The Internet....

is becoming pure rubbish!

I used to be quite the fan of facebook - it was great way to quickly and easily keep in touch with people, see what was going on in their lives and interact with them.  Now it is just full of shared articles of complete mis-information.

Like today, I read this article (which apparently started on facebook and then went viral) reported in two "newspapers" with no fact checking what so ever!

The article is claiming that people are walking around with handheld card swiping machines where they are basically picking £30 out of your account by holding it near your card and exploiting the NFC (near field communication). I've watched this being shared over and over on my feed and also watched people feel vindicated in not trusting NFC or online banking etc etc

You cannot just buy this device and touch cards to get payment to move from your account to the device holder's account.  To do this, you need to have comms to the bank to complete the request and the bank needs to know who is requesting to take the money which means the device owner is registered as a valid business with the bank.

It is also highly unlikely this would work via the mobile phone network.

This is just one example that I found particularly frustrating as I'm a technology consulting manager specialising in retail so I've been involved in a few projects that involve making this link to request and process payments.

In this day and age when there is such a wealth of information out there and it is so easy to have a quick search to check facts quickly that I find it frustrating.

The worst part is the actual newspapers that reported on this *with no* fact checking.  As a newspaper surely they could even just call somewhere and check - don't get your news from facebook people!

ummm end rant.  And no, this post won't be shared on my facebook feed!