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How debit card fraud can happen without using the card

FOX News

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AI scams drove UK reports of fraud to record 444,000 last year

The Guardian

Most of the account takeover scams reported last year were for mobiles, online shopping and credit cards, Cifas said. Most of the account takeover scams reported last year were for mobiles, online shopping and credit cards, Cifas said. Criminals are increasingly exploiting AI technology to take over people's mobile, banking and online shopping accounts, the UK's leading anti-fraud body has warned. Last year, a record number of scams were reported to the national fraud database, fuelled by AI, which allows for large-scale deception on "industrialised" levels, according to Cifas, the fraud prevention organisation. Its report showed 444,000 cases of fraud were reported by its members last year - a 6% increase on 2024.


What was really behind Jack Dorsey laying off nearly half of Block's staff?

The Guardian

Jack Dorsey leaves the Élysée Palace in Paris, France, on 7 June 2019. Jack Dorsey leaves the Élysée Palace in Paris, France, on 7 June 2019. What was really behind Jack Dorsey laying off nearly half of Block's staff? Jack Dorsey cited AI as the driving force behind cutting 40% of his company's employees, but other factors such as a weak crypto market, overstaffing and a declining stock price may also have motivated the move. Last week, the financial technology company Block announced that it would lay off 4,000 of its 10,000 workers.





The Download: a blockchain enigma, and the algorithms governing our lives

MIT Technology Review

Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen, an Australian man in his mid-30s, with a rural Catholic upbringing, is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can swap one cryptocurrency for another and earn fees from making those swaps. THORChain is permissionless, so anyone can use it without getting prior approval from a centralized authority. As a decentralized network, the blockchain is built and run by operators located across the globe. During its early days, Thorbjornsen himself hid behind the pseudonym "leena" and used an AI-generated female image as his avatar. But around March 2024, he revealed his true identity as the mind behind the blockchain. If there is a central question around THORChain, it is this: Exactly who is responsible for its operations?


Welcome to the dark side of crypto's permissionless dream

MIT Technology Review

Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen is a leader of THORChain, a blockchain that is not supposed to have any leaders--and is reeling from a series of expensive controversies. We can do whatever we want," Jean-Paul Thorbjornsen tells me from the pilot's seat of his Aston Martin helicopter. As we fly over suburbs outside Melbourne, Australia, it's becoming clear that doing whatever he wants is Thorbjornsen's MO. Upper-middle-class homes give way to vineyards, and Thorbjornsen points out our landing spot outside a winery. "They're going to ask for a shot now," he says, used to the attention drawn by his luxury helicopter, emblazoned with the tail letters "BTC" for bitcoin (the price tag of $5 million in Australian dollars--$3.5 million in US dollars today--was perhaps reasonable for someone who claims a previous crypto project made more than AU$400 million, although he also says those funds were tied up in the company). Thorbjornsen is a founder of THORChain, a blockchain through which users can swap ...


Bitcoin biopic starring Casey Affleck to use AI to generate locations and tweak performances

Engadget

You guess is as good as mine as to why a film about blockchain technology needs to be filmed this way, but Doug Liman has been connected with plenty of unusual projects in the past, including a rumored Tom Cruise film that was supposed to film on the International Space Station.


Crypto-Funded Human Trafficking Is Exploding

WIRED

The use of cryptocurrency in sales of human beings for prostitution and scam compounds nearly doubled in 2025, according to a conservative estimate. Many of the deals are happening in plain sight. Cryptocurrency's frictionless, transnational, low-regulation transactions have long promised the ability to pay anyone in the world for anything. More than ever before, that anything includes human beings: victims of human trafficking forced into scam compounds and the sex trade on an industrial scale, bought and sold in crypto deals carried out with impunity, often in full public view. In new research published today, crypto-tracing firm Chainalysis found that crypto-funded transactions for human trafficking--largely forced laborers trapped in compounds across Southeast Asia and coerced into working as online scammers, as well as sex-trafficking prostitution rings--grew explosively in 2025.