Well now, it seems that some web sites are very sleazy (via here via KD):
In general, the customers of these companies have no idea that they’re customers until they discover mysterious charges on their credit-card bills. When they investigate further, they find that during the checkout process at reputable websites like priceline.com or 1800flowers.com, they inadvertently clicked on a link which automatically gave their credit card details to these rip-off merchants.
I’ve seen these types of things before: when you want to download something or see a document, the site has multiple places that tell you to ‘click here’ and the one that you actually want to click is small and in an out of the way place (and even if you click the right one, you’ll get pop-ups). I didn’t expect this from mainstream sites.
KD and Felix Salmon don’t name names (well they do give the names of the sleazy companies: Affinion, Webloyalty, and Vertrue). Why would mainstream businesses like US Airways or FTD possibly alienate customers by allowing this crap? Well, look at the money involved below: there are 19 companies that have more than $10 million with this racket and Classmates made $70 million (and they have to do nothing to get it).
As a public service, since ‘free credit reports’ is one of the biggest scams, here’s the real place to get your free credit reports (you can get one every 12 months).
Here are the companies that allow the links to be put on their sites (you can see it here in pdf–go to figure 4)–show your appreciation by avoiding their business:
Partners Paid Over $10 Million
1-800-Flowers.com; Buy.com; Classmates.com; ColumbiaHouse
Confi-Check; Expedia/Hotels.com; Fandango; FTD
Hotwire; InQ; Intelius; MovieTickets.com
Orbitz; Priceline; RedcatsUSA; Shutterfly
Travelocity; USAirways; VistaPrint
Partners Paid Between $1 -$10 Million
1-800-PetMeds; Adteractiv; AirtranAirways; Allegiant Air; AllPosters.com;
American Greetings; Auto Parts; Avon; Barnes & Noble; Bizrate.com;
Bookspan; Boston Apparel Group; BuySeasons/Celebrate; Express;
Campusfood.com; Cendant Intercompany Agreeements;
Channel Advisor; Cheap Tickets; Choice Hotels; CollectionsEtc.com;
Continental Airlines; Current USA (123 Prints); Custom Direct; Digital River
Dr. Leonard’s Drugstore; eHarmony; eTix; eToys; Fareportal; FragranceNet
From You Flowers; FTD FloristsOnline; Gamestop/EBgames; Gevalia;
Haband; Half.com; Hanover Direct; Hertz; HiSpeedMedia;
Infinity Resources; J.C. Whitney; Joann.com; Lillian Vernon; Live Nation;
Marketworks; Miles Kimball; Musicnotes; MyLife.com; MyPoints; Pizza Hut;
Potpourri; Restaurants.com; Riverdeep; Shoebuy; Simplexity;
Spirit Airlines; Suresource/Americart; Thompson Group; Tiger Direct
TimeLife; True.com; True Credit (True Link); Upsellit.com; US Search
Victoria’s Secret; Vitacost; WayPort; West; Yahoo
Petunias 