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Money.com Offers to Check Your Data for Breaches, But…

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With so many data breaches happening these days, it is hard to keep track if and where you have become a victim. To help check to see if your personal data has been compromised, right at the top of the homepage of Money magazine, the publication is offering to do a free search.

Money- check data

What an easy and valuable service they are providing… except for one thing.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Money check data 2

What? In order to find out about any breaches you may have suffered, you are also signing up for advertising emails not just from Money but from others too.

That’s nasty.

The service that Money is using for the data searches is HaveIBeenPwned? which you can access directly for free. They say they do not retain your email address except if you subscribe to be alerted to future breaches.

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GoDaddy Offers Employees a Holiday Bonus, But…

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Just before Christmas, Internet service company GoDaddy apologized for not having a holiday party this year because of the coronavirus, but instead emailed employees news of a holiday bonus they could sign up for.

GoDaddy invitation

The email from HappyHoliday@GoDaddy.com directed employees to a link to sign up for the bonus, and presumably asked them to verify their identity by entering their official login credentials, etc. so the bonus could be processed.

A few days later the 500 or so employees who signed up got another email from the company.

*MOUSE PRINT: (details that were missing from the first email)

This time they were told the invitation was really a phishing test by the company, that they just failed it, and they would have to attend a remedial class on Internet security. And incidentally, there really was no company bonus this year.

Employees were livid and ultimately GoDaddy apologized for pulling this stunt so close to the holidays when money was short for many people.

[This story was originally reported by the Copper Courier.]

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Is It a Rebate or a Lottery?

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Since January is a big month for beginning healthy new year’s resolutions, it should not be surprising that vitamin companies are running big promotions to get you to buy their brand.

Nature's Bounty 1

Among the offers being promoted heavily at various chain stores are ones that entice shoppers to buy $30 worth of vitamins to qualify for a $10 rebate. The rebate for Nature’s Bounty is running simultaneously with buy one, get one free (BOGO) sales at Walgreens, CVS, and other stores, and in fact are often promoted adjacent to one another.

So the question for bargain hunters is do they determine that you have met the $30 purchase requirement before or after cents-off coupons and free items are deducted? In other words, let’s say that vitamin X is $7.50 a bottle, and I buy four of them on a buy one, get one free sale, have I met the $30 threshold?

The initial answer from Nature’s Bounty may surprise you.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nature's Bounty disclaimer

Great. What a surprise. They are looking at the gross price of the vitamins before deductions for coupons or free items… or are they? Read on.

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nature's Bounty disclosure 2

Oops. Now they say forget what we just said, you can’t use this offer if you buy the vitamins on a BOGO basis. Why not say that upfront? And why do stores like CVS and Walgreens advertise the BOGO sale and the $10 back offer virtually side-by-side and make no similar disclosure?

Believe it or not, it gets worse. Let’s say you were unlike most shoppers and you did read the fine print of the offer on the Nature’s Bounty promotional website. You would have found a most unusual restriction:

*MOUSE PRINT:

Nature's Bounty 3

Say what? This promotion is being advertised this week nationally in millions of newspaper RetailMeNot coupon inserts as well as the weekly circulars of major pharmacy chains, and the company is only going to honor 7,500 submissions?

Since when has buying vitamins and submitting a rebate become a game of chance? Paying a price for the chance of receiving money back is the definition of a lottery.

(We’ve written to the company and if and when we get a response, we will update this story.)

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