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Birchbox Will Share Your Mailing Address With Anyone Who Sends You A Gift Subscription

Birchbox Will Share Your Mailing Address With Anyone Who Sends You A Gift Subscription

UPDATE: Birchbox has discontinued its practice of sharing gift recipients’ addresses with gift givers. The company tells Consumerist that sharing the information was an “oversight.”

We live in a world where it’s becoming increasingly common for people to send gifts to others without ever knowing their mailing address. Many online retailers now let you at least purchase gift cards or gift subscriptions with only the recipient’s email address. But for some reason, Birchbox will also tell you the recipient’s full shipping address.  [More]

Plus-Size Online Retailer Eloquii To Open Bricks-And-Mortar Stores

Plus-Size Online Retailer Eloquii To Open Bricks-And-Mortar Stores

The current retail trend is for companies to shutter bricks-and-mortar stores and shift their focus to online sales. But plus-size apparel retailer Eloquii is going in the other direction and opening a handful of physical locations. [More]

Mike Mozart

H&M Slows Down Store Openings, Shifting Focus To Online

For years, so-called fast fashion purveyor H&M (which stands for Hennes & Mauritz) has quickly opened store after store around the world to compete with rivals like Zara and others. Now, however, the company says it will slow down its pace of new store openings in order to concentrate on current stores and online sales.  [More]

Why Can’t You Play ‘Super Mario Run’ Offline?

Why Can’t You Play ‘Super Mario Run’ Offline?

You may be excited to buy Super Mario Run to play on your iPhone or iPad come next week, but when you do, you’ll have to make sure you’ve got an internet connection first. [More]

Comcast Hopes Fans Of The Olympics Will Like Its Voice-Controlled Remote So Much They Won’t Cut The Cord

Comcast Hopes Fans Of The Olympics Will Like Its Voice-Controlled Remote So Much They Won’t Cut The Cord

Faced with a future where people can watch as much content as they want without a cable subscription, Comcast is getting ready to launch a product during the Rio Olympics it hopes will keep customers from pulling out those scissors and cutting the cord. [More]

The message seen by visitors to Target.com on Monday.

Target Website Crashes, Spoiling Shoppers’ Cyber Monday

Savvy holiday shoppers who didn’t want to fight the crowds on Black Friday may still be battling congested online traffic in order to obtain the plethora of Cyber Monday deals today. That’s especially true if you’re trying to score some goodies from Target, as the retailer’s website crashed this morning.  [More]

Costco’s Online Photo Services Back Up After Breach, Customers’ Cards May Have Been Compromised

Costco’s Online Photo Services Back Up After Breach, Customers’ Cards May Have Been Compromised

If you like viewing and ordering prints of your digital photos from the comfort of your own home and then traipsing to the local Costco to pick up your memories, then we’ve got good news: Costco has finally relaunched its online photo services website after taking the site down upon discovering a breach in July. But there’s also a bit of bad news: some customers’ credit card information may have been captured in the year-long hack. [More]

Costco Pushes Back Relaunch Of Online Photo Services Another Month Following July Hack

Costco Pushes Back Relaunch Of Online Photo Services Another Month Following July Hack

Fans of Costco’s photo services will likely be waiting another month before they are able to order pictures though its website, as the company that manages the site continues to recover from a July breach. [More]

Adam Fagen

United Offers “Bug Bounty” Of Up To 1 Million Miles For Hackers Who Find Vulnerabilities In Website, Mobile App

While big companies are known to quietly seek out the services of white-hat hackers to test for weaknesses in their networks and websites, it’s not every day that a major airline publicly offers a “bounty” to people who can diagnose vulnerabilities in its systems. [More]

Walmart’s “Women-Owned” Campaign Officially Launches In Stores & Online

Walmart’s “Women-Owned” Campaign Officially Launches In Stores & Online

Last June Walmart said it would work to bring awareness to women-led companies by sticking “women-owned” labels on a range of products in its stores. While the retailer initially planned to start the campaign last fall, it finally appears to be getting around to it this month. [More]

(Marcus Heinrich)

Court Orders Safeway To Refund Overcharges For Online Orders

Despite facing two previous lawsuits related to overcharging customers at its bricks-and-mortar stores, it doesn’t appear that Safeway understands the concept that you can’t say something is one price and then make a customer pay more – even online. And last week, a California federal judge ruled Safeway must refund customers the amount of money they were overcharged when the company broke its own terms and conditions by marking up prices of items ordered online. [More]

(brekmax3829)

Walmart Might Begin Price-Matching Amazon, Other Online Retailers

It’s not uncommon for consumers to view items at a store and then purchase them for a lower price online. One of the nation’s largest retailers is apparently tired of losing those customers and may begin price-matching its online competition this holiday season; a trend retail analysts predicted less than a month ago. [More]

Consumer Reports: Buy Your Electronics On The Internet

Consumer Reports: Buy Your Electronics On The Internet

Our connected colleagues at Consumer Reports are out with their latest electronics shopping survey, and online stores ranked higher than brick-and-mortar shops in almost every respect. Winners include Amazon.com, Newegg.com, Crutchfield.com and BHPhotoVideo.com. [More]

3 Tips For Fighting Bullies

3 Tips For Fighting Bullies

People are talking more about bullying these days. It can happen at school, in the workplace, or online. How do you combat it? Educator and author Natasha Deen offers these three tips. [More]

Resort Owner Shows How He Games TripAdvisor

Resort Owner Shows How He Games TripAdvisor

A guy shows TODAY how he posts fake glowing reviews for his own resort and restaurant on TripAdvisor, and trash talks the competition. This doesn’t mean that customer review sites like TripAdvisor aren’t worthwhile, though. Just take his own advice and throw out the best reviews and the worst. The ones in the middle are the most likely to be from real people reflecting their real experience. [More]

Nielsen Partners With Facebook, Other Websites To Measure Ad Views Online

Nielsen Partners With Facebook, Other Websites To Measure Ad Views Online

If you don’t like the concept of having your online actions tracked for marketing purposes, you can add Nielsen to you list of sworn enemies. The audience measurement company is better known for its TV viewer ratings, but yesterday it announced a new partnership with websites like Facebook where it will access user info (age and gender only, it says) to collect aggregate data on ad views around the web. [More]

CAPTCHA Codes, Now With Ad Slogans

CAPTCHA Codes, Now With Ad Slogans

A company called Solve Media is rolling out a new CAPTCHA interface that requires you type in an ad slogan instead of a nonsense word, reports AdAge. Advertisers are looking for message comprehension,” says the company’s owner, “And you know what they say, ‘If you write something down, you remember it.'” And if you force a customer to repeat your slogan during an unrelated transaction, does he resent you for it? [More]

Diesel Website Wants Color Scan Of Your Credit Card Via Email

Diesel Website Wants Color Scan Of Your Credit Card Via Email

I know credit card fraud is rampant, but I’m not sure sending full scans of your card through email is the proper way to fix things. [More]