The Computer Corner
By Charles Miller

Buyer beware

Several months ago I received a call from a lady wanting me to remove what she insisted had to be a virus on her computer. She was quite frustrated because she had listened to a friend who told her, “Buy a Mac and you will never have any problems again.” She bought the Mac, and that, she says, is when all her problems began.

The lady reported that her credit card was being billed for unauthorized charges, and she had traced it back to the time she bought the new computer. The company making the charges to her credit card refused to stop billing her because she could not give them the email address they had on file (she said she probably had typed in some random characters and not her real address). She wasted hours on the phone with them and then talked with her bank, finally putting a stop to the unauthorized charges.

At the time this occurred I was at a loss to explain exactly what had happened, except that she had no reason to believe her computer was at fault. Only after some months have some recent news reports shed light on the scam to which this lady most likely fell victim.

CNET News recently reported that Buy.com, Orbitz and other commercial sites have been linked to what they call “controversial marketers.” My client reports she was a regular shopper at Buy.com; now she puts the emphasis on the word “was.” According to CNET, thousands of web shoppers have complained that mysterious charges have been billed to their credit cards.

In an interview for this column, my client verifies the accuracy of the CNET article. When you move through the purchase process on the Buy.com website, at some point you encounter a page that says “$10 Off Coupon” and a request for your email address. The page is unavoidable and it won’t allow you to complete your purchase with Buy.com until you enter your email address or some miscellaneous characters that look like an email address.

What the buyer has just done is to agree for this company to charge them to send spam email containing “$10 Off Coupons” and other offers. Nobody in their right mind is going to pay some company to send more spam, but that is exactly what thousands do. If the Buy.com customer thinks they are protected because they never gave that other company any credit card information, think again. It turns out that Buy.com has permission to sell your credit card information to the third party companies without your knowledge.

These so-called “web loyalty programs,” also known as post-transaction marketers, are run by Vertrue, WebLoyalty, Affinion and possibly others. Buy.com executive Jeff Wisot was quoted as saying, “We have a longstanding relationship with WebLoyalty because we think they provide value to our customers.” What is really happening is that WebLoyalty is paying Buy.com behind the scenes—in Mexico it is called a mordida—gaining access to customers’ private data including their credit card numbers.

This sounds like it should be illegal, but it is not. The Buy.com terms of sale specifically state, “We reserve the right to use or disclose your personally identifiable information for business reasons in whatever manner desired.”

I felt all along there was nothing wrong with my client’s new Mac. However, this type of scam is something that could happen to anyone using any computer, so everyone who shops online should beware.



Charles Miller is a freelance computer consultant, a frequent visitor to San Miguel since 1981 and now practically a full-time resident. He may be contacted at 044 (415) 101-8528 or email FAQ8 (at) SMAguru.com.