Apple Wants You To Pay For Things With An iPhone — But There’s One Nagging Problem
Ahead of the new iPhone’s much anticipated unveiling this week, drug store giants CVS and Walgreens announce their partnership with Apple’s new payment system rumored to be featured on the newest iPhone.
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CREDIT: AP/Charles Krupa
Forgetting your wallet at home may no longer be a problem when picking up prescriptions or incidentals, as the nation’s two biggest drugstore chains partner with Apple and its new mobile payment system, according to a ReCode report. Apple’s new mobile payment system could certainly make life for consumers much easier. But the move also makes the iPhone a virtually indispensable — and invaluable –piece of property that will be even more vulnerable to security risks if lost, stolen or hacked.
CVS and Walgreens, which have upwards of 15,000 combined store locations across the U.S., are expected to be among the first retailers to accept Apple’s rumored mobile payment system that the company is set to unveiled Sept. 9 along with the latest iPhone and wearable technology.
The new payment system will allow consumers to pay for items using near field communication, a wireless technology that transmits payment information from the mobile device to a store’s checkout system. The SIM card in the mobile phone, which stores users’ personal information and allows them to connect to their carrier’s network, will help verify users’ accounts, according to TechRadar, and act as a digital wallet that holds credit card and banking information. The iPhone 6 is supposed to be the first Apple device to feature the system.
Smartphones already carry a host of sensitive personal data through mobile apps and web activity, including financial information, usernames, passwords and home addresses. But because the payment system would be tethered to the iPhone 6 and use WiFi to transmit credit card or banking information, the device would be even more valuable to hackers or thieves.
Over 3 million smartphones were stolen in 2013, almost half of which were never recovered. Besides their value on the black market, the personal and financial information on stolen smartphones can prove lucrative.
Even when consumers take precautions, their phones can still be at risk for hacking and fraud. For example, research hackers were able to lift account usernames and passwords from passersby by using a drone that masqueraded as a trusted WiFi network.
Last week, Apple’s iCloud storage service suffered a targeted breach where nude celebrity photos were stolen and distributed online. Apple said the security breach affected only certain celebrity accounts and was not a result of a security flaw on its end. The company, however, also announced that it patched a security flaw that may could have exposed users data and has vowed to beef up security measures.
The celebrity photo scandal also revived a broader conversation surrounding consumer privacy and large scale breaches. Breaches have increased in recent years with retailers such as Target and more recently Home Depot being prime targets. As a result, many of those whose information gets stolen also become victims of identity theft — which is on the rise. The trend has even taken a toll on the economy by stifling job growth as businesses spend billions fighting cyberattacks.
But the security risk is the same if not greater when hackers home in on security weaknesses in website encryption. The Heartbleed security flaw, which was even exploited by the U.S. National Security Agency, went undiscovered for two years and exposed millions of usernames, passwords, Social Security Numbers and financial account information from nearly 70 percent of the world’s websites. And as technology continues to evolve with more of consumers’ everyday lives centered online and on mobile devices, similar cybersecurity breaches will likely become more commonplace.
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Virginia Bar Closes Woman’s Tab Because She’s Breastfeeding
“I don’t deny that I had alcohol and was breastfeeding,” she told Fox, “but it’s how I went about it and how I always go about it that makes the difference.”
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CREDIT: Screenshot/ WTKR
A bar in Virginia is facing some scrutiny after it closed a woman’s tab without her asking. The woman wasn’t overly drunk or acting erratic; she was breastfeeding.
Crystal McCullough brought her daughter to Big Woody’s in Chesapeake, Virginia this week to celebrate closing on a new house, she told a local Fox affiliate. She sat with her family breastfeeding at the table. “I had one sip of beer and was not planning on the rest until after I was done nursing,” she added in an interview with WTKR. She had also ordered a shot of whiskey that she hadn’t yet drank. That’s when employees of the bar cut her off, citing complaints from other customers.
One of the owners of the bar admitted to WAVY.com that his staff could have handled the situation better, and that there was some confusion over whether McCullough was being cut off because she was drinking, or simply because she was breastfeeding in public.
“Our concern was for the child, really that’s what it is,” he said.
But to McCullough, that’s still not a good reason. “I don’t deny that I had alcohol and was breastfeeding,” she told Fox, “but it’s how I went about it and how I always go about it that makes the difference.”
Leaving aside public perception, there are no clear guidelines on whether women can drink while breastfeeding. While no one thinks a woman should be plastered while caring for a child, doctors including the American Academy of Pediatrics believe that drinking in moderation while breastfeeding is totally acceptable. The Academy does, however, suggest that the breastfeeding woman should wait two hours for the alcohol to clear her system.
In a sense, McCullough is lucky that the public scorn over her choice to drink and breastfeed only led to getting the check a little too early. A mother in Arkansas was thrown in jail after restaurant patrons noticed she was drinking a beer while breastfeeding and called the cops. Indeed, there is a growing trend of criminalizing how pregnant and breastfeeding women behave in the name of public health. Another woman in Montana was charged with criminally endangering a child this week, for example, because she tested positive for drugs when she was just 12 weeks pregnant.
The laws that allow these harsh punishments that seem out of step with the potential harm done are known as fetal harm laws, and exist in 38 states. The group National Advocates for Pregnant Women has found that hundreds of women have been stripped of custody or put in jail using these laws. While some punishments are rightful, and while no one is advocating for permissive attitudes toward harming a child, charges meted out under the laws are disproportionate: a huge majority of the women losing custody or getting jail time are African-American.
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