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At Amazon.com, the link to the privacy policy is at the bottom of the home page, in small print. At Buy.com, the policy measures 10 printed pages and 5,200 words in length. To read the full policy at Outpost.com, visitors have to click out and back into the policy page at least twice. Though the pu...

The projected boom in the online population over the next few years presents e-tailers with an "enormous opportunity" to win the loyalty of a whole new crop of consumers, according to data released Thursday by IDC. As a result, the research firm advised Internet sellers to "heed the homilies of t...

Buying a piece of fame online is easy because thousands of online celebrity auctions fill the pages of such Web auction sites as Yahoo! and eBay every day. Understanding the factors that motivate sellers and buyers of celebrity mementos, however, takes some study. For example, Elvis Presley migh...

Beleaguered electronics e-tailer Buy.com suffered another jolt of bad news Thursday when it was informed by the Nasdaq stock exchange that the company's shares will be delisted. Aliso Viejo, California-based Buy.com said it had requested a formal hearing to fight the notice. "However, there can ...

Stricter laws are needed to protect Internet auction users from spammers who harvest e-mail addresses from auction sites, an eBay executive told U.S. lawmakers at a House subcommittee on crime hearing on cybercrime Thursday. "It is worth noting that some forms of cybercrime could be reduced if Co...

Somewhere in the zone between idea and execution, e-commerce suffers from a case of diminished returns. Take online bill payment, for example. At the new-idea stage, online billing was going to let every business streamline their operations and offer customers a convenient way to "pay as they go....

Since starting a massive pop-up and pop-under advertising campaign early this year that brings Web traffic to its site automatically, e-tailer X10.com has gone from a relatively unknown seller of home networking and security devices to a leader in the quest for Internet clicks. However, analys...

Priceline.com has been working hard to improve its customer service and find the right product mix, but analysts still disagree about whether the "name-your-own-price" e-tailer has a business model that will succeed. "I don't believe Priceline has a long-term business model," Jupiter Media Metrix...

Although online credit card fraud is not a myth, its frequency has been greatly exaggerated, according to a survey released Wednesday by Jupiter Media Metrix. The report said that the attention focused on online security incidents has led consumers to believe that fraud is approximately 12 times ...

Monster.com has earned the title of top-rated online job search site, according to a report issued Wednesday by Greenfield Online. The new report also contained some potentially troublesome news for online job sites: Just under 20 percent of respondents reported they actually found a job using th...

The e-commerce world got some good news in recent days when the Better Business Bureau (BBB) reported that it received nearly 4,000 complaints about e-tail sites last year, more than double the number from 1999. Good news? This might sound like the ultimate in spin control, or a sarcastic slam....

Television will become an important vehicle for e-commerce transactions in the coming years, according to a study released Thursday by Jupiter Media Metrix. The research firm said that the majority of TV-driven buying will soon be transacted via interactive television (iTV) shopping programs, wi...

Cybercrime fighters are scheduled to continue lobbying U.S. Congress on Thursday for more money and power to combat hackers, con artists and other cyber crooks. "No one knows the full extent of the fraud being committed on the Internet," Thomas T. Kubic, deputy assistant director for the U.S. F...

Seven months after launching a Japanese-language book-selling site, Amazon.com said Wednesday the site is adding music, video and DVD product lines, with more offerings to come before the end of the year. The expanded product lines will bring several of the features for which the original Amazo...

While U.S. lawmakers have failed to stop the flood of unsolicited commercial e-mail -- otherwise known as spam -- clogging e-mail boxes across the nation, many savvy netizens are turning to SpamCop.net, a tool that helps consumers filter out spam and report spammers to their Internet service prov...