• Buzzfeed’s Venessa Wong offers a firsthand account of the security issues with Starbucks’ mobile app. A fraudster hacked her account, reloaded it from her saved credit card, and then made several purchases at a Starbucks in San Diego. The “account takeover,” as the scam is called, is “a long-running problem with the Starbucks app,” Wong reports.
Update 5/5 4:10 p.m. Starbucks has provided a statement regarding the security of its payment app.
The security of our customer’s information is critically important and Starbucks remains resolute in protecting them with a team of engineers dedicated to advancing security and fraud prevention, given unauthorized account activity is an industry-wide challenge. As a result, we see only a tiny fraction of one percent of account holders impacted, significantly reducing fraudulent activity to a level vastly better than industry average. We strongly encourage our customers to follow best practices to protect their accounts and, if we are made aware of any unauthorized activity, we work with our customers directly to ensure that their account remains whole.
• A new study dispels the popular belief that poor people eat more fast food than their middle income or wealthy counterparts. In the study (limited to 40 to 50 year-olds, for what it’s worth), people in the middle-income bracket ate fast food more often than those in a lower or higher income bracket, and even the differences between those groups weren’t all that stark. It looks like the biggest factor in whether or not people eat a lot of fast food is, unsurprisingly, a lack of leisure time.
• Giada De Laurentiis is getting anther Food Network show about entertaining.
• Starbucks has a new “Midnight Mocha” frappuccino and some are wondering if the coffee giant is trying to hop on the black food trend.
• Food replacement startup Soylent raised another $50 million.
• Ever wonder what snack food people eat in North Korea? The LA Times’s got you.
• Jamie Oliver once walked his daughters to school dressed as a Storm Trooper.
• People can now use Alexa-enabled devices to re-order food from delivery platform Seamless.