Accept credit cards on your mobile device.

In his NYT column yesterday, David Pogue reviewed the offering of a company called Square. Their product is a sweet software/hardware combo that allows anyone to accept credit card payments on their iPod, iPhone, Ipad, or Android phone. And do it at a reasonable cost.

I have to admit that I haven't paid any attention to processing credit cards on your cell phone. This looks like a cool idea, but apparently it's not the only option out there - although it may be the most palatable for some. In the comments to the article the reaction seems about even between the "This is great!" and the "This is a waste" crowds. There are a couple of people concerned about fraud, but I don't think the risks any worse than anything we already face on a daily basis. No worse than giving your credit card to the waitress at your favorite restaurant, anyway - and probably not as bad.

Square makes it possible to accept credit cards at your garage sale, or your booth at the local trade days, flea market, or for services you provide. It makes it possible to accept credit cards even if you only need to once or twice a year. And it makes it possible without having to have a merchant account or a paypal account, which is a big plus to some. Will it take off? I think it has a good chance, but only time will tell.

iTunes breach: Much ado about nothing.

It's a big story. It was reported on TechCrunch that there's a flaw in iTunes that allows bad guys to go in and empty your bank account if you have Paypal selected as the payment method. One poor customer racked up $4700 worth of charges in a matter of hours. Other customers were reporting hundreds and thousands of dollars stolen. The story grew from there.

There was just one problem. It was wrong. The real culprit wasn't a flaw in iTunes or Paypal, it was a successful phishing attack that harvested peoples usernames and passwords, allowing the hackers to access accounts and rack up charges as if they were the legitimate owners.

An overzealous reporter or editor at TechCrunch fails to adequately check a story, uses twitter to verify that there's a problem, and runs with it. There was a real newsworthy story here, but it wasn't a flaw in iTunes, it was gullible users passing on their passwords.

Don't trust requests for identifying information in email. Don't trust anything in such an email, and whatever you do, don't give out your information just because the email looks pretty. You'll keep your account and your sanity intact.