Target Rolls Out Shopki...

shopkick , the location-based shopping app backed by Greylock and Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, is having its biggest rollout yet — Target says it’s making the service available in its stores nationwide. Target was already announced as a shopkick partner, but until now, it was limited to testing integration in seven cities. Now, thanks to what the company says were “rave reviews,” it’s expanding its shopkick integration to all of its 1,764 stores in the United States, making it the largest shopkick retailer. shopkick uses smartphones to give stores and brands a new way to interact with shoppers. By entering partner stores and scanning specific products, users earn “kicks” which can be redeemed for gift cards, deals, and other rewards. The company says its other large retail partners include American Eagle Outfitters, Best Buy, Crate and Barrel, Macy’s, Old Navy, Simon Property Group, The Sports Authority, Toys“R”Us, west elm, The Wet Seal, and ExxonMobil. It claims to have driven $110 million in revenue for brands and retailers last year.

McAfee: Mobile Malware ...

Security and anti-spam firm McAfee today reported that it saw a massive uptick in mobile malware last quarter. Mobile malware has “exploded,” the company said ( PDF ), “with a significant increase on Android devices. In addition, McAfee also found a slight increase in malware targeting the Mac, but the report notes that this trend was not “extreme.” Despite the increase in mobile and Mac malware, as well as password-stealing Trojans, the good news in today’s report is that global spam level dropped quite a bit during the last quarter, though we are still talking about a trillion messages per month. This quarter’s increase in mobile malware is partly due to the fact that McAfee improved its ability to find these threats, but it still represents a massive increase. The company collected about 8,000 mobile malware samples last month. These threats, as usual, mostly target Android. While Google and other major store have made great strides in keeping malware out of their stores, third-party stores and forums remain a problem. Among the areas of mobile malware that saw major increases in threats was mobile backdoor malware and the always popular premium-rate SMS-sending malware. The report also noted that the company found one of the first destructive Android Trojans this quarter. This piece of malware doesn’t damage apps or executables, but instead targets a user’s photos and then adds an image of the Ayatollah Khomeini to each picture. Here are a few additional interesting data points from the report: Q1 2012 had the largest number of PC malware detected per quarter (83 million) McAfee found about 250 new Mac malware samples last quarter and about 150 fake Mac anti-virus samples spam levels dropped to 1 trillion per month the United States represents the primary source of cyber attacks You can find the full report here (PDF).

Schumer And Casey’s Ex-...

Charles Schumer and Bob Casey, the two U.S. Senators behind the Ex-PATRIOT act — a proposal to go after early Facebook backer Eduardo Saverin and others like him that have renounced U.S. citizenship and are getting out of paying capital gains tax on stock windfalls — have now revealed the details of their plan. We first wrote about it earlier today when the offices of the two senators first announced their intentions. It’s pretty big: any ex-pat with either a net worth of over $2 million, or an average income tax liability of at least $148,000 over the last five years, “will be presumed to have renounced their citizenship for tax avoidance purposes.” The ex-pat will have to demonstrate to the IRS that this is not the case if it is not. If there is a “legitimate reason” for that person living outside the U.S. no penalties will apply. But if the IRS finds that someone gave up their passport for tax purposes, they will impose a tax on that individual’s investment gains “no matter where he or she resides.” The rate of that capital gains tax will be 30 percent — the same that non-resident aliens currently pay on dividends and interest earnings. The tax detailed this act, if approved, will backdate for 10 years after its approval. Saverin is expected to make at least $3.84 billion when Facebook goes public tomorrow and would have picked up a tax bill of $67 million on it. He has lived in Singapore since 2009, where there is no capital gains tax. In September 2011 he renounced his U.S. citizenship. “Mr. Saverin has decided to ‘defriend’ the United States of America just to avoid paying his taxes. We aren’t going to let him get away with it so easily,” Schumer said in a statement. “It’s infuriating to see someone sell out the country that welcomed him and kept him safe, educated him and helped him become a billionaire. This is a great American success story gone horribly wrong. We plan to put a stop to this tax avoidance scheme. There should be no financial gain from renouncing your country.” The senators are being a bit cheesy with their wording here — defriending being Facebook parlance for ditching one of your contacts — but the point is clear: they feel that Saverin, and others like him, are turning their back on America when they avoid paying their big tax bills. (“Ex-PATRIOT” Act is an acronym for “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” Act.) As long as an individual does not pay his or her taxes under the scheme, he/she will be barred from entering the U.S., forever. Currently people can still come to America, even after renouncing their citizenship. Legislators have been trying to pass a similar measure for years now, although the last act to try to do this — the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act of 1996 — apparently was written with some loopholes that made it unenforceable. So much for DC power. Makes you wonder if this time they will manage to be more effective. The senators note that in 2011, 1,780 people gave up their passports — a record number. And there is a sign that this trend is growing: in 2008 only 235 people gave up their passports. Currently, if people have been found to have given up their passports for tax reasons, they can still come back to the U.S. for up to 60 days every year, and thousands do. It’s ironic, and probably not a coincidence, that the rise in tax avoidance of this kind is happening just as the U.S. banking system is going through its own wringer and the public tide is turning against the concept of fat cats benefitting from over-bloated markets when average people are finding it hard to make ends meet. Schumer and Casey at least in part seem to be playing to that crowd in this move. Full summary of the act below: Summary of the “Ex-PATRIOT” Act “Expatriation Prevention by Abolishing Tax-Related Incentives for Offshore Tenancy” Act   Sponsored by Senators Charles E. Schumer & Bob Casey I.                    Current law (Section 877A of the Internal Revenue Code) already provides that any individual who either has: (a) A net worth of $2 million or more; OR (b) An average income tax liability of at least $148,000 over the last five years; and who renounces their citizenship has to pay an exit tax based on the value all property and assets owned by that individual. The Ex-PATRIOT Act provides that when an individual expatriates for a substantial tax purpose—as judged by the Internal Revenue Service—that individual will be subject to a 30% capital gains tax on future investment gains. Section 871 of the Internal Revenue Code already taxes non-resident aliens for dividends, interest and other items at the 30% rate.  The Ex-PATRIOT Act adds capital gains to this mix of taxable earnings. The tax will apply to anyone who gave up his citizenship in the last ten years but only taxes capital gains earned in the USA following the date of enactment. II.                 The Ex-PATRIOT Act also provides that if the IRS finds that avoidance of taxes was a substantial purpose of expatriation, the individual who renounced citizenship will be barred from any type of re-entry into the United States.  This section requires the IRS commissioner to make a decision regarding tax-avoidance intent for every individual subject to Section 877A who renounces citizenship.  It is retroactive and will encompass individuals who have renounced citizenship for the 10-year period prior to enactment of the statute.

GM Halting Facebook Ads...

General Motors plans to stop advertising on Facebook, says The Wall Street Journal  according to “people familiar with the matter.” But I spoke to a source close to Facebook that characterize GM’s efforts as “taking one swing and deciding to quit.” My source says GM’s efforts weren’t social enough, focusing on building apps rather than launching social ad campaigns that spread by word-of-mouth. So what went wrong, and does Facebook need to offer more flexibility to advertisers? Facebook was reportedly unable to convince GM that its ads are an effective way to reach consumers. GM Marketing Chief Joel Ewanick reportedly told the Journal that the company “is definitely reassessing our advertising on Facebook, although the content is effective and important.” The auto maker supposedly spends a total of $40 million on Facebook, including $10 million on advertising, so the GM pullout won’t have a significant effect on Facebook’s $3.7 billion in revenue . However, it’s certainly awkward to have this news break just a few days before Facebook’s IPO. (And the timing probably isn’t a coincidence.) I’m guessing GM doesn’t see things that way, but it’s worth noting that Facebook has highlighted successful auto campaigns in the past. For example, there was a Kia campaign that led to a 13-percent increase in awareness for the Kia Soul, as well as a Mazda check-in deal in the United Kingdom that led to a 34 percent increase in sales of Mazda MX-5 during one of the campaign months. Isolated anecdotes? Sure, but at least they show that Facebook isn’t totally inhospitable to car companies. If we take my source at their word, the GM news may also point to the fact that even if Facebook can work for large advertisers, there are challenges in bringing those advertisers on-board. Facebook executives themselves have said they’re moving away from traditional advertising to a new model, with ads that are built around stories. It’s a compelling idea, but for some traditional advertisers, it may be more appealing to just show a big, glossy ad — like the one that Ford ran on Facebook’s logout page . [Additional reporting by Josh Constine]

MoboTap Inks Deal With ...

MoboTap ‘s popular Dolphin Browser has racked up over 16 million downloads worldwide, but that hasn’t stopped them from taking steps to expand internationally. The company announced earlier this morning that they have entered into a new agreement with Japanese wireless carrier KDDI that will see their browser pre-loaded on a number of new Android handsets going forward. KDDI is Japan’s second-largest wireless carrier with nearly 35 million subscribers under their belts, with just about 20% of those users owning smartphones. All things considered, it’s a big chance for MoboTap to bolster their brand outside the confines of the United States. MoboTap and Dolphin are no strangers to the Japanese market — they teamed up with Softbank in 2011 — but MoboTap views this new partnership with KDDI as a critical part of their international expansion plans for 2012. MoboTap marketing head Edith Yeung tells me a deal like this has been a long time coming (representatives from the two companies first met at Disrupt 2011), and that they are “putting a lot of energy” into making a similar splash in markets like China and South Korea. It’s worth noting that KDDI handles new handset releases a little differently than we do here in the States. Instead of unveiling new handsets in drips and drabs, the carrier reveals all the phones they will release within that period all at once every season — their Summer 2012 collection was just revealed last night, and I’m told that some of those devices will be the first to ship with the Dolphin browser pre-loaded. But why Dolphin? What was wrong with the stock Android browser? According to Kazuhito Shimizu, KDDI’s head of U.S. operations, customization was their main concern. By loading up Dolphin’s default list of bookmarks with links to their own services, KDDI hopes that they’ll have a better handle on the end-to-end user experience. “We believe that the browser will be the first touchpoint for the customer to access our services and content,” Shimizu said. Dolphin and KDDI aren’t exactly strangers to each other at this point — the popular third-party browser was added to KDDI’s au Smart Pass subscription app service back in March, with a handful of Japanese tweaks in tow. Sadly, among those tweaks is the exclusion of their recently-revealed Sonar voice-controlled browsing feature, though I’m told MoboTap is currently working on getting Japanese support up and running before too long.