Nothing in life is free, not even the Wi-Fi at Starbucks cafes. That's something Noah Dinkin would discover eventually. While sipping his coffee at a Starbucks coffeehouse in Buenos Aires, the founder and CEO of stensul decided to log onto the Wi-Fi network to get some work done. To his surprise, there was an unusual delay before he was able to access the internet. Noah later found out that a malicious code was working behind the scenes to hijack customer's devices to mine Monero (XMR). He immediately reported the exploit to Starbucks via Twitter. Starbucks was unaware of the issue, but the company immediately contacted their internet provider to remove the code. To their defense, the Wi-Fi service is outsourced to a third-party provider, therefore, Starbucks doesn't own or control the Wi-Fi network. The company claims that this was an isolated case, and their other stores are safe.

In order to promote the new iTunes Wireless service, Starbucks is set to give away free music downloads across its entire US channel. More than 10,000 stores will hand out a total of 1.5 millions songs per day from October 2 to November 7. Customers will receive a "song of the day" card with their coffee purchase, containing a promotional code to redeem at iTunes. 37 songs will be part of the promotion, including music from Paul McCartney, John Mayer, Bob Dylan, Joss Stone, and Annie Lennox. Earlier this month, Apple announced it had struck a partnership with Starbucks to allow users of the new Wi-Fi-enabled iPods to download music wirelessly while in the store. The service will have initial rollout in major cities, and is expected to be available nationwide by 2010.