PassMark Security has introduced new countermeasures to enable enterprises to prevent phishing attacks on their Internet users.   » Continue Reading

An updated version our recent phishing analysis is now also available here on Payments News.   » Continue Reading

The Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce announced today that the estimate of U.S. retail e-commerce sales for the fourth quarter of 2003, not adjusted for seasonal, holiday, and trading-day differences, was $17.2 billion, an increase of 25.1 percent (±4.2%) from the fourth quarter of 2002. Total retail sales for the fourth quarter of 2003 were estimated at $918.2 billion, an increase of 6.2 percent (±0.4%) from the same period a year ago.

MasterCard has announced that British Airways is the first global airline to adopt MasterCard's SecureCode online payer authentication service.   » Continue Reading

Wired carries a Reuters story about Atrua Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based startup funded by the venture capital groups of Ericsson, Nokia and Intel. Atrua's first product is a cell phone touchpad capable of user fingerprint verification. Details in the company's press release.   » Continue Reading

Wall St. Journal reporters Don Clark and Nick Wingfeld report (subscription reqd) on new techniques to verify online the identity of companies and computer users.   » Continue Reading

The Reserve Bank of Australia has designated Visa International's debit card scheme in Australia a payment system, a possible first step toward regulating it.

VeriSign this morning announced OATH, Open Authentication reference architecture along with a new network-based authentication utility. More information about OATH is available at a new OATH web site.