In this episode, hear more about how businesses are now targeting Generation Z, Using your watch or shoes as a form of two-factor authentication and a new ransomware attack, Bad Rabbit.

Show Notes:

For the longest while we have been hearing about Millennials and how they are being targeted by businesses as the main group to go after to increase sales but that is changing. Today, more and more efforts are being placed on targeting Generation Z.

Businesses have been preoccupied with how to cater to and exploit to their advantage the peculiar characteristics associated with consumers born between the early 1980s and early 2000s. But a new report released by Accenture indicates that the so-called Gen Z – the generation immediately following millennials – is the payment industry’s future customer base.

Gen Zs are projected to make up 40 per cent of all North American consumers by 2020, according to Accenture’s report Driving the future of payments – 10 mega trends. Accenture conducted an online survey of 1,000 adults in the United States and 500 in Canada between September 1, 2017, and September 10, 2017.

Gen Zers move fast but still demand personalized and highly-relevant experiences as consumers. As the payments market expands, customer experience will become a prime differentiator. The danger for many traditional non-digital players is that they are losing control of customers due to their difficulties of getting a handle on customer experience. For instance, businesses need to tie-in other desirable services to the payment solutions they offer customers.

Items and 2FA

One day, your household items and accessories like that old watch, or picture frame sitting on your fireplace, could become a new way to authenticate yourself online, according to researchers.

Many websites and online services are now enforcing or at least offering two-factor authentication (2FA) as a way to enhance the security of your accounts. We all know passwords are not ideal these days, with all the news about cyberattacks. And often times we set simple, repetitive passwords -- so we can see why other methods are now needed.

So, researchers from Florida International University and Bloomberg have come up with another idea of using your phone’s camera.

This project is called Pixie, which explores how 2FA can be implemented through cameras without the need for additional hardware.

Bad Rabbit

The U.S. government has issued a warning about a new ransomware attack that spread through Russia and Ukraine and into other countries around the world.

Cybersecurity experts said the ransomware -- which posed as an Adobe update before locking down computers and demanding money for people to get their files back -- targeted Russian media companies and Ukrainian transportation systems. It has also been detected in other countries including the U.S., Germany and Japan.

The U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team said late Tuesday it "has received multiple reports of ransomware infections ... in many countries around the world."

Dubbed "Bad Rabbit," the virus is the latest example of cybercriminals using ransomware to try to extort money from victims across the globe.

Tech Bytes 

• Twitter reported its earnings this week for Q3, and watchers of the company, used to seeing declines across the board, got an unexpected piece of news: the social media platform reported revenues of $590 million on adjusted earnings per share of $0.10. The revenues were still a decline over a year ago of about four percent compared to a year ago. The two areas where Twitter continues to get hit publicly are in the fact that its service continues to present itself as a hotbed for harassment and spreading false information, alongside its important role in providing a communications platform, which remains the problematic paradox of the service.
• Facebook has teamed up with auto car dealers to introduce a new Marketplace section for vehicles on its flagship social media app. The new section features search filters to find a vehicle of a specific type, maker, transmission, color, and more, offered by members of the public as well as car dealerships including Edmunds, Auction123, Cars.com, CDK Global, and SocialDealer. The automobile Marketplace includes a price checking function that uses the industry standard Kelly's Blue Book, and integrates with Messenger bots to allow users to communicate with dealers in real-time. More than 30,000 organisations have signed up to the Facebook's Workplace collaboration tool since its launch last year, the company has revealed, more than double the number announced just six months ago. Coinciding with the news, and to celebrate the app's one year anniversary, Facebook has also announced the release of a Workplace desktop app for group chats, which will eventually support video calls in an update due to land in the coming weeks.