Beth Cox

One of the top Internet career sites, Monster.com, acknowledging that some of its users are being targeted for identity theft via false job postings, has issued a warning to millions of its registered users. The TMP Worldwide subsidiary sent e-mails to job-seekers warning them about the possibility of attempts to steal personal information from fake […]

In settlements that the Federal Trade Commission called “food for thought,” two of the nation’s biggest name brands in the candy and cookies market agreed to settle charges that their Web sites illegally collected personal data from children. Both Mrs. Fields Cookies, a privately held, Salt Lake City-based franchise operation, and publicly traded Hershey Foods […]

Amazon.com, which for some time has been accumulating patents on some of its basic business applications such as its one-click shopping technology, has secured another patent, this one on a “method and system for conducting an electronic discussion relating to an item.” Based on the description, the patent would appear to cover Web-based, bulletin-board type […]

Dell Computer has it. So do Amazon.com and eBay. Oracle has it, and even some traditional manufacturing companies like Toyota and Volkswagen have it. What these companies have in common, according to a new research report, is the ability to move away from traditional methods of setting prices such as the cost-plus model or benchmarking […]

Battered by the IT spending slowdown, business software and services provider divine Inc. said it will file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection while it seeks to reorganize and sell off assets. The Chicago-based company, formerly called divine Interventures back when it was an Internet incubator, began to focus on software and services for the enterprise […]

Ratifying what many other surveys have found, the U.S. government says that online retail sales in the last quarter of 2002 were very good indeed, up about 28 percent to an estimated $14.3 billion. The report from the Commerce Department’s Census Bureau said that the sales figures compare to an estimated total of $11.2 billion […]

Priceline.com says its name your-own-price business model appears to be especially well suited to the hotel reservations procedure, as first-quarter-to-date hotel revenue increased approximately 35 percent over the corresponding period in 2002. And that’s a good thing, since Norwalk, Conn.-based Priceline saw its airline ticketing revenue decline in the last quarter of 2002 as the […]

A new study shows that online retailing, travel, brokerage and auctions are stronger in terms of customer satisfaction, loyalty, and future economic growth than virtually any other sector of the economy. And among Web retailers, Amazon.com and bookseller Barnes&Noble.com are said to be “leading a performance surge.” The e-commerce results are part of the American […]

Security for millions of MasterCard, Visa and American Express credit card account numbers – far more than first thought — was compromised when a hacker broke into the computer system at an unnamed third-party processor used by various merchants. However, apparently none of the account data obtained has been used in a fraudulent manner, although […]

Korea’s Samsung Electronics took a 5 percent stake in mobile smartphone software maker Symbian, following up on the licensing deal that it signed with the London-based company last October. Symbian has been busy forging alliances and establishing itself as an alternative to Microsoft’s wireless-based Windows smartphones. The company also has sold stakes to Nokia, Sony […]

Can Salon.com be saved? The financially troubled online magazine, widely praised for its editorial content, is facing a financial crisis so severe that its very existence is threatened as advertising revenues have continued to decline. In fact, for several weeks the site has been touting “Salon’s New Deal: Two ways to access Salon articles: Subscribe, […]

eBay account hijacked, bidders bilked in ‘rampant’ fraud Man pleads not guilty in eBay fraud Two must repay $35,000 to eBay fraud victims Police nab fugitive in eBay fraud case Police – Man arrested for failure to deliver on eBay purchases FBI Seeks Hacker Who Stole eBay Info The above are all recent headlines found […]