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GameStop, Other Retailers Subpoenaed Over Credit Card Information Sharing
New York State's Attorney General, Andrew Cuomo, has subpoenaed a number of online retailers, including GameStop, Barnes & Noble, Ticketmaster and Staples, over the way they pass information to marketing firms while processing transactions. MSNBC explains the scenario thus: "You're on the site of a well-known retailer and you make a purchase. As soon as you complete the transaction a pop-up window appears. It offers a discount on your next purchase. Click on the ad and you are automatically redirected to another company's site where you are signed up for a buying club, travel club or credit card protection service. The yearly cost is usually $100 to $145. Here's where things really get smarmy. Even though you did not give that second company any account information, they will bill the credit or debit card number you used to make the original purchase. You didn't have to provide your account number because the 'trusted' retailer gave it to them for a cut of the action." While there is no law preventing this sort of behavior, Cuomo hopes the investigation will pressure these companies to change their ways, or at least inform customers when their information might be shared.
There may be no law against it, but how does it comply with PCI security requirements? Shouldn't those companies be losing their permission to accept credit cards?
with out authorization it is credit card fraud among other things that a DA will throw at me. If a business gives my information to a third party and the third party charges my credit card then that's just sharing? I need to start up a couple of businesses.
open source sub sim. I might start coding again for this. http://dangerdeep.sourceforge.net/contribute/
While there is no law preventing this sort of behavior
Well that, right there, would appear to be a fairly large gap in the legal system. Common sense, decency and good old fashioned right and wrong clearly indicate that there should be a law against this.It reminds me of a scam that a site called RedSave.com ran in the UK. Hidden way, way down in the tiny small print of their Terms and Conditions when you made a purchase was a line that stated "We will charge you £20 every month unless you contact us to opt out". Apparently this isn't against the letter of the law, but it sure as hell isn't a good business practice and isn't in the interests of the consumer. It, and the situation from TFA, are examples of cynical, money-grabbing exploitation of customers. One can only hope that a sensible judge has the balls to come down really hard on them, discouraging others from trying these sorts of practices in the future.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
in most countries outside of the U.S.
This is absolutely frightening. Now I'll have to read the privacy statements to see if they share credit card information with other companies also? What exactly do the claims of "You are secure" and sort mean?
Fortunately my bank has disabled on-line transactions by default, and neither do I ever intend to click any ad while using my card. But I think that a lot of credit cards are activated for internet use, and
Information about joining the membership program and its ramifications, including the fact that the consumer is agreeing to transfer his or her credit or debit card account information, is buried in fine print and cluttered text.
is a terrible prospect as just seeing an ad doesn't usually mean agreeing to the purchase UNTIL we click on billing and shipping information.
Really! I didn't -mean- to buy Blow-Up Betty and a years subscription to Back-Door Babes. They tricked me into it!
Run away run away! The evil internet empire is upon us. Again!
... it seems like PayPal looks good in comparison.
with out authorization it is credit card fraud among other things that a DA will throw at me. If a business gives my information to a third party and the third party charges my credit card then that's just sharing? I need to start up a couple of businesses.
Apparently social gaming is a great business model for this kind of crap. The mentioned retailers get you after you make your purchase but when you need more resources in Farmville or Mafia Wars on Facebook:
In games like Mafia Wars, Farmville, YoVille and Vampires Live, you know, some of the major sources of all those garbage announcements cluttering up your Facebook, players compete to complete missions and level up. By leveling up, you can complete more difficult missions and fight off weaker opponents. You can wait for your various energies to regenerate naturally over time, or you can purchase with real money in-game boosts. Or, you can complete various lead generation offers, many of which are of the "answer page after page of questions and opt in and out of receiving various kinds of spam" variety. Some of them install malware and adware that is impossible to remove. And some of them secretly subscribe you to monthly recurring $9.99 credit card charges.
Don't ever put your credit card information into Facebook or a Facebook app. Social Media is rife with crap like this. Right about now we should be asking when we'll get to see the findings in the the federal probe that set out to address shoddy "business practices" like this and what is being done about it now that we know about it?!
My work here is dung.
B&N just annoys me, even some great tech sources tried it, make the purchase and up pops a "survey window" or save X on next purchase window.
It is very much like ad laden sites, I shop or read sites when my ad blocker/pop up blocker go nuts. If I get a single inquiry to pop a window, install x, or whatnot, I usually don't come back.
Keep it simple, keep it safe.
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
Wow, that's incredible. I find popups and popunders very invasive, so for years I haven't clicked them on principle. I had no idea that it had gotten this far.
I'm going to print off this article (I suggest you do the same) and find the dopey people that I know (the ones who use IE and think sending chain emails is a good idea), thrust it to them and say: "Don't... click... popups!". If that doesn't wake them up, nothing will..
If anyone is interested, I posted the other day about the marvels of Privoxy, which stops a lot of ads, irrespective of browser.
Here's where things really get smarmy.
Excuse me?
Smarmy: unpleasantly and excessively suave or ingratiating in manner or speech
Perhaps the word you were looking for is one of: deceptive, devious, underhand, sneaky, execrable, abhorrent, hateful, annoying, irritating, enraging, infuriating or inexcusable?
It's hard to believe that this practice is legal. I give my credit card details to one company, and it becomes perfectly legal for them to sell these details to a completely unrelated third party, simply because I clicked on an advert on a web site?
If you need car parts. DO NOT go to JC Whitney. They did this. The company they sold my credit card information to had gone under a dozen different names and phone numbers in the last 6 years. They were investigated by the Better Business Bureau. Everything time the BBB got close they shut their doors changed their name and they were starting right up again. The other company got $9 a month for 6 months before we realized it. I found out through bragging on the other website that they had gotten over 12 million people this way.
You know, you almost come to expect this kind of behavior from scummy web based companies, but really, Pizza Hut? I had to check out their Privacy Policy once I found out they were involved in this action and sure enough it says:
Should you choose to accept an offer from a third party, We will pass your relevant Personal Information, which may include your name, address, and credit/debit card number, to that third party.
Okay Pizza Hut, like, WTF?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Best buy used to do this and they got in big trouble In more then one way one was the MSN thing where they scan the free disk but don't tell you that you when singed up for a 2 year deal after the free trial ended and some people did not even use the disk and did not know that they when singed up for msn and then was the free magazine when you got singed up for if you did not call up and have it stopped.
"As soon as you complete the transaction a pop-up window appears. It offers a discount on your next purchase. Click on the ad...." So this is something that affects only people dumb enough to click on pop-ups, while those of us with either blockers or the brains to close pop-ups like this when they open are not affected? Internet darwinism at work and working as intended imo.
This is the best news I've heard in a while. I do tech support for a local Buddhist temple, which has some staff authorized to use corporate credit cards to buy supplies for the temple.
Well, more then once I've been called in to help out with the mysterious charges on their credit cards, and it's always because of this scam. These people are both good-hearted and completely unsophisticated, they see someone offering a discount they don't question it. (Recently these scam artists had to change up their fine print so it's easier to read due to lawsuits in other states.)
The worst thing is it's semi-reputable companies destroying their brands for the sake of getting $10 a month charges out of grandma's checking account. I mean Barnes and Nobel? I used to work for them, I can't believe they've sunk this low.
"MIT betrayed all of its basic principles."
From TFA:
The three discount companies in question are Webloyalty, Affinion/Trilegiant and Vertrue.
Well, there you go. Anyone dumb enough to accept a discount from an ancient lineage of aristocratic vampires deserves what they get.
Wait... oh, Vertrue. Oops. Never mind.
What do you mean there's no law against it? This is called fraud, isn't it?
I like to see a website set up that lists sites that do this practice. Hopefully some developer can make a plugin that warn or even block this for firefox and other browsers.
My wife got scammed 4 1/2 years ago when shopping at Joann.com, which is the web store for Jo-Ann fabrics and crafts, a major national chain. At the end of her purchase, she was offered a $10 coupon, and only had to give her email address. She gave the address of an account she uses for things that might generate a lot of spam. She never received the email containing any coupon information, but Webloyalty started charging our CC $10/month. After the second month, we caught on, and contacted them about it.
Long story, made short, even though there was nothing informing her about this, the simple act of providing an email address (any, even a bogus one) was interpreted as permission for Joann.com to give our CC info to Webloyalty. They refused to give our money back, and Joann.com only responded by saying "enjoy your coupon," which she never did receive. She doesn't shop there anymore, and neither does the majority of her circle of friends.
At least we only had $20 stolen from us. It could have been worse.
He's just running for governor.
Where do New York politicians get the idea that if they can become governor or mayor of New York City, they're shoo-ins for presidential nominations?
I don't see any problem in this, actually.
Sign me up for as much stuff as you want. I'll keep whatever you send me and reverse charges for the rest. I don't even mind the inconvenience, because I know that Visa will charge the merchant a fee and if enough people have done it then they will increase the cost of transactions.
Buyers are protected with Visa, what part of that don't you understand?
-- I was raised on the command line, bitch
....can I have some of what you're smoking?
Something similar to this happened to me with Gamestop. I purchased a DS game from their online store and a month later I was having money withdrawn for a subscription service, through one of Gamestop's third party affiliates, that I never purchased or agreed to.
After calling and canceling the 'phantom subscription' they promptly returned my money, but they knew damn well I would never buy from them again.
Best buy used to do this and they got in big trouble In more then one way one was the MSN thing where they scan the free disk but don't tell you that you when singed up for a 2 year deal after the free trial ended and some people did not even use the disk and did not know that they when singed up for msn and then was the free magazine when you got singed up for if you did not call up and have it stopped.
Punctuation, motherfucker, do you know it?
European laws protect against this sort of thing. The US could do with similar protections. Lack of protection is one reason why Europe is against data sharing with the US.
"... you did authorize it; it is just in very tiny print somewhere on the form you clicked. Smarmy yes; illegal, maybe not.
FTFY.
I do want to mention a shell script that might be of interest. It automates the task of looking for subtle changes in Terms and Conditions for those web agreements that you click on for day-to-day banking, etc. After a while, people get used to clicking "Agree" on long pieces of text in tiny scrolling windows every time they access the bank web site or Internet store. Ridiculous! Do you ever see this in physical bricks-and-mortar stores? Do you have to read through the conditions every time you use a credit card?
What if someone changes the text subtly one day, and you've been clicking through daily for the past few months? My script is designed to catch that. Just highlight and copy the text to clipboard and then run the script (you don't even have to paste the text anywhere).
This shell script compares what's in the clipboard to text files in a certain directory; in this case it's ~/Documents/terms_and_conditions. This is where I would store the T&C text from various web sites. When it finds a similar match, it does a diff to look for minor changes. If there is no exact match, it offers to store the copied text in a new text file so you can compare the current version to future versions.
It's at my journal. Hope it helps. It doesn't obviate the need for having to read the Terms & Conditions at least once, but hopefully it will prevent you from being so bored of reading that you skip over every Terms & Conditions text.
http://slashdot.org/journal/227249/detecting-subtle-changes-in-Terms-amp-Conditions
404555974007725459910684486621289147856453481154 in hex is "You sank my Battleship?"
[GPG key in journal]
You're singeing up an awful lot of things, even for a dragon.
ShopSafe Bank of America and Charles Schwab credit cards both have it.
It generates a unique credit card number with a limit & expiration date you choose. And for extra safety it can only be used by one merchant.
This would stop would stop the bogus actions described in the article. And it's really the only way to do online shopping.... it doesn't matter if the merchant loses the card number because its only usable by that merchant and you've hopefully set the limit at just enough for the purchase.
Why there isn't a law flat-out barring businesses from giving away or selling their customers' personal information is a mystery to me.