UK moves closer to mobile wallet

26 January 2011 Last updated at 20:16 ET

Paying for a sandwich will soon be possible via mobile phones as network operator Everything Everywhere rolls out what it claims is the UK's first mobile payments service.

The service, due for launch in summer 2011, sees the mobile phone operator partnering with Barclaycard.

Businesses that have contactless technology include Pret a Manger, Little Chef and the National Trust.

More services are expected to roll out in the run up to the 2012 Olympics.

The London games is seen as an epicentre for contactless payments, with sponsors such as Visa and Transport for London heavily involved in so-called Near Field Communication (NFC), the short range wireless technology that underpins many wireless payment systems.

In 2009 O2 trialled contactless payments, using mobiles in place of the popular Oyster card which allows commuters to pay for their tube journeys.

By the time of the Olympics it is expected that transactions, transport and tickets will all be available via contactless technology.

Mobile wallet

Consumers can already take advantage of contactless technology in the UK, if their credit or debit card is enabled - designated on Barclaycards, for example, with a wireless symbol.

There are already 11.6 million contactless credit and debit card in circulation.

Users with a contactless mobile, as with contactless cards, will only currently be able to use them for small payments of up to �15.

Moving the experience on to the mobile is something consumers want, according to Jason Rees, head of m-payments at Everything Everywhere.

"Studies show that people are more likely to forget their wallets than their mobile phones. Trials have proved that customers love it, they love the simplicity of having their wallet all in one place and it means there is no more need to carry cash," he said.

Everything Everywhere plans to extend its contactless services.

"We want to use the technology for loyalty cards and to get more information, for example, by tapping on a poster," said Mr Rees.

In Japan and Korea, handsets have come equipped with wireless payment chips for some years.

David Chan, chief executive of Barclaycard's consumer division thinks there is a natural fit between the phone and the wallet.

"I believe that future generations will find it surprising that early this century we were still carrying separate items to buy goods and to communicate with each other," he said.

A report by the Payments Council, which oversees payments strategy in the UK, said in a recent report that "by 2050, using cash could well be a minority activity".

Juniper Research predicts that one in six mobile devices will be contactless by 2014.

Ben Wood, an analyst with research firm CCS Insight, predicts that NFC will open up a host of applications, beyond paying for goods.

"Payments is going to be the anchor application but you can imagine shops having a NFC sticker which you simply touch with your phone to check yourself into Google or Facebook. Or imagine touching a digital photo frame and being able to transfer a picture," he said.

"There are going to be some incredibly cool ways to use it," he added.

It is rumoured that Apple will incorporate NFC in its next iPhone.

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Facebook blames bug for 'hacking'

26 January 2011 Last updated at 10:59 ET

Mystery surrounds the apparent hacking of a Facebook page used by fans of the site's founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Overnight, a cryptic message was posted to the page in the name of the 26-year old billionaire founder calling for the site to become a "social business" with investment from its users.

The message has led to suggestions that the the site was hacked or Mr Zuckerberg's account was compromised.

Facebook has so far declined to comment on the incident.

Take down

The message, left in the name of Mr Zuckerberg, read: "Let the hacking begin: If Facebook needs money, instead of going to the banks, why doesn't Facebook let its users invest in Facebook in a social way?

"Why not transform Facebook into a 'social business' the way Nobel Prize winner Muhammad Yunus described it?"

Muhammad Yunus is a Nobel Peace Prize winner and the founder of the Grameen Bank, which offers small loans to people who have no collateral to get started in business.

The message also linked to a recently edited Wikipedia article about social business and asked readers: "what do you think?"

In addition, it linked to a page for the Hacker Cup, an annual programming event organised by Facebook. Many have interpreted this as a sign that the hacker feels they should win the competition.

A detailed analysis of the message by the Guardian newspaper turned up some clues about the hacker, but has failed to identify them.

The cryptic Facebook post attracted nearly 2,000 comments before it was taken down, but not before technology blog TechCrunch spotted it.

The page, which has nearly three million fans, has also been moved to a new address, according to researcher Graham Cluley of security firm Sophos.

He said that because the site was a public fan page, which are used to promote everything from businesses and products to bands and public figures, it was likely run by Facebook staff.

"It's quite possible that other people than Zuckerberg had access," he said.

"It could have been one of those that got hacked," he said.

The hacker may have got access to the account, he said, via a poorly chosen password or spyware installed on an employee's computer that stole the password.

Walk away

He said the password could also have been stolen when an employee was accessing the unsecured version of the site over an unencrypted wi-fi network.

Last year, a tool called Firesheep was released that that made it easy for anyone sharing an unsecure connection to grab login information for many unsecure sites, including Facebook.

"I can easily imagine that something like that could have happened," said Mr Cluley.

Facebook has just released new tools aimed at shoring up user's accounts against tools like FireSheep, by allowing people to always connect via a secure connection.

However, Mr Cluley admitted that the site may not have been hacked at all and the post may have been made by a disgruntled employee.

"The other possibility is that [Mr Zuckerberg] strode away from his desk for a while and someone grabbed it and typed the message in.

"Although you wouldn't think that would do much for their job prospects".

The incident comes days after the account of French president Nicolas Sarkozy was also hacked to suggest that he was resigning.

"As a general rule this can happen to anyone," said Mr Cluley.

"Just because a person is famous or well known doesn't mean that everything that is posted from their account is legitimate."

Mr Zuckerberg's private account appears not to have been affected.

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O2 plans UK-wide wi-fi network

26 January 2011 Last updated at 06:27 ET

Mobile operator O2 is launching free wireless in the UK, which it promises will be double the size of existing networks by 2013.

Initially the hotspots will be available in 450 O2-owned sites but will be expanded to other locations, including shops and restaurants.

Previously 02 had offered free wi-fi on some of its tariffs via BT Openzone and The Cloud.

The Cloud is rumoured to be close to sealing a buy-out deal with Sky.

Premium

O2 said access to the hotspots would be through a simple sign-up process and would be free to both 02 and non-02 customers.

For Jeremy Green, a principal analyst with Ovum, the move is a "step in the right direction" to sorting out 02's capacity issues, brought about by high iPhone ownership and the increasing desire for data on the move.

"450 sites is not fantastic coverage and wi-fi isn't something that smartphone users will be able to rely on but it is a gesture in the right direction," he said.

He said it was "surprising" that O2 was prepared to offer it free to non-customers, something the firm is hoping to fund via advertising.

In a swipe at BT's Fon network, which offers connections which piggyback on BT home broadband networks, O2 said that its service would offer "premium public hotspots, as opposed to using residential connections with limited bandwidth".

BT's Openzone and Fon networks are currently the biggest networks in the UK.

The second largest The Cloud claims to have around 22,000 hotspots.

BT recently launched an iPad app allowing its broadband customers to gain access to wi-fi hotspots around the country.

It already has Android and iPhone apps, which has proved popular, attracting 400,000 downloads.

Rival Virgin Media is also toying with the idea of creating a nationwide wi-fi network.

Years away

O2 wants to help kick-start more wi-fi usage.

"Only 20% of people who have access to free public wi-fi on 02 tariffs actively use it despite the majority of devices being wi-fi enabled," said O2's business development director Tim Sefton

"We know that wi-fi as a technology has great potential and can be a very fast service, however customers are discouraged by barriers which include complexity in activation, uncertainty of where wi-fi is free and the variable quality of the current experience," he added.

Mr Green said that 02's wi-fi network would have to go hand-in-hand with other network upgrades.

O2 said that it is continuing to invest in its existing network but Mr Sefton confessed to UK technology news site TechRadar that it would be "years rather than months before we'll have a commercial 4G network".

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Egypt protests face net clampdown

26 January 2011 Last updated at 05:39 ET By Jonathan Fildes Technology reporter, BBC News

Egypt appears to have clamped down on web services, such as Twitter, that have been used to help organise anti-government protests in Cairo.

Twitter confirmed that its service has been blocked in Egypt on Tuesday from around 1600GMT.

A Swedish mobile video site called Bambuser also reported that it had been blocked around the same time.

However, the Facebook page used to co-ordinate many of the protests has remained online.

Facebook has not said whether it has implemented any technical measures to keep the site up and running but a spokesperson said that it was "seeing consistent levels of traffic".

The social network, which has more than 600m users, recently was forced to intervene when it emerged that political protest pages in Tunisia were being hacked and passwords stolen, seemingly at the behest of the former government.

The site implemented a series of technical measures to counter the attacks, including encrypting all requests for the site from within Tunisia.

'Right to protest'

Details of the blocks in Egypt began to emerge on Tuesday afternoon, as thousands of people joined a "day of revolt" against the government of President Hosni Mubarak.

Initially it was unclear whether state authorities were blocking internet access or if mobile networks were simply overloaded by the numbers of people gathering in the streets.

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The BBC's Jon Leyne, who is in Cairo, said the protests like this in Egypt were rare

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Twitter were at first unwilling to comment, instead directing people towards Herdict, a website created by a group at Harvard University, which collects reports of websites that are down.

The site has seen a small spike in the number of reports about Twitter from Egypt.

But overnight, Twitter issued a statement..

"We can confirm that Twitter was blocked in Egypt around 8am PT today. It is impacting both Twitter.com and applications."

The block had previously been confirmed by BBC readers and telecom operator Vodafone Egypt, which sought to reassure customers that it was not responsible.

"We didn't block Twitter - it's a problem all over Egypt and we are waiting for a solution," it said.

Some Twitter messages - many tagged #jan25 to show they were in support of the demonstrations - seemed to have got through via text messages and some third-party applications.

Bambuser, a service that allows people to stream live video from a phone to a website or a Facebook page, also said that it had been hit by the ban.

"We are working hard to ensure access resumes for the Egyptian community and stand by them in their quest for the right to protest," it said.

Street ban

In support of the protests, a collective of online "hacktivists" known as Anonymous claimed to have taken down the Egyptian interior ministry's web page.

Anonymous came to prominence for its cyber-attacks on the websites of companies it deemed to be anti-Wikileaks.

It has since turned its attention to supporting the protests in Tunisia and Egypt.

The group uses so-called "denial-of-service" attacks, that seek to swamp websites with large volumes of traffic, until they are knocked offline.

The group was one of many that also offered advice to the protesters on how to evade blocks on sites and services.

However, some sites appear to have escaped the block.

Google-owned video sharing website YouTube, which has been used to share film of the protests, has seemingly not been blocked.

Protesters are also turning to other digital tools to help.

For example, a map has been set up by the Arabic Network for Human Rights Information, for people to report arrests, and harassment during the protests.

The digital blocks come as the government issued a ban on street protests.

Public gatherings, protests and marches are all now prohibited, the country's official news agency reports.

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