Cross-Selling Online Scams and Security Issues

An anonymous reader writes "The site 12 Angry Men recently published a discussion of a widely used but little-known online scam called 'cross-selling'. Essentially, after-sale shops cut deals with shady online retailers in an attempt to make a quick buck off of you after you've already bought something. 'What actually happens is that instead of linking to the site as a separate session, they link internally as another page in the same session. Why is this important? When you do a credit card transaction, any reputable company will attempt to protect your credit card data. They do this by establishing an SSL session to encrypt sensitive data on-line.' What makes everything even more interesting is that now the company has responded, with the usual white washing and meaningless statements."

Comments

Funny Aside

[TiggertheMad]

...Anyone notice that the website that this article is on prevents you from navigating away via the browswer back button? I was always suspicious about sites that employed Javascript to prevent people from navigating away. An article about shifty behavior on a site that triest to manage your attemts to leave. Classy!

The upside: Free food!

[aussersterne]

I know reservation rewards well! I used to get tons of free food using them through delivery.com (a fast food delivery website). Here's how it would work:

1. Order food online through delivery.com.

2. An "opt-out" cross-sell appears offering you a $10.00 coupon if you don't uncheck enroll box. First 30 days are free.

3. Agree to "free trial" and get $10.00 coupon code. Then call immediately and cancel service you just enrolled for.

4. Use free $10.00 coupon (still good) next time you want to order food through delivery.com.

5. At end of order, an "opt-out" cross sell appears offering you a $10.00 coupon if you don't uncheck the enroll box...

Just over a year ago I probably got $300 in free food delivery that way over a several month stretch before moving to an area where there is no delivery.com service. Too bad.

My card was never charged by these people. All you have to do is be dilligent and pay attention and call the 1-800 number to cancel.

Going on for 5 years

[flyingfsck]

This has been going on for a long time and people are still falling for it and they are still in business. You should complain to your Congress Critters.

Re:12 Angry men

[Pedersen]

It's not as clear cut as that. You see, in the case of severe trauma, there are two basic treatment paths to take: Keep the body warm, or keep the body cold. The colder the body is, the better the chance the victim comes out alive and intact. So, the body should always be kept cold, right?

Well, if the victim dies anyway, then it's time to harvest. Oh, but the body being kept cold has put the organs closer to death. This reduces the amount of time they can be out of the body before they become useless to a new body.

So, we need to keep the body warm. But if we do that, then the victim has a much greater chance of suffering severe, disabling injuries out of the accident. Which means it's more likely he dies.

Think about it. Would you prefer to live, or to die? Oh, and let's not get started on the medical personnel who have a very important job: If there is any chance the person could be an organ donor, pressure the (still in shock) family to allow organ donation.

As for me, I choose to live. I do not wish to be an organ donor, and have said so to my family.