WHY SO MANY BOYCOTT AMAZON CALLS?

There are increasing calls to boycott Amazon, but I had no idea just how many different issues are involved and how serious they are until I started researching this post.

Image Credit: Broken Sword Publications ~ Click Image to Read Amazon Threats to Publishers

Just like Wal-Mart, Amazon engages in unethical and unfair practices.

If you are not familiar with the reasons many people – myself included – boycott Wal-Mart please read my post about How WalMart Practices affect small business and local tax revenues.

AMAZON CENSORSHIP: DELETES KINDLE BOOKS

In Why Amazon Went Big Brother, Arstechnica wrote:

“Amazon.com shocked customers yesterday when it reached out to hundreds, if not thousands of Kindles and simply deleted texts that users had not only purchased, but had started to read!”

The New York Times reported:

In George Orwell’s “1984,” government censors erase all traces of news articles embarrassing to Big Brother by sending them down an incineration chute called the “memory hole.”

On Friday, it was “1984” and another Orwell book, “Animal Farm,” that were dropped down the memory hole — by Amazon.com.

Amazon customers were so outraged that Amazon Said They Will Stop Deleting Kindle Books. When they start editing books you already bought how many will notice? Almost NONE!

MUST READ: Amazon moving to force authors to use THEM as their publisher

SMALL BUSINESS INDIE BOOK SELLER BOYCOTT

This week, Small Business supporters called for a boycott of Amazon because of their recent targeting of all small businesses that sell books, electronics and anything else Amazon offers.

Sarah Woodbury called Amazon’s tactic of offering buyers a discount for reporting prices and not buying from local businesses “a pretty low blow—despicable—…” in her comprehensive post on her Word Hits book review blog about Amazon’s Price Check App:

“Amazon wants shoppers to scan the price of electronics, toys, or dvd’s
with their Price Check app (thus sending them [Amazon] this data) -
and then walk out of the store to get a discount of up to $5 on that item online.”

This is going too far – and on top of their choosing to have ambulances stand by instead of bringing their warehouses down to a safe working temperature and then making employees stand outside in 26 degree weather -  I am joining the calls to officially boycott Amazon.

I have previously written about Amazon’s heartless employee practices which intentionally endanger their employee’s lives.  Details on that are at the bottom of this post so that all Amazon related issues are in this one post for easier sharing.

I realize that many bloggers and affiliate marketers are in the middle
of their prime revenue generating period and now may be the worst possible
time to make changes, so I ask you to at least REMEMBER and
change who you’re promoting at your earliest convenience.

As you can tell by the tower ad in the center column of this blog, I have chosen to go with Bigger Books as an alternative to Amazon. Their affiliate program is on ShareASale.

The ShareASale Affiliate Network is where I always look first because they have been protecting merchants and affiliates alike from predatory affiliate practices. We need to encourage them to continue to make that their most important USP.  It IS the reason we use, recommend and promote ShareASale. Without a continued commitment to keep their network clean they will be just another network.

BOYCOTT AMAZON TAX NEXUS ISSUE:

There are numerous other calls to boycott Amazon including the lobbying organization Alliance for Main Street Fairness boycott Amazon call over the sales tax Nexus issue.

While obviously wishing to APPEAR TO BE a small business organization, that alliance was actually formed by large retail corporations such as AutoZone, Best Buy, Home Depot, Sears, Target, and Wal-Mart.

That alliance is a good example of why intelligent individuals MUST
learn to be VERY discerning in what information you believe.

The quality and quantity of disinformation
being generated every day is astounding.

BOYCOTT AMAZON CENSORSHIP ISSUE:

Image Credit SoYouThinkYouCanInvest ~ Click Image to Read their Boycott Amazon post

Amazon has periodically banned books that reveal truths that are not in line with what the global elite want us to believe. When they banned one such book, The Secret of Oz, some called for us to boycott Amazon for censorship.

Amazon lifted the ban of that book so there was no boycott. As I come across other incidents of censorship for political reasons I will add them here. If you know of any please leave details including links in the comments.

BOYCOTT AMAZON CHILD PROTECTION ISSUE:

Amazon is also being boycotted for selling books that are pro-child molestation. This issue makes it clear that the issue of free speech is not a simple one.

We can not protect ALL speech; however, as soon as we move
to limit SOME speech all Freedom of Speech is imperiled.

There are no easy answers when it comes to allowing free speech while at least keeping the most objectionable issues behind closed doors where only those who really want to see them can voluntarily go.

Laws of all kinds are used more to protect evil
than to protect us FROM evil.

Cetronia Ambulance Corps hired to stand by at Amazon warehouses

When you buy and recommend books this year I ask you to consider supporting small book sellers instead of automatically buying or acting as an affiliate for Amazon.

This is especially important in light of the extremely bad publicity Amazon is getting REPEATEDLY regarding their putting profits before lives.

Amazon endangers employee’s lives:

• Ambulances wait outside Amazon warehouse | Business – The News Tribune (Sep 25, 2011 … ALLENTOWN, Pa.)
• Inside Amazon‘s Very Hot Warehouse – NYTimes.com (Sep 19, 2011)
• Amazon has Ambulances Wait Outside Warehouse on Hot Days (Sep 20, 2011)
• Amazon Forced Employees To Work Brutal Hours In 100 Degree Warehouse Or Face Termination (Think Progress)
• Amazon workers’ nightmare shows what happens when jobs are scarce (LA Observed)
• When employees are disposable, high unemployment benefits the employers (UndertheMountainBunker)

Apparently learning nothing from the bad publicity over employees suffering from heat stroke, last month that same Amazon warehouse left their workers standing outside in sub-freezing temperatures because apparently identifying who pulled the fire alarm was more important than letting them die from exposure:

On Dec. 3, Cetronia Ambulance Corps transported six Amazon warehouse workers to the hospital to be treated for cold exposure following a fire alarm evacuation, said Larry Wiersch, CEO of the nonprofit ambulance service.

About 30 other people got into ambulances to warm up, he said.

“It was cold — 26 degrees — and it was windy,” Wiersch said.

“There were pregnant women, men and women in T-shirts and shorts, some with sleeveless shirts and shorts,” one complaint states.

“People were passing out and feeling ill left and right. … I am absolutely disgusted with this company’s practices and I do believe OSHA should visit this building and give them some sort of coaching on how to better handle the situation before there are more people suffering from hypothermia.”

These incidents make it painfully obvious that Amazon does not consider their employee’s lives when making business decisions. It is up to us to hold companies like this accountable for their actions.

You don’t have ambulances stand by – you FIX THE PROBLEM!

If we look the other way and continue to buy from Amazon and promote them as affiliates we are equally complicit and guilty of enabling them to intentionally endanger lives by negligent homicide or even criminal negligence.

The best way to get the attention of those who worship money
is this: Amazon Suffers Big Drop in Income

Keep giving them your money and you are guilty, too!

I encourage all people of conscience to switch to other affiliate programs and buy from other book sellers. There are many and I am personally supporting Bigger Books because they are on ShareASale and have every book I’ve searched for so far.

If you don’t care about the Amazon employees, at least care about you, your friends and your family because what we allow to happen to anyone CAN and DOES happen to us eventually. As Joan Baez sings, “There but for fortune, go YOU or I…”

Do you know of an Amazon issue not yet covered on this page?
Please do leave details and relevant links in the comments.

If you are a new commenter here or you provide multiple links in one comment, your comment WILL be automatically held for moderation, but I will approve all relevant comments.

The U.S. Small Business Conference is one day only – this Friday, November 11, 2011 – and this event’s theme is Productivity to Profits. You can read more about it on the Small Business Conference site.

The huge Expo is being held in the 14,000 square foot San Mateo Event Center on the San Francisco Peninsula. Seven speakers chosen from hundreds who applied are presenting including Social Media Expert Ann Evanston (@AnnEvanston).

Overview of what the Small Business Conference and Expo is about in just over 1 minute:

You can buy tickets there, too – or email my friend Darshan Gadkari over at the Cyber Deals site GoSkoop and ask him for free double-tickets to attend. You can tell him I sent you.

I wrote about GoSkoop back in September that they are a Small Business Friendly Ecommerce Social Network: An Easy Way to Find, Track and Share Cyber Deals.

Now would be a good time to check out what they have to offer. Their site could save you time and money doing your holiday shopping – or any time.

First Amendment Wording and Internet Censorship

This is a guest post by Internet Attorney Richard B. Newman which shares with us the status of the most recent lawsuit brought against Yelp alleging manipulation of reviews. Because the cases are being brought under the Communications Decency Act, the outcome affects bloggers even if they never use Yelp because the outcome sets precedents for the application of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.

In June 2009 I wrote How to Get Your Free Listing at Yelp and I updated that post in February 2010 and wrote Why We No Longer Recommend Yelp to Businesses because of repeated accusations that Yelp deletes positive reviews and/or adds negative reviews to get businesses to buy advertising with them.

The distinctive nature of the Internet has played a critical role in cases that have addressed the level of First Amendment protection to be applied to the medium.  Earlier this month, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California ruled that the Communications Decency Act Immunity for Publisher’s protection for interactive computer services against claims that seek to treat them as the publisher or speaker of third-party, user-generated content, is not dependent upon the motive underlying the services’ performance of traditional editorial functions.

The ruling was issued in conjunction with a lawsuit involving allegations that Yelp, an online review service, knowingly manipulates user-generated reviews and rankings on its service to drive its advertising sales.

Specifically, the complaint alleged that Yelp was liable for extortion and other wrongs on several grounds, including;

• creation of negative business reviews through its employees and other paid individuals acting on its behalf;
• manipulation of third-party reviews, by highlighting negative reviews for customers who did not sign up for its paid advertising service; and
• manipulation of third-party reviews to drive down its business rankings, which Yelp, rather than third-parties, creates.

The court disposed of the claim alleging that Yelp created negative reviews based upon insufficient allegations.  As it pertains to Yelp’s alleged manipulation of user-generated content, the court concluded the claims were barred under the Communications Decency Act.

The Communications Decency Act provides that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of information provided by another information content provider.  This provision has been interpreted quite broadly by many courts.  Any activity that can be boiled down to deciding whether to exclude material that third-parties seek to post online is essentially immune.

The plaintiff alleged that this lawsuit involved content created by Yelp, a star rating at the top of each business’ review page, and that the Communications Decency Act did not apply.

The court disagreed, reasoning that linking the Communication Decency Act’s publisher immunity provision to a service’s motives would ultimately result in the “death by ten thousand duck-bites” and that such a bad faith exception could force service providers to defend waves of litigation involving editorial decisions.  Such an interpretation would contravene the purpose of the statute, the court said.

The Communications Decency Act immunized Yelp from these claims even if it performed traditional editorial functions, such as choosing which user-generated content to delete, with wrongful motives, such as trying to drive down a business’ ranking to encourage them to sign-up for paid services.

Although the case was dismissed and other cases interpreting the Communications Decency Act have not established an intent-based exception to immunity, the court did make it clear that the Communications Decency Act would not protect Yelp from a lawsuit alleging that it “deceptively represented its rankings as user-generated and neutral.”     Interestingly, this ruling differs from one issued in another lawsuit involving Yelp earlier this year, wherein a different judge concluded that Yelp’s bad-faith intent in manipulating user reviews fell outside the traditional editorial functions protected by the Communications Decency Act.

Traditionally, there are narrow exceptions to the broad immunity granted to service providers.  A website owner may lose CDA immunity if it takes an active role in editing unlawful content.  However, this recent ruling indicates that while the performance of editorial functions includes subjective judgements - determining which motives are permissible could prove problematic - exposing service providers to potential litigation about those motives could chill online speech and contravene the Communication Decency’s Act purpose.

If you are uncertain of how to interpret the exceptions to the Communications Decency Act, contact your Internet Defamation Attorney.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Richard B. Newman is an Internet Lawyer at Hinch Newman LLP
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

COMMUNICATIONS DECENCY ACT of 1996

• Eff.org ~ articles related to Communications Decency Act
• Epic.org ~ Communications Decency Act struck down

FREEDOM OF SPEECH

• Freedom of Speech and Online Hate Speech
• ACLU History: Modern-Day Censorship: Reno v. ACLU
• Freedom Forum: The First Amendment

YELP REVIEWS EXTORTION

• Eric Goldman: Yelp Gets Complete Win in Advertiser “Extortion” Case–Levitt v. Yelp
• TechCrunch: Class Action Lawsuits Alleging Extortion Over Yelp’s Review System Dismissed

This is a guest post from an old friend of mine, Pete Ekizian, a very savvy small business owner who owns and runs a very successful ecommerce engraved gifts store that has been online for twelve years.

I’ve known Pete for most of those years and had no idea what he wanted to write when he asked if he could guest post here and am very happy to share these tips from him on how to manage a small business during economically challenging times.

I hope you REALLY listen to what Pete has to share in this post. Few are as successful at ecommerce as Pete is – I can count how many I know about personally on one hand.

Pete has a HUGE selection of gifts and the best warranty I've ever seen so consider his ecommerce online gift store for holiday shopping or any time.

You can read more about his store in my post
How to Evaluate an Ecommerce Store and Merchant’s  Affiliate Program.

Image Credit: 123rf.com Royalty Free Images

So the recession is killing all of us.

Ignore what you read from certain people
who claim you can actually do
better in this economy.

The only reason they are saying
this is that they have something to sell.

You know the pitch:
The economy is bad, yes,
but we have the secret to
getting richer than ever!

It comes in many different forms:

• Build links that Google loves, without leaving your couch!
• How to add tons of content to your site on autopilot!
• Comment on followed blogs in your industry without lifting a finger!

There are two common threads to just about all pitches like this (and I’m sure you’re getting more than ever because people are getting desperate):

1. First, they promise to automate a service that we all know works:  Building links, building content, adding real value to blog conversations, etc.
2. Second, they state that these invaluable activities can be done effortlessly.

And, of course, they claim that for a small lump sum payment or monthly fee, they’ll show you step by step how to do this.

Please, please, please take my word on this for your own sake…

Do NOT fall for what SIMPLY DOES NOT WORK!

99.9% of pitches for ways to automate your business
are utter nonsense!

I don’t say 100% are nonsense because I’ve been around long enough to know never to say never! (Never and always will usually come back to bite you.)

Grow Your Business by Building a REAL Small Business:

How about doing this instead?

Build a real business
(yes – even if its a website based business)
with real customers / clients who will
come back to you again and again
because you provide value.

How about using this recession as an opportunity to refine your business?  You’re not packing as many orders, overseeing as much AdSense activity, or consulting with as many clients, so take the time to fine tune your business processes and practices.

When the recession ends, which it will because they always do, you will be so much better off because of this.  Here are some tips that you can get working on today:

Business Operating Expenses:

Take a long hard look at your expenses:

• Stress what’s working for you
• Eliminate what’s not.

This is probably the single most important activity you can do right now.  When business is booming,  you can often add a whole bunch of expenses that may or may not work.  Who cares when you have so much money coming in that you don’t want to upset the apple cart by getting rid of anything.

That social bookmarker you hired for $200 a month, maybe he’s paying for himself in traffic and/or rankings.  The blog commenter from the Philippines you employ for $100 a month, well you don’t have time to check your analytics to see if she’s actually driving traffic. You’re too busy!

Make sure money you are spending
Is actually working for you.

Well guess what, now you’re not too busy.  You have the time now to go and check your analytics, to do backlink analysis, to get on the phone with your virtual employees and see what’s working and what’s not.

GLOBAL OUTSOURCING:

Stop outsourcing so much that you lose
control of the quality of your product.

Look, I love outsourcing.  It’s one of the most important activities you can do.  When you break it down, every great business in history has used outsourcing in one way or another.

When you think of outsourcing as just getting someone else
to do your work (tedious, or otherwise), there’s no debating
that you need to learn how to do this.

The problem arises when you lose control. When you don’t know what your article writer is writing, and whether its really content you feel proud putting “out there.” When your AdWords specialist is upping your spend without increasing conversions because they get paid as a percentage of spend.

Or when your “brand” is becoming known more
for the blog comment spam your blog commenter
is posting than for your actual products or services.

Right now, outsourcing is huge. Everyone is touting the virtues of outsourcing your life. This is fine but you need to monitor your outsourcers just as you would any other aspect of your business.  If you don’t, they may run amok, and bring your business down with it!

Strive for a better product and happier customers.

This one seems fairly obvious in theory, but judging by many of the companies I’ve bought products from or employed to do a service, it needs to be stated.

Everyone wants more, more, more.
More clients, more sales, more money.

How about building a real business with happy customers
that you care about and products you’re proud to sell.

Now, you can do this for purely altruistic reasons of course but, let’s face it, you’re a business person. The best reason of all to do this form purely a business perspective is that you’ll build customers for life.

Your customers will come to you,
even in the midst of a recession
with hardly any money to spend

Because they know they will get value from you!

They know that you stand behind your products
and that they’ll never feel like they got ripped off.

They know they will be treated well –
and that is even more important to them when they’re
parting with the few extra dollars they have.

These are some things that have helped me survive this economic downturn.  Obviously, things are not booming like they were three years ago, but when they do come back, my company will be a leaner, nicer, more customer-friendly operation.

I’d love to hear your thoughts on the things you’re doing to survive the recession.

My name is Pete Ekizian, I own an e-commerce website named Executive Gift Shoppe.  We specialize in gifts for men like Flasks, Wallets, Pub Signs, Accessories and Money Clips.

[NOTE: Pete often shares business tips in the Executive Gift Shoppe blog including this interesting piece on Keeping Your Employees Happy When Money is Tight.

NOTE from GrowMap:
I hope you REALLY listened to what Pete had to share in this post.

Few are as successful at ecommerce as Pete is – I can count how many I know about personally on one hand.

Small businesses like Pete’s that Google’s favored big brands see as
competition were severely impacted by the Google MayDay update,
then the Google Panda update, and will continue to lose traffic from
organic search and from AdWords pay per click ads (unless they
keep adding more and more keywords or spending much more).

One other thing Pete does is that he offers the very best money back guarantee I have ever seen – so good that I highlighted it in this post I wrote about my favorite category of all the products he offers: business card holders.

You can see Pete’s guarantee
and some of my favorites in my post
How to Use Business Card Holders to Attract More Business.

Pete has a larger selection of practical and unusual gifts that can be personalized with engraving than any site I’ve seen online or any store I’ve ever seen – and because I once managed Pete’s AdWords account and worked with him on blogging and social media I’ve done a LOT of research in his niche and seen all of his competitor’s sites.

As the holiday season approaches, I encourage you to
support small businesses – both local and online.

Every dime you spend with them benefits our economy and working people everywhere because real people like us spend the money we receive so that it stays in circulation and benefits more people!

Make notes about your favorite small businesses
that include their Web site URL because during the
holiday shopping season they will become harder to locate online.

Whenever you need personalized gifts, groomsmen gifts, or unique holiday gifts I can highly recommend Pete’s store.

DISCLOSURE: Pete Ekizian / Executive Gift Shoppe is a former client of mine. We are not currently working together. He did not offer and I would not accept any compensation for the privilege of my readers and I benefiting from him sharing his wisdom.

I put more links in this post because limiting links is another way that search engines make it difficult for us to find small businesses. I wrote the intro and closing. At the time of publication, he has not even seen what I wrote about him.

I add this because so many (not my regular readers who understand – others who may see this) are so quick to jump to unwarranted conclusions and so far have still not seen what is so obvious to me:

When we actively promote small businesses
we use and trust EVERYONE benefits;

• The small business benefits because they MAY receive more sales.
• Anyone who reads or hears your recommendation benefits because you have assisted them in finding a business they can trust offering products or services that they need or want.
• Our economy benefits because money you spend in a small business stays in circulation, pays sales and often property taxes, and creates jobs!
• Your favorite small businesses will STAY in business and you still have freedom of choice!
• The relationships you form with small business owners can change your life and theirs for the better.

We have been conditioned to object
when small businesses use
word of mouth small business marketing
to help us find what we want and need.

WHY greatly favor ONLY the multi-national corporations
who can afford to advertise nationally or internationally?

Small business marketing BENEFITS US!

Big brands and bankers have taken too much from us already:
our jobs, our pensions, our benefits, our standard of living –
and now they want our food and our freedom, too.

If we are ever going to stop this we must understand
what caused the great depression that is happening again now
and what causes economic decline.

WE MUST ACT NOW!
to stop it from going any further
While we still can.

By understanding how our economy benefits we can raise our standard of living – and the first step is to CHANGE where we spend our time and money!

Have you heard about BANK TRANSFER DAY? MOVE your money!

Q: What do you get when you cross a social network with an ecommerce site?

A: Goskoop: a custom cyber deals site with a personal online ecommerce concierge that continually searches the Web for whatever you ask it to find – products, services, books, music movies, vehicles, real estate – even a job.

Instead of you searching for what you need – what you need finds you! Enter a search once and Goskoop will keep seeking deals until you click ‘turn off’.

As Goskoop CEO Darshan Gadkari explains:

“Goskoop constantly searches for buyers rather than have the seller wait to have someone find them. It facilitates an active search for consumers seeking unique deals rather than have them revisiting their search.”

Over 1000 beta testers have used Goskoop to date and there are already over ten million products listed on the site with more being added every day. 70% of inventory is national.

Early listings are strongest in these METROS: Dallas, San Francisco, New York City, Boston, San Diego, Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Houston, Atlanta, Miami, Nashville and Washington D.C.

The best coverage of products so far is in electronics, movies, health and beauty, watches and jewelry, toys, baby products, and supplements.

Goskoop is small business friendly!

They encourage you to add your products and links
and promote yourself on their site.

Realtors: add rental and sales listings and create a local network.

Authors: promote your books.

The Goskoop site is simple to use:

1. Select what you need (books, ebooks, business/service, job, music, movie, product, real estate, vehicle.
2. Choose between buy or sell / own.
3. Type what you want in the search box.
4. Click Skoop it.

This screen capture shows a pending search ready to click "skoop it".

After you click Skoop it, the GoSkoop site will add your search to your vault, return existing results, and notify you whenever a new listing that matches your search is added:

This screen capture shows my search added to my vault. The numbers indicate how many sellers/deals are available and how many 'Others Buying Same'

When you’ve found your deal and don’t need the search any more simply delete the search. Or if you are busy and want to save it until later, you can easily turn off matches with a click of a button in your vault.

If there are other Goskoop users interested in buying the same product, you can click on View Scoop on the Others Buying Same popup and add them as connections:

When others are searching for the same thing as you are you can see them in Others Buying Same - and add them as connections to exchange resources or ask questions.

Goskoop is just out of beta and additional features are scheduled to go live October 1st including the ability to sort results by price, date and relevance.

Businesses and individuals are invited to list their products and
services and for now that is completely free of any cost to them.

You can also list and find jobs and real estate.

Goskoop has just released a Goskoop Android Mobile App and has a Goskoop iPhone app in development to make it fast and easy to manage your deals from your smart phone.  You can even take photos while out shopping to remind you what you are interested in that will be included in your vault result.

My readers know how much I emphasize the need for independent alternatives to multi-national corporations. Big brands are controlled by the same big money as the major media and they use it to promote companies they control like Google, Facebook, Twitter, eBay.

If you hear about a brand in the media or they are featured in movies, television shows or at sporting events they have the support of the major media. The challenge for small, independent solutions is they will never have that backing – all they has is US to create a grass roots movement to support them.

This is a MAJOR uphill battle and Goskoop and other startups and businesses need us to consistently spread the word and use their sites. Goskoop could grow into an alternative to Google, Facebook, and all the others IF we are willing to use them and be patient as they roll out new features. I’m game – are you?

Related Posts about Goskoop Cyber Deals:

• Yahoo Finance:Emerging e-Commerce Concierge, Goskoop, Announces Addition of Mobile App
• Market Watch: Start-up Goskoop’s Application Eases Online Buying/Selling

Image Credit: NetChoice ~ Click image to read Privacy: A Solution in Search of a Problem

This is a guest post by Richard B. Newman – Internet Attorney

Data security and consumer privacy are hot-button issues these days.  They are gaining momentum and many – including the Obama administration – believe that it is time for a new regulatory framework.

Proposed regulations could have a direct impact on any entity that collects, stores, or shares data on a large scale.

Data brokers, online marketers, advertising agencies and networks, media and publishing companies, mobile application developers, retailers, web browsers and operators, credit reporting agencies, and financial services companies must be intimately aware of the status of these debates so that they can prepare for an almost certain new regulatory framework.

Numerous high-profile incidents have accelerated
legislative discussions for increased regulation.

Everyone from large corporations to government entities have fallen victim to large-scale data  breaches, and many mobile devices have been discovered to allow the tracking and recording of a user’s locations.

Sensitive information such as names, dates of birth, Social
Security numbers, e-mail addresses, passwords, locations, and
health and financial related information increasingly seem at risk.

Over a dozen bills have been introduced this year in response to privacy advocates’ clamoring for heightened regulation.

In fact, the FTC and Department of Commerce have published their own recommendations.

THREE TYPES OF PROPOSED PRIVACY LEGISLATION

Generally, the proposals pertain to three specific areas:

1. Online and point-of-sale privacy
2. Mobile device privacy
3. Data  security and  breach  notification

Now is an ideal time for any business entity that may be at risk to critically examine their privacy and data security procedures to ensure compliance with legal and industry best practice standards on both the national and state levels.

The following is intended as a brief overview of pending regulatory proposals in Congress and the federal agencies, the implications of proposed regulations, and what companies should do to comply with the confusing patchwork of privacy regulations currently in place.

Legislative proposals in recent bills on consumer privacy and data security generally pertain to three topics:

• Consumer privacy bills seek to help consumers control what personal information is collected, used, stored, or shared based on their online and point-of-sale behavior.
• Mobile privacy bills seek to help consumers take control of what information is collected, used, stored, or shared based on their mobile device usage and their geolocation.
• Data security and breach notification bills seek to implement new protocols for protecting data and to create a national standard for notifying affected individuals and government agencies when a data breach has occurred.

Six bills have been introduced this year pertaining primarily to online and point-of-sale privacy.

When browsing the Internet or making purchases at a store, consumers reveal valuable, sometimes highly-sensitive, information that is used to construct user profiles based on their location, their preferences, and their contact information.

This data can be very valuable for behavioral marketers, which is the precise reason that the market for such consumer data continues to grow so rapidly.

The purpose of the privacy bills is to change how consumer information is collected, stored, used, and shared, and what and how consumers are informed told about these practices. Bills regarding data collection call for opt-out or opt-in mechanisms that require prior, express consent from the consumer before any personal information can be collected.

Bills contemplating data storage impose new limits on the scope and duration of data retention, as well as new security procedures to safeguard information.  Bills regarding data use and sharing impose limits on the purposes for which data may be used, restrict with whom a data collector (e.g., a retailer) can share information, and set new standards for whether consumer consent or notification is necessary before information can be used in certain ways or shared with a third party.

While the themes discussed above generally characterize the current group of legislative proposals, there exist slight differences between each of the privacy-focused bills.

KEY ONLINE PRIVACY BILLS:

1. Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.): Do Not Track Me Online Act of 2011.  This bill would require opt-out mechanisms for the collection or use of online and personal data;
2. Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.): Commercial Privacy Bill of Rights Act of 2011.  This bill would require opt-out mechanisms for  data  use or sharing, as well as opt-in consent for the collection, storage, or sharing of sensitive personal information;
3. Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Ill.): BEST PRACTICES Act.  This bill is similar to the Kerry-McCain proposal and calls for opt-out mechanisms for  data  collection and storage, as well as opt-in consent for certain third-party information sharing;
4. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.): Consumer Privacy Protection Act of 2011.  This bill would allow consumers to opt-out of having their personally identifiable information shared with third parties;
5. Sen. John D. Rockefeller IV (D-W.Va.): Do-Not-Track Online Act of 2011. This bill would give consumers the ability to opt-out of having their online data tracked and stored.  This proposal would go one step further than the other privacy bills by also imposing limits on data collection from mobile devices;
6. Reps. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) and Joe Barton (R-Texas): Do-Not-Track-Kids Act.  Markey and Barton’s proposal would preclude online companies from using personal information for targeted marketing to children, would enable parents to delete the history of their children’s online behaviors, and would require parental consent for any data tracking online r on mobile devices.

MOBILE DEVICES LEAVE AN ELECTRONIC TRAIL

An entirely separate group of bills focuses their attention on mobile devices.  To begin with, users who access GPS-enabled applications on their mobile devices, tablet devices, and smartphones are leaving an electronic trail that can be utilized to reveal both present and past physical locations.

KEY MOBILE PRIVACY BILLS:

Some of the key proposals in this particular area include:

1. Sen. Ron Wyden (D-Ore.) and Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah): Geolocation and Privacy Surveillance (GPS) Act.  These bills would prohibit companies from collecting or sharing geolocation information without the user’s express consent;
2. Sens. Al Franken (D-Minn.) and Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.): Location Privacy Protection Act of 2011.  This bill would require any covered entity to offer prior notice and obtain express consent from consumers in order to track and collect their geolocation information;
3. Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.): Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA) Amendments Act of 2011.  Enacted in 1986, the ECPA restricts third-party access to private electronic communications, such as online activity and e-mails. However, the ECPA does not cover GPS-based information.   Therefore, Leahy proposed this update to add geolocation information as a new class of private communications subject to the protections of the ECPA.

DATA SECURITY and BREACH NOTIFICATION:

Key proposals that focus primarily on data security and breach notification have recently been introduced.  The purpose of these bills is to require entities that collect or store data  to take steps to prevent bad actors from accessing personal information and to create a standard for notifying government agencies and consumers if an organization’s data  is breached.

Limits on the scope and duration of data storage are the main focus.

The theory goes – if less data is stored and for a shorter period of time, then less data is necessarily at risk.  Proposed security and notification legislation also mandate security policies to prevent unauthorized third-party access to data, as well as procedures and time frames to alert affected individuals and government agencies when a data breach has occurred.

DATA SECURITY and BREACH NOTIFICATION BILLS:

The key bills in this particular area include:

1. Sens. Rockefeller and Mark Pryor (D-Ark.):  Data Security and Breach Notification Act of 2011. This bill requires businesses and nonprofit organizations that store personal information to implement reasonable security measures and alert consumers when their data has been compromised.  In the event of a  breach, affected individuals would be entitled to free credit monitoring services for two years;
2. Leahy: Personal Data Privacy and Security Act.  This bill is similar to bills Leahy has introduced in the past and his proposal calls for businesses to enact security procedures to protect sensitive data.  It would create a federal standard for notifying appropriate parties of a breach;
3. Bono Mack (R-Calif.): SAFE Data Act.  Her proposal requires businesses to notify consumers and the FTC within 48 hours of containing and assessing a breach and would entitle affected individuals to free credit monitoring services for two years;
4. Rep. Cliff Stearns (R-Fla.): DATA  Act of 2011.  Stearns’  data  security and  breach bill is similar to Rep. Rush’s in its call for tighter protections of  data  storage systems, in addition to setting a standard for notifying affected individuals and government authorities in the event of a  breach.

Of note, California recently amended its data breach notification law and as of January 1, 2012, California businesses are required to provide notice to individuals of the breach of their personal data, and must also notify the state Office of the Attorney General if the breach requires notification of more than 500 California residents.

For the first time, California will also require that notices to individuals include certain information, such as the type of information breached, the time of the breach, and a toll-free telephone number of major credit reporting agencies.

Despite the number of competing legislative proposals, Congress
will almost certainly pass a national standard on these issues soon.

The FTC and the Department of Commerce have issued their own recommendations addressing online and point-of-sale privacy, mobile device privacy, data security, and breach notification.

The aim of the FTC and Department of Commerce plans include limits on what information can be collected, how long it can be stored, simpler and more easily understood privacy policies, do-not-track preferences that follow a user from website to website, increased transparency on the part of  data  collectors, and requiring companies to build security and privacy measures into products.

Broad sweeping changes in these areas will almost certainly have far reaching practical implications that could reach just about every consumer and business in the country.

Data privacy regulations, as currently proposed in “do-not-track” and geo-location bills, would significantly change operations for entities that purchase consumer information for behavioral marketing purposes.  Third-party purchasers would be affected by stricter privacy regulations.

New regulatory standards could change the online advertising landscape.  It could significantly impact mobile phones because data privacy and geo-location bills could conceivably curtail data -centric, targeted marketing.

Under many of the proposals, ad networks, retailers, content websites, data brokers, mobile network providers and application developers, and any type of entity that collects and stores personal information would likely be impacted and limited in their ability to collect, store, use, or share consumer information.

If data security and breach notification proposals are adopted, covered entities would be mandated to comply with specific regulatory methods for storing consumer information and responding to breaches.

New data breach and privacy regulations will, undoubtedly, create countless hurdles and landmines in the information trade sector.

In the meantime, the wise thing to do is to evaluate policies in terms of existing law and best practice standards.  If businesses do not currently meet regulatory standards, raising the threshold “if and when” will be much more difficult.

Currently, no comprehensive federal privacy law governs
the collection, use, storage, and sharing of consumer information.

Instead, a constantly evolving patchwork of sector-specific and data -specific state and federal privacy laws makes such compliance assessments difficult.  Therefore, steps should be taken to minimize data privacy and security risks.

HOW TO MINIMIZE YOUR LEGAL EXPOSURE:

So, what can be done to safeguard sensitive information and minimize exposure?  Here are some simple steps regarding the design and implementation of a sound data security plan:

1. Implement reasonable written privacy and security policies, immediately.
2. Identify risks and implement appropriate technological solutions.
3. Assign one individual to oversee privacy and security issues.
4. Take stock.  Inventory what you have and train workers on privacy and data security matters.
5. Scale down and pitch it.  Keep only what you legitimately need.
6. Lock it - physical security.
7. Plan your response to security incidents, ahead of time.
8. Consult with an experienced Internet Law Attorney.

…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Richard B. Newman is an Internet Privacy Lawyer and Internet Defamation Attorney at Hinch Newman LLP (New York & California)
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

PROPOSED INTERNET LEGISLATION:

• Atlantic.com: The Legislation That Could Kill Internet Privacy for Good: The Protecting Children from Internet Pornographers Act of 2011

This is a guest post by Nisha Sandhu, Editor at Merchant Account Forum.

Whatever the nature of your business, a merchant account provides a seamless way to collect payment for the goods or services you provide. Merchant accounts are specialized business accounts licensed to accept credit card transactions, usually allowing payment from several major credit cards. If you have an online business, your merchant account must be coupled with an application program interface (API) gateway which actually processes your customer’s credit card payments.

How a merchant account benefits your business:

Being able to accept credit cards is essential to any business. The more convenient you can make the shopping experience, the more attractive your business is to potential customers. With a merchant account you can offer the customer a number of payment options and the ability to make a payment in seconds, which generally leads to increased sales.

When customers can pay for something instantly
They are far more likely to make impulse purchases.

Most merchant accounts provide customizable shopping carts to incorporate into your website. The transaction process is quick and easy and the customer is not redirected to another website to complete the transaction as they would be if you were using a third party payment processor. A complex transaction increases the likelihood that the customer will change their mind about the purchase.

When buying goods or services online, most customers are concerned about the security of their transactions. Internet merchant accounts use secure payment gateways to ensure that the customer’s credit card information cannot be comprised. They also offer you protection in the form of fraud control measures, protecting you from losses as a result of fraudulent payments or chargeback’s.

Merchant accounts offer accounting tools that can help you keep better track of your financial transactions. They provide monthly statements of all your transactions and payments and help you track your success with real-time reporting and payment trends. The information they provide makes bookkeeping easy and is invaluable at tax time.

A merchant account can provide you with consistent customer service. When you are accepting credit card payments you will inevitably have to deal with the occasional processing error, chargeback or other service issue. Having a merchant account representative available to help you resolve disputes with customers, obtain voice authorizations or simply answer any questions you may have, can allow you to deal with potential problems with minimal headaches.

If you want to grow your business internationally
merchant accounts can accept multi currency payments
allowing you to deal with overseas customers.

Having a merchant account gives customers the sense that you are an established, professional business, lending a level of authority to your website and increasing customer confidence in it. Add to that the ease and convenience with which customers can select and purchase your goods and services, and it will go a long way towards creating loyal customers who will not only frequent your website but will help advertise your business. You’ll also find that as your business grows and you experience a higher transaction volume, having a merchant account becomes increasingly cost effective. Merchant accounts are a boon to an online business.

AUTHOR BIO: Hello my name is Nisha Sandhu. I am 26 years old and I am an Editor at merchantaccountforum.com, whom I have been working with for two years now. I love to write and give online business advice to new and growing businesses.

Image Credit: TheNextWeb; Entrepreneur

How much to charge for anything is one of the greatest challenges many businesses, bloggers and consultants face.

Many think there is a “correct” price and do not realize that few things in life are more relative than money.

What really matters is VALUE – not price.

This is true whether you are buying or selling. If you are wondering how to price your products or services, read on – these examples are HIGHLY RELEVANT to what you need to know.

Why Value is More Important Than Price:

The true cost is cost over time – not immediate outlay. To make this clear, here are some specific examples:

SHOES: You can pay a little or a lot for shoes, but the TRUE COST is how long they last divided by what you paid. If you own hundreds of pairs this may not be obvious, so let’s use my boots for our example:

• If I buy cheap boots they cost about $30 and last three months. The cheap boots cost $120 per year to wear.
• If I buy high quality Tony Lama boots they last at least a year, then I can have them resoled and reheeled and wear them another year. These boots cost about $150 so they cost $150 the first year, but only $40 (the cost of refurbishing them) the second year, for a total cost of $190 or $90 per year. So $150 boots cost less than $30 boots over time – and they’re much better for your feet, too!

APPLIANCES:

Our throw-away economy is not only creating overflowing landfills – it is costing us money, too.

• You can buy a window air conditioner for $100 and up, but they only last one season. Or you can save up and buy quality, have it serviced once a year, and use it for years.
• Did you know you can still sometimes find working chest freezers and stoves built in the 1950s? How long did the last refrigerator, stove, washing machine or dryer you bought last? If you want to save money on energy costs and appliances, find a good repair shop that sells refurbished appliances – and have them pick you out a high quality machine. You’ll only pay a small amount more for the best appliance when buying used, but it will last a lot longer. Oh – and be aware that “energy star ratings” are often NOT accurate.

LAWN MOWERS:

You can buy disposable lawn mowers at Wal-Mart, Lowes or Home Depot or you can buy a high quality Snapper lawn mower and with a little maintenance it will run year after year. If you are in the market for a lawn mower I encourage you to read more about how very different Snapper is from cheap brands in The Man Who Said No to Wal-Mart.

COOKING UTENSILS:

I suspect one of the reasons many people don’t enjoy cooking is that they’ve never had decent pots, pans and especially utensils.  Many stores sell cheap junk utensils that are little more than toys. They are often too small to be effective, rust almost immediately, or made from cheap components. Invest in quality and good utensils can last almost a lifetime. See Greening Your Kitchen Cooking Utensils for photos of quality utensils and what materials to choose. You can even buy ergonomic kitchen utensils for those with limited dexterity or arthritis.

These are just a few examples of why value is more important than price. When you are marketing what you do, make or sell, emphasize VALUE and QUALITY. As the old saying goes, buyers are not going to remember what they paid when they’re still getting use from what you sold them months, years and possibly even decades later.

I encourage you to read Values, Value and Valuation – the Money is All Relative. The pendulum has swung as far toward cheap as it can get. It MUST swing back because focusing on cheap is simply not sustainable. The first thing many ecommerce store owners think to do when sales drop is lower prices.

BAD IDEA! If traffic and sales are down and
QUANTITY OF SALES are down,
lowering prices = less profit per sale
right when you have fewer sales!!!

Whether you are selling products or services, NEVER, EVER, COMPETE ON PRICE! Emphasize value. Illustrate as visually and entertainingly as possible what you have to offer. Focus on clients and customers willing to pay a reasonable price for quality and willingly sacrifice any who only focus on price – and here is why:

Customers who focus on cheap will be unhappy
even if you PAY THEM to take it.

They will suck up more of your time and cause you more grief and stress than they’re worth. Let them be someone else’s headache!

Businesses and consumers alike must learn to use discernment in evaluating the validity and accuracy of the reviews they read online.  When I read the comments in blogs, forums and on Social Networking sites it is apparent to me that many have never heard this old saying:

“Don’t believe everything you read”.

For reviews to benefit us as consumers to know which businesses and products we can trust, more people who can write accurately and honestly need to be contributing their opinions. The more individual reviews there are the more likely we are to find the truth.

Click the Image to see stats from EZLocal on where Google pulls reviews

Valid reviews benefit us all. They allow us to avoid businesses that offer horrible service, save us from losing money buying bad products, and discover small businesses that really care about us.

We must hold business communities like Merchant Circle and Yelp accountable for their actions and not allow them to charge businesses protection fees or encourage them to allow merchants to manipulate real reviews.

At the same time we do not want to allow any individual to use the threat of bad reviews to hold businesses hostage or businesses to sue over bad reviews. Although we have no control of what others do, the bad behavior of some who claim to be online reviewers reflects poorly on us all.

Do your favorite small businesses, friends and neighbors a favor and write reviews of their businesses and services and add product reviews after you use what you buy.  To make that easier for you see the section under the bold heading Where to Write Reviews in our post about Supporting Small Businesses.

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• Top 10 Local Search Directories By Importance (growmap.com)

Like Gun Dog Supply on Facebook ~ Click Image

What do dog collars have to do with Yahoo Stores? That is one of many products that Rob Snell sells at his Gun Dog Supply Yahoo store. Why should you care? How about because his 14 Years of experience increased his family store’s income by $10,354,767 – and more importantly – he is really good at teaching HOW he did it!

When I needed answers about a Yahoo Store Product Feed issue, I immediately contacted Rob Snell because he is THE Yahoo Store expert.

Rob wrote the book on Yahoo Stores – literally – Yahoo Stores for Dummies – but that isn’t all. No one knows as much about Yahoo Stores as Rob because he has what I consider the ideal background for really knowing how to increase sales and optimize an ecommerce store:

Rob and his family own a highly successful store and handle every aspect of what that takes from Web development to usability to conversion optimization to marketing.

There is one key to how I do what I do: I figure out who knows the most about what I have questions on and I go directly to them for the answers I need. That is where Rob comes in and why you’re reading this post today. Just this week, Rob has shared what every ecommerce store owner (and blogger who sells affiliate products or uses an ecommerce plugin) needs to know.

He tells you EXACTLY HOW he increases sales in his store.

So many people are big on the “what” but don’t give you enough HOW to actually get it done. THAT makes Rob leader of the pack and leaders are the ones who can increase YOUR sales too!

Want to make more money? Get serious about these specific strategies:

1. Increase your sales using Rob’s method for determining exactly what pages of your site generate the most revenue, how to prioritize which pages to focus on, and how to do ecommerce SEO.
2. Monday Rob was on WebmasterRadio and shared these SEO Mistakes Retailers Make. Learn from Rob’s 14+ years of experience and be glad you’re not taking notes! Use the transcript to review and implement his tips.
3. You NEED to know how to do ecommerce conversion optimizaton. Play and replay that presentation. Take notes. Then DO what Rob teaches you do.

As if that wasn’t enough, here are the tips Rob shared – in just one comment – in that post I mentioned about Yahoo feeds:

Way back in 1996, I started looking at Viaweb stores which in turn became Yahoo! Stores. They’ve been doing images this way since before there WERE datafeeds to shopping engines.

• My store loads 2-3x as fast as my competitors‘ because of Yahoo’s image servers. Because of this I generate AT LEAST tens of thousands of dollars a year, maybe more than that. It’s hard to tell without slowing your store down…

• The secret is to PUBLISH often. If you don’t, your store is STALE, and not just to datafeeds. Google LOVES fresh content.

Most of the hundreds of stores I’ve worked on PUBLISH on a pretty regular basis. We publish our stores at LEAST once a day. If you are always adding content to your stores, updating inventory, changing prices, featuring items, adding reviews, then your feeds will be fresh because you publish often enough…

If you don’t publish very often, say once every few months, then you have more problems than images not showing up in old datafeeds. You should be adding content at least weekly.

Yahoo! Stores aren’t perfect, but there are positives and negatives to any e-commerce solution. I don’t think Yahoo! is doing anything criminal by not explaining how their image serving works, and what the upsides and downsides are, but thanks to sites like this there are plenty of resources for all of us!

When it comes to increasing sales in ecommerce stores, Rob is on my short list of who’s who. If you have a Yahoo Store he is THE person you need to learn from wherever he publishes and speaks. (Hey Rob, I need a link to your upcoming speaking engagements and where you’re publishing regularly these days!)

In the meantime, Follow RobSnell on Twitter and Friend Gun Dog Supply on Facebook to find out what he’ll be up to next. And share this post with all your favorite store owners too!