Staples suffers a data breach from malware, and Apple Pay launches right on time. We reflect on both these events, and the big shift thats coming up.

Plus Tinder gets an upgrade, good news for Spotify users & more!

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Bank Sources Reoirtubg Credit Card Breach at Staples Stores — Krebs on Security

According to more than a half-dozen sources at banks operating on the East Coast, it appears likely that fraudsters have succeeded in stealing customer card data from some subset of Staples locations, including seven Staples stores in Pennsylvania, at least three in New York City, and another in New Jersey.

Staples has more than 1,800 stores nationwide, but so far the banks contacted by this reporter have traced a pattern of fraudulent transactions on a group of cards that had all previously been used at a small number of Staples locations in the Northeast.

The fraudulent charges occurred at other (non-Staples) businesses, such as supermarkets and other big-box retailers. This suggests that the cash registers in at least some Staples locations may have fallen victim to card-stealing malware that lets thieves create counterfeit copies of cards that customers swipe at compromised payment terminals

Apple Pay Launched Yesteryday, Early Reviews are Good

Sharon Profis for C|NET Writes:

If the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus do one thing exquisitely well, it’s pay for stuff. Transactions take seconds to complete. For those who habitually dig their wallet out of a bag, the process will feel especially brief.

Apple Pay’s greatest asset is security. When you register a card with Apple Pay, its 16-digit number is not stored in the device. Instead, your iPhone pings a company like First Data to trade the card’s real number for an alias — called a “token.” That token, a devalued 16-digit number, is stored in an iPhone chip called the Secure Element.

Then, whenever you make a purchase, your phone sends the merchant the token instead of your actual 16-digit number. The *only* way to access that token is by scanning your fingerprint. The result? Three layers of security that greatly reduce the instance of fraud.

It’s also worth noting that Apple promises never to keep track of your payment activity. However, that doesn’t stop retailers from tracking you on their own, either through their Point of Sale system or loyalty program.

• Video: Here’s what it’s like to buy lunch at McDonald’s with Apple Pay – Yahoo News
• We Tried Out Apple Pay In The Real World | TechCrunch
• See Apple Pay Put to the Test at McDonald’s – ABC News
• Where You Can Check Out Apple Pay Today – ReadWrite
• Taking Apple Pay Out for a (Slightly Rocky) Spin
• Welcome To The Future: I Just Bought Chicken Nuggets With My Dang iPhone

Spotlight Suggestions Send Data to Apple, Exact Location and IP Addresses Not Collected

Following the release of OS X Yosemite with new Spotlight Suggestions, some users noted that Apple’s Spotlight privacy policy began offering a warning letting users know that search terms were being uploaded to Apple’s servers, with some of the info being forwarded to Microsoft’s Bing search engine.

The search terms were being shared with Apple in order to enable Spotlight’s new capabilities, which include searching sources like the Mac App Store, Wikipedia, and the web.

Apple has now given a statement on Spotlight Suggestions to iMore, stating that the company is “absolutely committed” to protecting user privacy and that Spotlight Suggestions minimizes the information that’s sent to Apple.

*”We are absolutely committed to protecting our users’ privacy and have built privacy right into our products,” Apple told iMore. “For Spotlight Suggestions we minimize the amount of information sent to Apple. Apple doesn’t retain IP addresses from users’ devices. Spotlight blurs the location on the device so it never sends an exact location to Apple. Spotlight doesn’t use a persistent identifier, so a user’s search history can’t be created by Apple or anyone else. Apple devices only use a temporary anonymous session ID for a 15-minute period before the ID is discarded.

“We also worked closely with Microsoft to protect our users’ privacy. Apple forwards only commonly searched terms and only city-level location information to Bing. Microsoft does not store search queries or receive users’ IP addresses.

“You can also easily opt out of Spotlight Suggestions, Bing or Location Services for Spotlight.”*

Tinder Swipes Right To Revenue, Will Add Premium Service In November

Sean Rad, Tinder’s CEO and cofounder, announced during the Forbes Under 30 Summit in Philadelphia, that the two-year-old company (which currently has no revenue model) will launch a premium service in early November that will offer paying users more match-making powers.

Rad says there will be no changes to the current, free Tinder app. Tinder has been growing like crazy. Rad won’t comment on user numbers but did say that people now swipe through 1.2 billion Tinder profiles a day — that’s billion with a “B.” He also says that each day Tinder makes more than 15 million matches.

Spotify Lowers Music Price with Family Plan

Spotify is effectively offering a price cut on its subscription music service by giving family members a 50 percent discount on additional accounts. So if you have a $10 Spotify Premium subscription, your husband can get one for $5 a month.

Apple has been pushing the labels for more extensive price cuts. It wants to relaunch the Beats Music subscription service it bought last spring next year, and industry scuttlebutt is that it’s trying to get the price cut in half, to $5 a month.

The logic of Apple’s argument, relayed by people who’ve heard the pitch secondhand: Apple’s best iTunes buyers spend about $60 a year on downloaded music — $5 a month. So if subscription services dropped that low, any download buyers that switched over to the streaming model would generate just as much revenue for the music labels. And, more important, the market of potential subscribers would get much larger.