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Category Archives: E-Commerce

Can You Delete an Amazon Order From Your History?

How to Geek: “…The short answer is that you can’t completely delete an order from your history. The only option is to archive, which is Amazon’s way of allowing you to hide an order from your main order history. However, even when archived, the order remains in Amazon’s system (linked to your account), and it can be seen on your Archived Orders page. If someone knows how archived orders work and has access to your Amazon account, they can find the orders you’ve hidden. This means that archiving is not a foolproof way to hide the history of buying something from Amazon. To do that, you’d need to close your Amazon account and create a new one (though Amazon will retain your transactional data, due to legal obligations.) So, don’t buy sensitive items with your main Amazon account—or from an account you share with other people—because those purchases will follow you for as long as you maintain that account…”

Google will let you search for products on Maps to help with holiday shopping

The Verge: “Google has added some new travel and shopping features to Maps that aim to make it easier to find local products and stay on time during busy periods. Starting today, Maps now allows users to search for items like home goods, clothing, and electronics, and find stores nearby that sell them — a… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 9, 2024

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, November 9, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex… Continue Reading

FTC Order Against AI-Enabled Review Platform Sitejabber

“The Federal Trade Commission today charged that Sitejabber, a company offering an AI-enabled consumer review platform, deceived consumers by misrepresenting that ratings and reviews it published came from customers who experienced the reviewed product or service, artificially inflating average ratings and review counts. Under a proposed order settling the agency’s complaint, Sitejabber will be prohibited from… Continue Reading

Streaming subscription fees have been rising while content quality is dropping

Ars Technica: “Subscription fees for video streaming services have been on a steady incline. But despite subscribers paying more, surveys suggest they’re becoming less satisfied with what’s available to watch. At the start of 2024, the industry began declaring the end of Peak TV, a term coined by FX Networks Chairman John Landgraf that refers… Continue Reading

The chatbot optimisation game: can we trust AI web searches?

The Guardian -“…Looking into the sort of evidence that large language models (LLMs, the engines on which chatbots are built) find most convincing, three computer science researchers from the University of California, Berkeley, found current chatbots overrely on the superficial relevance of information. They tend to prioritise text that includes pertinent technical language or is… Continue Reading

Exploiting Meta’s Weaknesses, Deceptive Political Ads Thrived on Facebook and Instagram in Run-Up to Election

ProPublica: Reporting Highlights Deceptive Political Ads: Eight deceptive advertising networks have placed over 160,000 election and social issues ads across more than 340 Facebook pages in English and Spanish. Harmed Users: Some of the people who clicked on ads were unwittingly signed up for monthly credit card charges or lost health coverage, among other consequences.… Continue Reading

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 26, 2024

Pete Recommends – Weekly highlights on cyber security issues, October 26, 2024 – Privacy and cybersecurity issues impact every aspect of our lives – home, work, travel, education, finance, health and medical records – to name but a few. On a weekly basis Pete Weiss highlights articles and information that focus on the increasingly complex and… Continue Reading

The Boomer Stuff Avalanche

Business Insider ungated – “Millennials are about to be crushed by all the junk their parents accumulated…In some ways, this is a timeless problem — every generation accumulates things, and younger generations rebel against older generations’ tastes. But the sheer size of the current problem is unprecedented given that baby boomers are an extra-materialistic breed.… Continue Reading

15 Best Amazon Alternatives For Ethical Online Shopping

goodgoodgood [June 2022] Amazon, the company that catapulted founder Jeff Bezos to billionaire status (and to the edge of space), has long been touted as environmentally unfriendly; the company emits the same level of carbon emissions as the country of Norway, according to a report released by Amazon in 2019. Its impact on the environment,… Continue Reading