Anders Coor reports in The Epoch Times that Chinese manufactured credit card machines are sending data back to China.
We don’t know what data, but presumably it’s your credit or debit card information that was entered in one of the Chinese made point of sale (POS) machines.
These are the machines that your credit/debit payment processor gave you for free in return for processing all your payments through them.
The US Treasury Department in charge of these payments reports that China bound payment transactions are larger and more frequent that one might expect from normal payment transactions.
PAX Global is apparently one of the Chinese manufacturers of the payment machines, and it has had its sole US office raided by the US Treasury and machines seized. No word on where the manufacturer placed its systems, or any banks that might be using its systems.
Florida- based FIS Worldpay, a payments processor, was forced to replace its PAX Global machines with machines from US and French manufacturers (Corr doesn’t name them).
The big US based processor of credit card payments, Square, was not mentioned in the article.
No big bank payments processors, such as Chase and Wells Fargo, were mentioned in the article.
Other China-based companies, such as Zoom and TikTok, as well as cellphone users, may also have data hacking vulnerabilities. In addition, Zoom has been found to be sending unauthorized data to Meta (the former Facebook).
As of late September, Zoom software allowed remote code execution, that is possible hacking of Zoom users over the internet. Zoom has reportedly fixed the vulnerability, so if you’re using Zoom, make sure you’re using the latest version.
TikTok is reportedly worse than Zoom on security, but we are not aware than any US companies are using it for payment processing. Their employees, yes. We would recommend that employers share this post with employees.
90 percent of computers and 70% of cellphones are manufactured in China and are therefore subject to this hacking risk. We haven’t recommended that one use cellphones or computers for payments online (this latest problem is just the latest reason why), but we know that most people do use such devices for online payments. We would guess that using US or French made computers with US or French chips in them, would minimize one’s risk.
Corrs says, and rightly so, that we need laws and executive orders that mandate for a secure tech environment, but good luck getting those out of the Biden administration, given its coziness with China.
Just the latest reason not to trust the Chinese.