Bank Regulators Issue Guidance on Social Media Usage

“Financial institutions using social media channels such as Facebook and Twitter to market products and services may soon have some rules to follow thanks to U.S. bank regulators.” <<READ MORE>>

Here come discounts via hashtags - American Express syncs cards to Twitter

American Express is offering cardholders the ability to sync their Amex cards to Twitter so that when they tweet using special offer hashtags, couponless savings are loaded directly to their cards.

Cardmembers can tweet their way to savings by linking an eligible American Express card with Twitter at sync.americanexpress.com/twitter.

The card scheme has created @amexsync, an automated notification handle that is activated when someone sends a Tweet that includes one of the special offer hashtags. The handle detects if a user is already synced and either confirms their offer enrollment or provides an enrollment link to join the scheme. Additionally, if an offer is no longer available, @amexsync will direct users to check out the Tweets @americanexpress has "favourited" to find the latest offers. Questions or additional assistance will be provided by @askamex, the American Express customer service team on Twitter.

Merchants participating in the program (being rolled out in Texas this coming week) include 1-800-Flowers, Best Buy, Century 21 Department Store, The Cheesecake Factory, Dell, FedEx Office, FTD, Gulf, H&M, McDonald's, Seamless.com, Sports Authority, Ticketmaster, Virgin America, Whole Foods Market and Zappos.

American Express says it will provide merchant partners with detailed reporting about the online and offline spend behavior of their customers.

American Express last month partnered with Twitter to give away $1 million in free advertising to small businesses who sign up for a new promotional service on the microblogging Web site which is scheduled to launch late March.

Operations Risk - Police expose Latvian hacker who “tweeted” bankers' pay details

Neo, the Latvian hacker who stole millions of classified tax documents from government computers and leaked the information via Twitter, has been caught by police.

In February this year, Neo and his colleagues at the “People's Army of the Fourth Awakening” contacted a local TV station to claim they had downloaded the documents from the state revenue service. They exposed salary details for senior officials through Twitter, revealing that management at a Latvian bank that received bail out money had not taken the pay cuts they promised at the time.

The revelations prompted anger in a country devastated by the global financial crisis and forced to embark on austerity measures to meet the terms of a €7.5 billion IMF and EU led bailout.

The hacker, who took his name from the central character in the Matrix film, attained cult status for his actions and was hailed as a "virtual Robin Hood".

Police have now detained the mystery tweeter, who according to local press reports, is Ilmars Polkans, a researcher in artificial intelligence at the University of Latvia's computer science department. According to AFP, hundreds of protesters chalked slogans outside the main government building in central Riga, calling for Polkans' release.

However, the suspect has confessed and criminal proceedings have been launched, although he has been freed from detention until a trial.

His unmasking came after a police raid on the house of a television journalist recently. This latter action has enraged the country's reporters and prompted the ombudsman to investigate whether freedom of speech regulations have been breached.