davidson of The Wall Street Journal.
Defense spending has come in as expected, but nondefense spending has lagged, and it’s unlikely to catch up to projections even if it accelerates in the coming months. Lower spending on disaster relief, the government shutdown earlier this year, and federal agencies spending less than they have been given by Congress all appear to be playing a role in the spending slowdown, Davidson said.
Number of the Day: $203,500
The Wall Street Journal’s Catherine Lucey reports that acting White House Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney is making a bit more than his predecessors: “The latest annual report to Congress on White House personnel shows that President Trump’s third chief of staff is getting an annual salary of $203,500, compared with Reince Priebus and John Kelly, each of whom earned $179,700.” The difference is the result of Mulvaney still technically occupying the role of director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, where his salary level is set by law.
The White House told the Journal that if Mulvaney is made permanent chief of staff his salary would be adjusted to the current salary for an assistant to the president, $183,000.
The Census Affects Nearly $1 Trillion in Spending
The 2020 census faces possible delay as the Supreme Court sorts out the legality of a controversial citizenship question added by the Trump administration. Tracy Gordon of the Tax Policy Center notes that in addition to the basic issue of political representation, the decennial population count affects roughly $900 billion in federal spending, ranging from Medicaid assistance funds to Section 8 housing vouchers. Here’s a look at the top 10 programs affected by the census:
Chart of the Day: Offshore Profits Continue to Rise
Brad Setser, a former U.S. Treasury economist now with the Council on Foreign Relations, added another detail to his assessment of the foreign provisions of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act: “A bit more evidence that Trump's tax reform didn't change incentives to offshore profits: the enormous profits that U.S. firms report in low tax jurisdictions continues to rise,” Setser wrote. “In fact, there was a bit of a jump up over the course of 2018.”
