In a new book, a journalist recounts what a scam taught her about the blind spots of online payments

Take a moment to think about your day: How many things did you do online? Perhaps you made a call or two via WhatsApp. You definitely sent at least one WhatsApp text. You might have looked up a restaurant, office, or some other location online on Google Maps, perhaps run a Google search for some fact to use in a work email, and you may have used Gmail to send it. Later, you might have built a shopping cart on Amazon after spotting a brand while scrolling Instagram. Along the way, you may have forgotten to book that Uber to that destination you needed to go to, until a WhatsApp message reminded you – “Where are you?”

The point is, multinational technology companies or Big Tech are increasingly running our lives. We rely on these apps for many, if not most, of our basic tasks. And the result is that we trust them to give us the right information, get us connected to our loved ones at the right time, bring us our things securely, and even get us somewhere safely. That is a lot of trust placed in a very small group of private, profit-driven companies. What happens if they end...

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