Massive Frozen Vegetable Recall May Not Be So Bad Because People Cook Vegetables

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Have you gone through all of the frozen vegetables and packaged food in your house to ensure that they aren’t on the list of items potentially contaminated by Listeria in an outbreak dating back to 2013? Yeah, me either, and I don’t even have a lot of frozen vegetables. That’s what public health officials are worried about: that people won’t check their freezers and could get sick years from now, with Listeria monocytogenes, a foodborne illness that is especially dangerous.

Listeria poses a unique hazard to pregnant women, since it can cause miscarriages and stillbirths. Symptoms of listeriosis include fever, fatigue, and aches for pregnant women, and other people may experience gastrointestinal symptoms followed by aches and fever. The most dangerous complication, which is more common in people who are elderly or immunocompromised, is meningitis. Symptoms of that complication include headache, stiff neck, confusion, loss of balance, and convulsions.

If there is any good news about millions of pounds of fruit and vegetables potentially being contaminated with Listeria, it’s that frozen vegetables are usually cooked before people eat them.

An expert at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention told the Associated Press that this is one possible reason why relatively few serious illnesses have been reported relative to the amount of food out there that was affected. Another possibility is that whatever caused the contamination spread it unevenly, and very few bags ended up with enough of the pathogen to make anyone sick.

Frozen vegetable products (Listeria monocytogenes) [FDA]
Multistate Outbreak of Listeriosis Linked to Frozen Vegetables [CDC]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

THINX: We Disabled All Referral Codes After Bad Customers Gamed The System

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Earlier today, we heard that THINX customers were ticked off to find the company had suddenly disabled all the $10 gift codes they’d collected as part of a referral program. When we reached out to THINX for a comment on their referral program and any changes to it, the company said it had to disable all gift card codes after a few bad apples took advantage of the system.

The company told Consumerist in an emailed response that THINX saw “thousands of fraudulent orders created by ‘customers’ who were severely abusing the referral program as it was structured.”

According to THINX, those customers created fake bots and scripts that generated new email addresses, allowing them to then use those emails to sign up for the referral program. That brought them thousands of gift cards, THINX says, because the program was designed to send a $10 gift card to any new customer who created an account.

“Thousands of pairs were ‘purchased’ with these fake gift cards and sold on the second hand market. The loss was devastating,” THINX told Consumerist in the emailed statement.

“After we discovered this issue, we still had hundreds of thousands of dollars in unused, active gift cards from the program and a grand larceny investigation revealed as many as half could have been created maliciously,” THINX’s statement explains.

Because of that, THINX had to disable all the remaining codes.

“We let as many legitimate customers as possible know that we were disabling the current program and enabling a different one that would provide new $10 off codes that could not be combined together,” the company said.

As for any value the customers lost when those emailed codes were disabled, THINX says the company reached out to anyone with a significant number of legitimate gift cards and offered them “several different options for how they’d like their remaining credits handled.”

“If for some reason anyone affected has not been notified of this change, or has missed the original emails pertaining to the situation, we sincerely apologize and urge them to reach out to support@shethinx.com to have the matter rectified immediately,” THINX said.

As for the customer who claimed that her post had been deleted from THINX’s Facebook page, the company says: “We never delete comments and we’re working on answering her momentarily.”

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Amberen Must Stop Claiming Menopause Supplement Is “Proven” To Cause Weight Loss

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Last year, the Federal Trade Commission sued Lunada, the makers of the supplement Amberen, alleging that the company did not have the science to back up claims that Amberen was “clinically proven” to cause substantial weight loss, and to alleviate just about every symptom associated with menopause: hot flashes, night sweats, sleep problems, fatigue, and irritability. Now Lunada has agreed to stop making these claims to settle the complaint.

Radio ads for the supplement said Amberen is “the ONLY product on the market today clinically proven to cause sustained weight loss for women over forty,” and that it is “clinically shown to cause sustained weight loss in women over forty – with no big changes in lifestyle.”

However, footnotes on its advertising revealed that “weight loss was not clinically evaluated in Amberen clinical trials” and that the claims of weight loss were based solely on anecdotal reporting from “some women” who referenced “varying degrees of weight loss.”

The weight loss claims were based solely on a 2001 study done in Russia by the creators of the supplement. That study asked trial subjects — some of whom received a placebo — to write about their menopause-related symptoms in a journal for 21 days. Weight loss was not one of those symptoms and was not measured in any way.

Subsequent reviews of that study also noted that there was no statistical proof that Amberen has positive effect in treating hot flashes or insomnia, where were symptoms monitored in the diaries.

Then a 2012 independent study on Amberen — commissioned by Lunada — found that the average weight loss was only 1.48 pounds over the course of 12 weeks, statistically insignificant compared to the .28 pound average weight gain among the placebo group.

Yet the company continued to market the product as a proven weight loss supplement. Additionally, Lunada claimed a weight loss success rate of 92% and that 93% of women who tried Amberen through the company’s 30-day risk-free trial offer ended up purchasing it.

Speaking of which, those trials weren’t so risk-free, says the FTC, because the company failed to reimburse customers for the return shipping.

As part of the proposed settlement [PDF], Lunada is barred from claiming — without sufficient evidence to substantiate the claims — that any dietary supplement or other product causes weight loss, sustained weight loss, or loss of belly fat; boosts metabolism; relieves hot flashes, night sweats, and other specific symptoms of menopause; or cures, mitigates, or treats any disease.

The Amberen website now claims that there is new scientific research (which it does not make available, other than to name it) to bolster claims regarding hot flashes and other symptoms. While it doesn’t mention weight loss, it makes vague reference to physical changes.

On the website for the Russian medical school where the study was done, we could only find a mention of a 2014 call for test subjects.

The $40 million judgment against Lunada and its principals has been suspended — based on a purported inability to pay — in lieu of a $250,000 payment. If the defendants are later found to have misstated anything about their financial situations, they could face having to pay the full amount.

We attempted to contact Lunada regarding the new research and to find out what happened to all the money it earned from a decade of selling Amberen, but have thus far been unsuccessful.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

New And Improved Version Of Popular ATM Malware Spotted In The Wild

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Modern ATMs are just computers attached to machines stuffed with cash, and that means that ATMs can also be infected with malware and viruses. Back in 2009, a piece of malware that could make an ATM spit out cash or give out the card numbers of people who had recently used the machine was found in the wild, the not-very-creatively-named Skimer. Now the security company Kapersky Labs has discovered a new and better (if you’re not a bank or a consumer) version of Skimer out in the wild.

That isn’t a misspelling: the name is a play on the term “skimmer,” which is a device that records card numbers and PINs for customers who use an ATM or payment kiosk. The “Skimer” malware can record customer card numbers, but can also make the machine do even scarier things from a bank’s point of view, like spit out cash.

We’ve seen other pieces of malware that can take over an ATM and make it spit out money. They happen most often in other countries, but malware attacks on ATMs here in the United States do happen.

What does this look like in action? Here’s a team from Kapersky demonstrating how to insert a special card that activates the malware and

How can you protect yourself against these attacks? That’s the thing: you can’t. You can avoid cash machines that look particularly sketchy, but the point of using malware to compromise an ATM is that it’s invisible to customers, and sometimes invisible to bank employees.

ATM is a New Skimmer: Crooks Bring ATMs on Their Side [Kapersky Lab]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

GM To Compensate Some Vehicle Owners For Misstated Mileage

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Last week, General Motors revealed that it had incorrectly calculated the fuel economy on three models of SUV. The carmaker stopped the sale of these vehicles and is now going through the mea culpa process, trying to make things right with drivers who already own one of these SUVs.

Today, the company alerted dealers that it would try to make it up to thousands of customers by providing them a prepaid gift card valued between $450 and $1,500 or an extended warranty, the Wall Street Journal reports.

Under the program, which will begin on May 25, customers who purchased a 2016 Chevrolet Traverse, GMC Acadia, or Buick Enclave can choose between a debit card or a 48-month/60,000-mile service protection plan that improves their existing factory warranty.

Those who leased one of the affected vehicles will be offered a debit card.

The value of the debit cards will be determined based on whether or not the vehicle was leased or owned, and what type of vehicle it is.

“We designed this reimbursement program to provide full and fair compensation in a simple, flexible and timely manner,” a GM spokesman said, apologizing to customers for the misstated labels.

GM’s issues came to light last week when the company alerted the Environmental Protection Agency that engineers had discovered that fuel-economy labels on the affected vehicles overstated mileage by one to two miles a gallon.

The carmaker maintains that the error was related to new emissions tests conducted required for model year 2016 and onward.

Where the WSJ points out that there is no evidence the errors were made deliberately, our colleagues at Consumer Reports examined whether the discrepancies are present in older model vehicles.

“When Consumer Reports looked at our own historical test data next to fuel economy numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency and GM’s own claims, it seemed like there might be more to this story,” the publication wrote. “It’s possible that the stated figures for the Enclave, Traverse, Acadia, and also the discontinued Saturn Outlook may have been incorrect for years.”

If the issue extends beyond the currently affected models, CR estimates it could be found in nearly two million vehicles.

A spokesperson for GM told CR that it had “found no other models or model years were affected.”

GM Offers Cash or Extended Warranty Over Crossover Fuel Economy Labels [The Wall Street Journal]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

“Aggressive” Tarantulas Get Loose On Flight, Everybody Freaks Out

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In the latest installment of our Arachnids On A Plane series* comes Spiders On A Plane: 2 Fast 2 Be In The Cabin. It’s the second occasion we’ve heard of spiders, specifically tarantulas, getting loose on a plane. But unlike the previous incident, this time the little suckers were scurrying around in the cabin. Otherwise known as, “where all the passengers sit.”

Passengers were reportedly screaming and standing on the their seats during a recent flight from the Dominican Republic to Montreal, reports The Guardian, while flight attendants told everyone to hide their ankles from two tarantulas roaming freely in the cabin.

Witnesses spotted the fuzzy creatures toward the end of the flight, and it felt their presence even more keenly soon after.

“I was wearing a skirt and a spider crawled up my leg,” one passenger told Radio-Canada. “It was during the meal. My husband managed to catch the spider in a plastic container, but it wriggled its legs out. My daughter was crying, she was in shock.”

Flight attendants appeared to be confused — is there protocol you learn in flight attendant training to deal with crawly creatures? Who knows! — and some were scared to approach the spiders. Because spiders.

The union representing Air Transat flight attendants said the crew tried their best to maintain calm, and instructed them to put their shoes on and cover their ankles.

As for the spiders, one was captured during the flight, but the other eluded its pursuers and skittered around in the plane until the flight landed in Montreal. A federal agent was then able to track it down and trap it.

According to an entomologist who spoke to The Guardian, the spiders were probably a species called Phormictopus cancerides (note: not the spider pictured above), which isn’t venomous, but can be aggressive, and frankly, sounds terrifying: they’re anywhere between four and eight inches long, with fangs that can grow longer up to an inch, or possibly more.

It’s unclear how the spiders got loose, but with a demand for live tarantulas as pets, the entomologist speculated that perhaps someone had them in a carry-on.

Air Transat called it an “extraordinary and isolated event,” a spokesperson told The Guardian.

“Passengers who have seen the spiders (we have no confirmation of the species) were certainly surprised, but according to our flight report, they reacted calmly.”

*Because you can’t forget about those scorpions!

Aggressive spiders cause panic on Canada-bound plane [The Guardian]
Spiders spread panic in an Air Transat flight [Radio Canada]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Bank Of America To Allow Android Pay Cash Withdrawals At Some ATMs

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Back in January, Bank of America jumped on the card-free bandwagon by developing new ATMs that allow customers to withdraw cash or complete other tasks using their cellphones instead of their bank cards. This week, the company took that initiative a step farther, announcing it would let customers perform those tasks through Android Pay. 

Bank of America announced the plan to incorporate Android Pay into its cardless ATMs during Google’s I/O developer event earlier this week, noting that it expects to have about 5,000 of the machines around the country by the end of the year.

“Consumers are increasingly using their mobile devices to manage their daily lives, and we’re committed to delivering solutions that give them convenient and secure options when it comes to managing their money,” Michelle Moore, head of Digital Banking at Bank of America, said in a statement.

Bank of America’s cardless ATMs — first piloted in Boston, Charlotte, New York City, San Francisco, and Silicon Valley — can be identified by the contactless symbol near the card reader.

The new cash dispensing machines will also accept payments for BofA credit cards, cash checks, and provide customers with a variety of denominations.

To use the machine, customers select their Bank of America debit card in their digital wallet and hold their device over the ATM’s contactless card reader to activate the ATM. They then follow the normal process to enter their PIN, select their account, and initiate a withdrawal, transfer, or balance inquiry.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Fox Swipes YouTube Clip Of Video Game For “Family Guy” Then Demands Copyright Takedown Of Original

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Seven years ago, a YouTube user uploaded footage of a well-known glitch in the classic basketball video game Double Dribble. More recently, an episode of Fox’s Family Guy used what appears to be this exact same clip. Then the network had the original video temporarily removed from YouTube, claiming it was a copyright violation.

The folks at TorrentFreak noticed that the YouTube video — which shows a glitch that results in an automatic three-point shot every time — had been pulled shortly after Family Guy had two characters playing the game during an episode:

It’s unclear whether the show lifted the clip wholesale or painstakingly recreated it, but the timing of the shots and other details are identical between the two videos.

The original clip, first uploaded in Feb. 2009, has since been restored, and all is right with the world. For the moment.

Let’s be clear that neither the YouTuber nor Fox hold the copyright to Double Dribble. The network, which also runs the studio that produces Family Guy may have a copyright claim against people who upload actual footage from the show, but not footage that the show swipes from other sources.

For example, if Family Guy uses a clip of Wizard of Oz, it can’t go around demanding takedowns of any other video that uses the same footage, even if those videos violate the copyright for the 1939 movie.

It reminds of the story from last year of the musician whose work had been licensed for use in an audio book produced by Universal Music… who then sent takedown demands of his original work, claiming that he was violating their copyright.

In that case — and likely in the Family Guy instance — the takedown demands were not sent by any sort of sneering, evil corporate goon, but by a faceless video/audio-scanning bot that saw the original Double Dribble upload, compared it to its database of copyrighted materials and determined — incorrectly — that it was footage from Family Guy.

At the same time, the lack of malicious intent on Fox’s part only serves to highlight the careless, shoot-first approach to protecting copyright. Had Fox’s copybot done something as simple as a date comparison, it would have seen there was no way the video game footage could have come from a Family Guy episode that only aired in the last few days.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

Customers Claim Period Underwear Company THINX Suddenly Retracted Thousands Of Dollars In Referral Credits

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One good way for new companies to spread awareness of their products is to offer referral credits to customers: get a friend to sign up or buy, and you get money to spend with the company. But period underwear company THINX may be rethinking (rethinxing?) its referral program, as some people are now claiming it’s taking back thousands of dollars in credits it doled out to customers and bloggers.

For those not in the know, THINX makes underwear that the company says can replace the need for panty liners and can be used in conjunction with other feminine hygiene products like pads and tampons, depending on each individual’s needs.

Consumerist reader Kimberly pointed us to a post on Put A Cup In It, a site that advocates the use of menstrual cups and other alternatives to pads and tampons, laying out claims made by various bloggers and customers who purchased the panties and shared their referral codes.

To get people to share its brand, THINX offered a refer-a-friend program: share a unique code with your pals, they get $10 off their first order, and you get $10 by way of a code that could be used like a gift card.

“When they make a purchase you’ll also get a $10 THINX gift card as a reward! Pretty straightforward. Go on, now. Get that guap. You deserve it.” read the email, via Put A Cup In It.

That’s a pretty good deal, when you take into account the $24-$38 price tag for each pair of underwear — stacking up those codes could mean never having to pay for underwear ever again. Bloggers bought the panties themselves and reviewed them, in turn, sharing their referrals, including a co-founder of Put A Cup In It.

“I had been asked about THINX several times by readers so when their PR person asked for a call to discuss a review and giveaway I figured ‘why not.’ I spent 30 minutes chatting and the PR person was quick to offer free THINX for me to review, and she wanted a video review,” says Kim Rosas of Dirty Diaper Laundry. “When I mentioned I had fees for a giveaway she didn’t seem as pleased, but asked me to send that information. I didn’t hear from her again for 6 whole months, by which time I’d already purchased a pair, published a review, and earned hundreds of $10 gift codes.”

As those kinds of posts circulated in the blogging world, Rosas says she wrote to the company to find a way to keep things from spiraling out of control: she realized if she used all the gift card codes she’d amassed, and if others did the same, the company would be out of thousands of dollars in product.

She approached THINX with an idea for a more traditional affiliate program where referrals would earn bloggers 5-10% of purchases. She says that in response, THINX said it was discontinuing the current program and would be in touch if other opportunities came up.

A few weeks later, THINX’s referral program changed, Put A Cup In It says: after April 28, referring friends and readers to THINX earned a $10 coupon code — but only toward a single purchase. Codes aren’t considered gift cards and cannot be combined or accrued in a user’s account. Under this system, each time you want to use that $10 off, you’d only get that discount on one purchase, meaning you’d pay the difference in price up front, instead of being able to apply a bunch of gift codes and pay nothing.

Rosas says she sent about $100 in THINX codes from her bank of codes she’d earned to her hairdresser, who tried to use them without success. When she clicked on the codes in her email collection, each one showed up as disabled. Other friends reported back to her with similar stories.

“I was humiliated and felt robbed by the company I’d been shouting from the rooftops for months,” she says, after having around $2,000 in gift cards deactivated.

One customer claims she posted a question about the referral program on the THINX Facebook page, only to have it deleted.

“Seriously? You deleted my post from yesterday asking a question about this and never answered,” she wrote, posting a link to Put A Cup In It’s story. “Is this true? Are you deleting our referral codes? It appears you did it to some bloggers. Don’t delete this. Put your big girl Thinx on and address this. ”

Currently, the “get $10” link on the THINX website promotes a “Give $10, Get $10” model. Customers used to the previous referral system might not realize the change, as there’s nothing to indicate that the $10 is only for a single purchase.

While it makes sense for a company to change a program that could be causing them to bleed money, pun unintended, it’s also a good idea to alert your customers to that change, communicate what will happen to the referral dollars they’ve already collected.

We reached out to THINX for a comment on their referral program and any changes to it, and will update this post when we hear back.

Why We No Longer Support THINX [Put A Cup In It]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Google Patents Pedestrian “Glue” For Self-Driving Cars

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While Google’s self-driving vehicles have been cruising around the streets, the company’s engineers have been working on a way to ensure pedestrians that may come into contact with the bumper of one of those autonomous vehicles are left relatively unscathed. Their apparent solution: an adhesive that makes people stick to the car’s hood. 

At least that’s the impression one might get from a recent Google patent intended to protect pedestrians during impact with a vehicle.

“Some efforts have been made to provide for the mitigation of injury to a pedestrian in a collision with an [autonomous] vehicle,” Google says in the patent, noting that when a vehicle has a person behind the wheel the operator is able to react in a way that can prevent injury, where as a fully self-driving vehicle can not.

According to the patent, the system is for protecting a colliding object from a secondary impact after initially hitting the vehicle.

That means while someone would have to actually be hit by Google’s self-driving car, they wouldn’t be pushed forward and hit a second time.

Here’s how it would work: an adhesive layer covered by a special coating would be placed on the front end of a vehicle.

Upon initial impact, the coating would be broken exposing the adhesive layer to “adhere the colliding object to the adhesive layer during the initial impact.”

Google says in the patent that the adhesive wouldn’t be relegated to the front of the vehicle; it could also be used on side panels, as well.

So far, Google’s self-driving vehicles have reportedly only been in accidents involving other cars, or in one case, a city bus. The patent suggests the company is taking the potential of a pedestrian versus car accident seriously.

Of course, we should point out that while Google has filed for the patent, that doesn’t mean the company will actually use it in the future.

[via Engadget]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Stores Are Crammed With Unsold Merchandise, Especially Clothes

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Here’s some great news for bargain-hunters, if not necessarily for retailers: dismal sales numbers from national retailers have experts worried about the future of American malls. Low sales numbers mean stores crammed with inventory that will have to be put on sale. That could boost total sales numbers, but hurt profits.

If this sounds familiar, it’s because it’s similar to what happened in department and specialty clothing stores at the end of 2015, too. Retailers blamed unseasonably warm weather for poor sales of winter clothes.

“Right now, retailers have started cutting back on deliveries for the third and fourth quarter,” a retail analyst explained to Reuters. That might mean stores end up ordering too little new merchandise during the back-to-school and holiday seasons during the second half of the year, or that they might still be trying to unload merchandise from the first half of the year.

Where you’re less likely to find deep discounts later this year are Walmart and off-price clothing and household goods stores like T.J. Maxx, Ross, and Marshalls, since shoppers have shifted a lot of their clothing spending to those stores.

Unsold U.S. retail inventory a challenge after dismal earnings season [Reuters]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Budweiser’s Parent Company Wants To Fill the Corona-Shaped Hole In Your Heart With Jalisco Estrella

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When Anheuser-Busch InBev merged with Corona parent company Grupo-Modelo, it had to sell the U.S. rights to the popular beer to another company in order to abide by a Justice Department requirement to keep the marketplace fair and competitive. To fill that Corona-shaped hole in your heart, Budweiser’s parent company is now bringing Jalisco Estrella across the border and into American stores and bars.

With the addition of Jalisco Estrella, AB InBev is responding to consumers’ growing love of Mexican beers: as MarketWatch points out, the market for Mexican beers imported to the U.S. has grown by 14.2% in in 2015, according to industry researcher IRI Worldwide.

Jalisco Estrella may be new to U.S. customers, but it’s a brand that goes back to 1910, and is popular on Mexico’s Pacific Coast in particular, Anheuser-Busch marketing director Jorge Inda Meza told MarketWatch.

So far, so good: the response to Estrella Jalisco has been very strong since it hit the market a few months ago, Maza said, though he declined to provide sales figures.

He says in many cases stores are selling out of the beer, to the point where the company has created signs to alert beer customers that “our brewery is hard at work making more.”

Unlike Corona, Maza says Estrella Jalisco doesn’t require a lime to finish off the taste, but that’s entirely up to you drinkers.

Anheuser-Bush to take on Corona with this Mexican beer [MarketWatch]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Study: Your Computer May Be Tracking You Online Through An ‘Audio Fingerprint’

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We all kind of know that our devices, and our activities on them, are being tracked. In response, there are entire categories of apps and services that let you browse incognito, block ads, or hide your tracks — and many of those are quite popular. But it turns out there’s another kind of tracking signal that those privacy protectors, for the most part, miss.

A study out of Princeton (PDF) has found that in addition to all the cookies and beacons and digital fingerprints we know leave behind us, there’s one that is metaphorically shouting your presence — you just can’t hear it.

It’s audio fingerprinting. As in yes, trackers are listening to you. Not to what you do, exactly, but to what you use. And no, it’s not weird science-fiction stuff; it’s tech that’s really in the world.

So, your computer makes sound. Not system sounds or booting beeps, or music or audio you actually play, but the sound of its own electrons doing their thing. It’s out of your range of hearing, but that sound cluster is there.

Now what you can do, if you really want a way to identify a particular machine, is add a unique sound into that mix. The user can’t hear it (nor, for that matter, can the tracker), but software can.

So in order to track you by the audio fingerprint your device makes, a script checks for the existence of certain audio-related code and then drops in a tiny extra bit of information, to create a unique fingerprint:

In the simplest case, a script from the company Liverail checks for the existence of an AudioContext and OscillatorNode to add a single bit of information to a broader fingerprint. More sophisticated scripts process an audio signal generated with an OscillatorNode to fingerprint the device. … Audio signals processed on different machines or browsers may have slight differences due to hardware or software differences between the machines, while the same combination of machine and browser will produce the same output.

The researchers have a site where you can see a visualization of your own hardware’s audio fingerprint, as well as snippets of the relevant code if that’s a thing that makes sense to you.

This is not a widespread tracking tactic, the researchers make sure to emphasize. But because it is niche, the vast majority of privacy protecting services — including the common browser extensions consumers use — aren’t going to know to do anything about it.

Niche also doesn’t mean from someone you’ve never heard of, nor does it preclude the idea eventually becoming more widespread if it proves effective. LiveRail, the company that checks for the existence of audio code? They’re a Facebook company. That certainly means that if they wanted to expand the use of this technology, they’d sure have the means to do so.

[via TechCrunch]

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

The Short Rise (And Possible Fall) Of Online Teen Clothing Retailer Shop Jeen

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Yet another teen retailer appears poised to join the likes of Aeropostale, DEB, Wet Seal, and Delia’s on the list of clothing stores that have fallen from their glory days of outfitting youngsters in fashionable duds. The website of quick-rising online retailer Shop Jeen has been down for several days.

Unless you’re into teen clothing, you might not have heard of Shop Jeen, but it’s an online retailer that quickly came popular for its cheeky and topical selection of clothing and accessories tailored to “hip, cool” teens.

But it appears that just as quickly as the online retailer burst onto the scene it’s also fading, with the company’s website down for several days and its 24-year-old CEO deflecting discussion on the company’s issue in social media posts.

BuzzFeed News reports that the website for the company, which launched in 2012, has been down since at least May 13, leaving hundreds of customers waiting for orders and unable to find information on when or if those packages will ever arrive.

CEO and founder Erin Yogasundram briefly addressed the issue in a “vague and dramatic” Snapchat video Tuesday, noting that “there’s a lot of shit going on with us, with Shop Jeen. We’re going to talk about it soon, we’ll have a statement.”

The company addressed an issue to BuzzFeed News:

“Shop Jeen has been experiencing operational challenges, which we are working extremely hard to address. Fortunately, we are close to a resolution and the site will be operational shortly. Approximately 5% of orders from the last 60 days have been affected and we ensure that they will all be shipped. Nothing is more important to us than our relationship with our customers and we sincerely apologize for the disruption in service.”

Yogasundram opened Shop Jeen from her dorm room at George Washington University, and the site quickly went viral thanks to its meme-themed and emoji-heavy clothing and accessories.

“I was studying sociology, and I was failing everything ’cause my heart was actually in, like, immersing myself in experience — you learn so much better like that,” Yogasundram told MTV last year.

The company enjoyed a wealth of positive media coverage and supposedly healthy sales after its launch. In fact, Yogasundram MTV that Shop Jeen had 22 employees in its New York office and she was readying to open a location in California.

The company also reportedly had an impressive following on social media, with over 400,000 Instagram followers and 60,000 Facebook likes.

In addition to Internet fandom, Shop Jeen was also apparently quickly profitable. Yogasundram claimed to have made $50,000 in her first month as CEO of the company, according to a profile in New York Magazine’s The Cut. She later told Business Insider that the company makes “millions” in sales each year.

But it appears the love from customers and others disappeared just as quickly as it started.

In September, Jezebel reported that not everything was sunshine at Shop Jeen. At the time, the company was facing allegations of misconduct, such as failing to pay vendors on time and only addressing the non-payments when legal action was threatened.

In one instance a vendor told Jezebel that she encountered payment delays for much of the time she worked with company. The vendor claims that she eventually received payment, but not after receiving confrontational emails with Yogasundram.

“She’s really trying to make us feel like the bad ones [for having asked for payment],” the vendor said, showing an email in which Yogasundram noted that she had recently flown to New York to close the company’s offices, as they could “no longer afford” it.

At the same time vendors were experiencing delays, so were customers. Complaints from shoppers focused mainly on the fact that shipments weren’t arriving when they were promised.

Those issues were difficult for the company to address, as Jezebel reports it only had one customer service rep.

“I generally enjoyed my time at the company due to my coworkers,” the rep tells Jezebel. “Having said that, it was not well organized and it was very difficult to [do] my job well due largely to internal issues such as money and lack of communication from management.”

These issues seem to have come to a head for Shop Jeen, BuzzFeed reports, noting that customers are now getting antsy about their pending orders.

Yogasundram recently posted several Tweets suggesting she was homeless or struggling to hold ground in the business world following news that Shop Jeen’s site was down.

#WhyYouNeedTherapyInOneWord business

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 20, 2016

should I take a job as a sign flipper for cash for gold place

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 20, 2016

if I knew then what I know now…. fuck

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 20, 2016

I really wanna help these kids man there's not enough resources for young entrepreneurs out here

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 20, 2016

someone thought I was pretending to be homeless to be funny if only she knew….

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 20, 2016

if u got a brand and u want #promo HMU I'll take stupid pics like this with ur product I need money I'm homeless http://pic.twitter.com/V7Q0DCrMmF

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 20, 2016

in a world full of snakes and an industry full of hateful people I LOVE THE REAL ONES WHO GENUINELY SUPPORT AND HOLD YOU DOWN

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 18, 2016

the best part about being homeless is going to meetings w big corporations smelling like shit

— GC FAM (@ERINJEEN) May 18, 2016

Shop Jeen’s Website Has Disappeared [BuzzFeed News]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Facebook Lawsuit Over Scanning Of Private Messages Moves Forward, But Plaintiffs Will Receive No Money

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Way back in late 2013, a lawsuit accused Facebook of scanning links in users’ private messages and turning them into public “Likes,” from which the company earned revenue. This week, a federal court certified the class action, giving it the green light to move forward, but none of the plaintiffs should expect to see any money if they prevail at trial.

According to the complaint, which was amended in April 2014 [PDF], when someone pasted a URL into a private message with another user, “Facebook treated the content of Plaintiffs’ private messages as an endorsement of the website, adding up to two ‘Likes’ to the page’s count.”

So even if you wrote your buddy, “Hey, check out this awful website!” Facebook might still consider the sharing and any subsequent clicking on that link as an endorsement.

In a court order [PDF] granting class certification to the lawsuit, more details have come out on why and how Facebook uses this information from private messages.

Through the discovery process, the plaintiffs point to internal Facebook emails to support their claims. One email refers to the “acknowledged problem” that “a shortage of likes is limiting the number of users that can be targeted by their interests and thereby affecting revenue.” A second employee email more explicitly states that the motivation behind including private-message data in “Like” counts was to make the counts “as big as possible.”

Yet another employee wrote in an email that “we have intentionally not proactively messaged what this [Like] number is since it’s kind of sketchy how we construct it.”

Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerburg chimed in on the issue in an email, complaining that the “Like” equivalents on Twitter were higher than what you’d see on Facebook, and that “we should be showing the largest number we can rationalize showing.”

In addition to racking up potentially bonus “Likes” for web pages, the plaintiffs claimed that Facebook scrapes the data from these private messages to create profiles of users, which are then used to deliver targeted advertising.

The plaintiffs originally sought to define the offended class as all Facebook users located within the U.S. “who have sent or received private messages that included URLs in their content, from within two years before the filing of this action up through and including the date when Facebook ceased its practice.”

Then, when it came time to file the motion to certify the plaintiff class, the description became simultaneously more generous — removing a reference to Facebook having ended the practice — and more specific, adding the requirement that Facebook must have “generated a URL attachment” from the link shared in the private message.

The plaintiffs say that both changes to the class description were based on things they learned during the discovery process.

Speaking of which, they also claim that having access to proprietary Facebook info has turned up other alleged violations of federal law.

First, they allege that Facebook is using info scraped from private messages not just to generate recommendations for those involved in the message itself, but also for third-party users. According to their review of Facebook’s inner workings, your friends recommendations are based, in part, on the links you share. So the collection of this data has an impact on more than the two people involved in the private conversation.

Finally, the plaintiffs claim that Facebook is sharing the data collected from private messages with third parties so that they can generate targeted recommendations.

Facebook’s lawyers and the plaintiffs’ experts have gone back and forth about whether or not it’s possible to ascertain which users may have been affected by Facebook’s data-scraping. Ultimately, the court came down on the side of the plaintiffs, finding that the class of plaintiffs was identifiable, that it was so large in scale that the plaintiffs need not provide specific numbers, and that they all involve the same common legal questions.

While the plaintiffs allege that Facebook’s scraping and sharing of the URLs from private messages constitutes a violation of the anti-wiretapping prohibitions in the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, the company contends that the ECPA only applies to the interception of the content of messages, and that all Facebook is doing is sharing the “record information” about the message, which they believe would be allowable under the law.

Facebook argues that the only way to determine if it truly scraped the content of these messages would be to perform a “URL-by-URL, message-by-message, sender-by-sender analysis” of the potentially billions of messages sent by the presumably hundreds of millions of plaintiffs in the class.

What’s more, Facebook’s position is that the URLs in these private messages do not constitute content. However, the court disagreed.

“In the messages at issue in this case, the sender is affirmatively choosing to share a certain webpage with the recipient, and the webpage itself is the ‘substance, purport, or meaning’ of the message,” writes the court. “The fact that the substance of the message happens to be in the form of a URL does not transform it from ‘content’ to ‘record information.'”

The judge notes that Facebook undermines its own argument by its practice of creating URL preview for the links that are shared in these messages.

“If the URL represented only ‘record information,’ then why would Facebook create a “preview” of it for the recipient to view?” asks the court.

However, because it will effectively be impossible to prove that the members of the class actually suffered any damage as a result of the alleged wrongdoing, the court certified the class of plaintiffs in such a way that they will not receive any monetary relief.

That means that, if the plaintiffs prevail, Facebook could be stopped from this sort of practice, but don’t expect to get any sort of payment out of it.

Facebook, in a statement to The Verge, seemed pleased with that decision.

“We agree with the court’s finding that the alleged conduct did not result in any actual harm and that it would be inappropriate to allow plaintiffs to seek damages on a class-wide basis,” explains Facebook, which contends that the “remaining claims relate to historical practices that are entirely lawful.”

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

TD Bank Gets Rid Of Coin-Counting Machines, Makes Pennies More Useless

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Pennies just became a little bit more useless. TD Bank’s Penny Arcade coin-counting machines have been a useful perk for the bank’s customers and non-customers, letting them convert jars full of loose change into useful cash. After an NBC news test turned up inaccuracies in the machines and a customer sued over his miscounted coins, TD Bank is ending the program and will eventually remove the machines.

Since an April NBC report, the bank’s branches had just suspended the change-counting machines, saying that they were under re-evaluation. Machines were supposed to be tested daily for accuracy, but a team from Today found that the final count varied when they dumped in exactly $300. They were off by amounts as low as $.05, and as much as $43.10.

The bank’s head of consumer banking explained to CNN that while free coin-counting was a longtime service for their customers, it was time to end the Penny Arcade program.

“[R]ecent accounts regarding the performance of our Penny machines have led us to reassess this offering,” he explained. “We have determined that it is difficult to ensure a consistently great experience for our customers.”

The amusing irony in all of this is that TD Bank is the United States offshoot of Canada’s Toronto Dominion Bank, and Canada began phasing out pennies from their currency back in 2012.

Horror! TD Bank dumping Penny Arcade coin machines [CNN]
Coin-counting machines may be shortchanging you [Today]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

This Is How You Fail At Sponsored Social Media Posts

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We’ve written in the past about how it’s illegal not to disclose when you’re getting paid to post about a product on social media like. There was nothing under-the-radar about a recent sponsored Instagram photo reality TV person Scott Disick posted, however.

In a very good lesson in how not to do the internet, Disick, who appears on a reality TV show about a wacky family called Keeping Up with the Kardashians, included instructions apparently provided by Skinny Tea’s marketing team for posting a caption on a photo of himself with their product, for all of his 19.5 million followers to see.

No one can say he didn’t do what he was told — the caption is there, after all. It reads:

“Here you go, at 4pm est, write the below.
Caption: Keeping up with the summer workout routine with my morning @booteauk protein shake”

Sponsored posts can bring in lots of cash for social media influencers and celebrity endorsers: as Jezebel noted in January, Disick can make between $15,000 to $20,000 per sponsored post, just for putting products in front of the eyeballs of his millions of followers.

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

After Nearly 1,000 Complaints, Regulators May Open Investigation Into GM Airbag Issue

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General Motors isn’t making any new Saturn or Pontiac vehicles, but owners of the many Saturns and Pontiacs still on the road should have some reasonable expectation that their airbags will deploy properly when needed.

This is why the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration is working to determine if a full-scale investigation into 91,000 vehicles that contain airbags that may not deploy properly is needed.

The potential investigation, which centers on 91,205 model year 2007 to 2010 Saturn Sky and model year 2006 to 2010 Pontiac Solstice vehicles made under the General Motors banner, was initiated after the agency received more than 900 consumer complaints and a petition from one owner.

According to a notice [PDF] posted with NHTSA, the Office of Defects Investigations received a petition requesting a defect investigation into the vehicles’ airbag systems.

The petition [PDF] alleged that the Passenger Sensing System (PSS) sensor mat can break over time. If this occurs it could lead to a failure in the circuitry of the sensor mat that may lead to the passenger air bag system being inoperative when the seat is occupied by a passenger that would otherwise require air bag protection.

In addition to receiving the petition to open an investigation into the General Motors-made vehicles, NHTSA says it has received 933 complaints from owners over the issue.

“The identified complaints encompass several General Motors vehicle models in addition to the Pontiac Solstice and Saturn Sky,” the agency says. “ODI will evaluate these complaints further to determine if the complaints pertain to the issue cited in the petition.”

Complaints submitted by owners alleged, among other things, that the issue is first noticed when the car’s “service airbag light” comes on. Subsequent visits to dealers for repair have resulted in thousands of dollars worth of repairs.

“As complained by most Saturn Sky owners this should be recalled. HUGE SAFETY ISSUE!! Is it really going to take more deaths to have this considered recall-able? I now have both airbag lights on and estimated cost of repairs is close $1500,” the owner of a 2007 Saturn Sky tells NHTSA in a complaint.

“On the right side airbag is not working, I had it checked out and they said it would be 1,050 dollars to fix it,” the owner of a 2007 Pontiac Solstice owner writes.

“My 2009 Saturn Sky, with less than 50,000 miles, displays the ’service air bag’ light in the instrument panel for no reason,” another owner writes. “The air bags have never deployed and the car has never been in an accident. I am taking it to an authorized GM dealer but this cost and problem is absurd for a car well taken care of and garage kept.”

“Passenger airbag service light came on at 67K,” the owner of a 2009 Solstice says. “The car was never involved in any accident and has no damage. Took it to a GM dealer, they want $900 to fix the faulty sensor. It should be a manufacturer recall.”

NHTSA says in its notice that the Office of Defects Investigations will evaluate the issue and determine if an investigation is warranted.

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Those Updated Nutrition Labels On All Your Packaged Food Are Finally Happening

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It’s something most of us learned to do decades ago: you see an inviting package on the supermarket shelf. You pick it up, have a look at the front to see if you might like that flavor, and then flip it over to stare intently at the familiar white nutrition label on the back. Well now, finally, after much hemming and hawing, those nutrition labels are getting an overdue upgrade.

The changes look a lot like the proposal the FDA unveiled more than two years ago, in Feb. 2014. But rules don’t change immediately, by fiat; the agency had to go through a whole long process of proposal, comment, and approval in order to make the change.

So what’s going to be different? The white box you’re used to will look pretty similar to the way it has, but some of the contents are going to change, especially when it comes to serving size. Some highlights include:

• The number of calories per serving will be a BIG, bold number that you can’t easily miss.
• Serving sizes are going to have to shift to be more similar to portions actual human people really eat. (When’s the last time you had a measured half-cup of breakfast cereal in a measured half-cup of milk?)
• Some line items that only listed contents in percentages [of daily recommended value] before will now actually include real quantity measurements, in grams.
• Items you might consume in a single sitting even if they’re more than one serving, like your classic pint of breakup ice cream, will have to show both the per-serving and per-container values.
• Single-serve but theoretically multi-serving containers, like 20 oz sodas, will just have to list the numbers for the whole bottle as one serving because let’s be real, people don’t usually share or save half for tomorrow.
• Some of the recommended daily value numbers have been tweaked, because the science on how much you should or shouldn’t have has been updated.

In short, the FDA says, your new labels are going to look a lot like this:

The full text of the newly updated rules regarding both serving sizes and nutrition will be posted to the Federal Register soon.

Meanwhile, it might still take a while for you to get used to seeing the new label out in the wild; the deadline for manufacturers to get it in use is July 26, 2018.

by Kate Cox via Consumerist

Dick’s Will Bid For Maybe 2 Dozen Sports Authority Leases After Stores Close

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When Sports Authority locations and their merchandise went up for sale in the first round of auctions after the retailer filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, experts thought that the chain’s biggest competitor might bid for up to 100 stores to snap up areas where it doesn’t already do business. Dick’s did bid for some stores, but ultimately lost out to liquidators. That’s okay, though, the company’s CEO explained during an earnings call this week: they’ll go for the store leases after the locations they want close.

Out of the 460 Sports Authority stores that were already slated to close after the bankruptcy or were sold to liquidators and will begin their going-out-of-business sales next week, it turns out that industry leader Dick’s wants relatively few of them.

The company also warned investors that the liquidation sales at Sports Authority could hurt its next few quarters, including the important back-to-school season.

Dick’s is ready to bring on Sports Authority customers, though: in some markets, they’ve started TV and radio commercials enticing people who belong to the Sports Authority loyalty card program to sign up for their version.

As Sports Authority prepares for going-out-of-business sales, competitor Dick’s bides time [Denver Post]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Macy’s To Pay $15M Over Escalator That Mangled Girl’s Foot

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In 2013, a young New Jersey girl’s leg became trapped in a Macy’s escalator while on a shopping trip with her family. Nearly three years later, the family, the retailer, and the company tasked with maintaining the escalator are ready to put the ordeal behind them, agreeing to a $15 million settlement.

Macy’s agreed this week to pay $15 million to the family this week to settle a lawsuit that claimed Macy’s and escalator company ThyssenKrupp Elevator America Inc. were negligent in the August 2013 incident that occurred at the Garden State Plaza Mall in New Jersey, NorthJersey.com reports.

The retailer and ThyssenKrupp agreed to the financial terms of the settlement, but did not admit liability in the case, which is currently sealed as it includes a minor.

While Macy’s owns the escalator, ThyssenKrupp is responsible for the inspection, maintenance and repair of the escalators at the Garden State Plaza Mall store.

“I think the settlement can be judged by its size as to whether Macy’s felt culpable in its conduct,” the attorney tells NorthJersey.com.

A spokesperson for Macy’s said she could not comment on the settlement.

The girl, who was 10 at the time of the incident, was riding the escalator during a shopping trip when her right foot became trapped.

By the time a passerby was able to stop the escalator with the emergency stop switch, the girl’s leg was trapped about halfway between her right ankle and knee.

According to the lawsuit, “copious amounts of [the victim’s] blood and tissue were distributed over at least 11 steps as the escalator continued grinding up against [the victim’s] trapped foot and leg.”

The girl was hospitalized for three months and doctors were unable to save her pinky and second toes.

In all, NorthJersey.com reports the girl has undergone a series of 22 surgeries in an effort to save her foot and leg.

“She received skin and muscle grafts from other parts of her body, and endured lung and kidney failure,” the family’s attorney said, noting that she now walks with a “slight limp.”

Family of Bergenfield girl injured in Garden State Plaza escalator accident to get $15M [NorthJersey.com]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist

Report: Sprint Changes Its Mind Again, Will Kill Off Two-Year Contracts After All

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Sprint can’t seem to decide what it wants to do with two-year contracts: after announcing in January that it would join the other major carriers in ditching the two-year deals, Sprint backtracked a month later and said it would still offer them to existing customers. That resolve may not have stuck, as a new report claims the wireless company is again preparing to eliminate two-year contracts.

According to an internal slide obtained by Android Central, Sprint will only offer two-year contracts on a “reactive basis.”

“What’s a reactive basis?” you may be reacting. It probably means Sprint won’t be advertising two-year plans and they might even disappear from the company website, but if you complain enough or ask nicely, you could possibly still get one.

“Saying Goodbye,” the document reads, with a 5/24/16 date for “Moving Away From 2-Year Pricing In Our Systems.”

The slide seems to be information for employees on the change, with a note that 2-year pricing on all new accounts won’t be available, and customers won’t be able to upgrade to that two-year pricing, except on that reactive basis. Phone financing and leasing programs will be the main offerings employees push, though of course you can still pay full retail price for the phone without a subsidy.

Sprint will kill off two-year contracts for the second time on May 24 [Android Central]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

Consumerist Friday Flickr Finds

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Here are ten of the best photos that readers added to the Consumerist Flickr Pool in the last week, picked for usability in a Consumerist post or for just plain neatness.

Want to see your pictures on our site? Our Flickr pool is the place where Consumerist readers upload photos for possible use in future Consumerist posts. Just be a registered Flickr user, go here, and click “Join Group?” up on the top right. Choose your best photos, then click “send to group” on the individual images you want to add to the pool.

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Don’t Ruin Your Summer Fun With Water-Borne Illness: Make Sure Pools And Hot Tubs Are Safe

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Swimming in a pool or soaking in a communal hot tub are super fun things to do in the summer, but can also become injured, or something in the water can make you sick. You can scrupulously chlorinate and maintain your own pool, and trust your friends and family to do the same, but when venturing in public swimming pools, you can perform some quick checks as a health precaution.

The most common waterborne illness is diarrhea, which you may not even attribute to your family’s trip to a pool or water park. Cryptosporidium (commonly called Crypto), Giardia, Shigella, norovirus, and E. coli O157:H7. These illnesses spread when fecal bacteria ends up in the pool (we’re sure you can figure out how that happens), and the levels of disinfectants aren’t high enough to kill the virus or bacteria.

Other unexpected infections spread at the pool include skin, eye, and ear infections caused by bacteria in the water. Pseudomonas Dermatitis or Folliculitis is a contagious infection of the skin or hair follicles that you can contract after spending a long time in water that hasn’t been properly disinfected.

It’s often associated with hot tubs, but can also happen in pools or even lakes. One way to avoid it is to not sit around in your swimsuit for a long time after soaking in a hot tub, to shower after getting out, and to make sure to launder your suit between dips.

Legionella, the bacteria that cause Legionnaire’s Disease, can also grow in water that isn’t properly disinfected, and can cause fatal pneumonia, especially in people who are elderly, former smokers, or immunocompromised.

This isn’t meant to scare you out of going to pools, hot tubs, or water parks, of course. What you need to keep in mind are the CDC’s tips for keeping yourself and your family from getting sick or injured in the water, and maybe stopping outbreaks in their tracks.

Carry your own test strips and check the water before getting in. Disposable strips are inexpensive and easy to find, and you can easily throw them in a bag with your towel. Sure, you might look paranoid, but I’d rather look paranoid than have norovirus again.

Can you see the drain at the bottom of the pool? This is to make sure that the water isn’t cloudy, and that lifeguards and other people around the pool can see to the bottom in case there are swimmers in distress. Speaking of which…

Make sure that the drains are securely closed. People can get hair, swimsuits, or parts of their body trapped in a drain and drown.

Is there a lifeguard, or rescue equipment? If you don’t see equipment like flotation devices or a pole, maybe don’t bother swimming that day.

Thousands of public pools, hot tubs closed due to serious violations [CDC]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

DOJ: Concerns About Expanded Government Hacking Much Ado About Nothing

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Earlier today, a bipartisan group of senators introduced legislation intended to combat new rules that some critics believe gives expanded hacking authority to federal law enforcement agencies. In response, the Justice Department claims that this bill isn’t necessary to protect consumers’ privacy.

At the core of this debate is a little something known as Rule 41, which is not the name of an early ’80s post-punk band from Spokane. Instead, it refers to Rule 41 of the Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure, which deals with issues of legal searches and seizures.

The U.S. Supreme Court recently signed off on amendments to Rule 41 that have raised alarm bells among privacy-minded consumers, lawmakers, and advocates.

One of the biggest concerns in the proposed amendments [PDF] involves a new addition granting magistrate judges the authority to “issue a warrant to use remote access to search electronic storage media and to seize or copy electronically stored information” if the location of that information has been “concealed through technological means,” or if there’s a hacking incident that involves damaged devices in multiple locations.

Opponents of this change to Rule 41 say that it unlawfully confers a new authority that changes substantive rights. There’s nothing against the law about disguising your location electronically, this is why phone number spoofing — however frequently it’s misused by scammers — is legal, because there are people (victims of domestic violence, whistleblowers, and journalists to name a few) who may have a good, legitimate reason to disguise their location.

But in an emailed statement to Consumerist, a spokesperson for the DOJ contends that “The amendment would not authorize the government to undertake any search or seizure or use any remote search technique not already permitted under current law,” and that law enforcement would still be required to demonstrate probable cause.

The amendment, claims the DOJ rep, “would merely ensure that some court is available to consider whether a particular warrant application comports with the Fourth Amendment.”

In the DOJ’s view of the Rule 41 amendments, the hiding of the location isn’t the crime; it’s just the reason that the government would need a warrant to remotely access a suspect’s information. The amendment does state that “the officer must make reasonable efforts to serve a copy of the warrant on the person whose property was searched or whose information was seized or copied.” The government would be allowed to try to serve this warrant electronically if need be.

The other issue of concern for opponents of the amendment involves the authority to remotely search computers that have been damaged as part of a widespread cyber attack. Specifically, it would allow the government to seek a warrant to remotely peek at computers that are part of a botnet, where your device is — unbeknownst to you — being used by a malicious third party to send spam or crash a website with a denial of service attack.

To the EFF, allowing this sort of remote access to people who have already been victimized by malware makes them a victim all over again.

“Even with the best of intentions, a government agent could well cause as much or even more harm to a computer through remote access than the malware that originally infected the computer,” explains the EFF’s Rainey Reitman. “Malicious actors may even be able to hijack the malware the government uses to infiltrate botnets, because the government often doesn’t design its malware securely.”

But the DOJ spokesperson contends that this change to Rule 41 is needed for the sake of expediency when trying to take down a widespread attack like a botnet.

“This rule change would permit agents to go to one federal judge, rather than submit separate warrant applications to each of the 94 federal districts,” explains the DOJ. “That duplication of effort makes no sense.”

The DOJ successfully convinced the Supreme Court that this amendment is purely procedural and does not change the “underlying substantive law regulating these searches. Allowing venue in a single district in no way alters the constitutional requirements that must be met before search warrants can be issued.”

Congress has until Dec. 1 to decide on whether to adopt the Rule 41 amendments or leave them as-is.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

University Of Phoenix To Stop Stripping Students Of Their Right To Sue School

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A recent study found that student enrollment agreements at virtually all of the nation’s biggest for-profit colleges have forced arbitration clauses that strip students of their rights to file a lawsuit against the school, and in most cases bar students from joining their similar or identical disputes together. Under pressure from lawmakers and consumer advocates who questioned how these schools could continue to take billions in federal aid while trying to avoid accountability in the courtroom, the nation’s biggest for-profit educator has decided to stop using the controversial arbitration clauses.

Apollo Education Group, parent company of University of Phoenix, announced today that, effective July 1, neither Phoenix nor Apollo’s Western International University would use mandatory arbitration clauses in their students’ enrollment agreements.

The company does not force students at its other U.S.-based schools — the College for Financial Planning and The Iron Yard — into arbitration, so this move would bring the entire Apollo portfolio in line.

“We have worked hard to further improve the student experience at all of our institutions, and it’s clear that eliminating mandatory arbitration is the right choice for all of our students,” said Apollo CEO Greg Cappelli in a statement.

Sen. Dick Durbin of Illinois, who has been critical of Apollo and the for-profit education industry in general said in a statement today that he is cautiously optimistic about the policy change.

“Mandatory arbitration clauses are unfair to students and their families. Many for-profit schools have promised to end these unfair practices and failed to deliver,” said the senator.

The policy change is likely tied to the recent decision to take Apollo Education private and merge with an investor consortium led by the Vistria Group.

Vistria’s Tony Miller is slated to take over as chairman of Apollo’s board when the deal is complete. As a former Deputy Secretary of the U.S. Department of Education, he has been blunt about the public image of for-profit institutions like University of Phoenix.

“For too long and too often, the private education industry has been characterized by inadequate student outcomes, overly aggressive marketing practices, and poor compliance,” said Miller in February. “This doesn’t need to be the case.”

However, Sen. Durbin appears to remain somewhat skeptical that Apollo will change its stripes overnight, given that a privately held company no longer needs to publicly disclose things like executive compensation, pending litigation, or ongoing law-enforcement investigations.

“We will watch carefully to see if Apollo will truly change its practices and protect its students,” said Durbin.

by Chris Morran via Consumerist

She Tried This One Crazy Thing And Received The Consumerist Newsletter Twice A Week

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Okay, so it’s not that crazy, but you do only have to do one thing to sign up for the Consumerist newsletter, and have it arrive fresh and hot in your email inbox twice a week.

Come on, try it — we won’t sell, rent or otherwise share any of your personal information. All we’ll do is send you an email every Wednesday and Friday morning with the best we’ve got to offer.

Fill out the form below or OR CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE.

by consumerist.com via Consumerist

9 Things We Learned About How Americans Are Using (Or Not Using) Technology To Get What They Want

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Though it might feel like you can turn a corner without seeing an ad for this ride-hailing app or that on-demand delivery service, Pew Research Center’s first-ever survey of how American adults interact with the new digital economy shows there’s a big difference between how many people have ever tried one of these services and the people who use them on a regular basis.

Pew’s in-depth survey on the digital economy covers commercial services that offer on-demand access, like ride-hailing apps; sharing service that enable people to sell products or expertise like StubHub and TaskRabbit, respectively; and other “collaborative” services that try to connect communities and solve problems by way of crowdsourcing, like Kickstarter.

Pew surveyed 4,787 American adults and asked them their views on a wide range of services, and while for many folks these services are part of their every day lives, there are many others who barely use them — or even know they exist. Here are a few of the results from Pew’s report on the digital economy that we found most interesting:

1. People are picking and choosing among services: While 72% of American adults have used at least one of 11 different shared and on-demand services, many are only using one or a few of them. About 20% have used four or more of such services, and 7% have used six or more.

2. Exposure doesn’t always translate to use: Then there’s the full 28% of Americans who said they’ve never used any of these commercial platforms. For example, though 15% of Americans have used a ride-hailing app like Uber or Lyft, about twice that many people haven’t even heard of them in the first place. On those same lines, 11% of people have used Airbnb, VRBO, or similar, but almost half don’t know they exist.

3. Educated, high-income, young people in cities use these services the most: It might come as no surprise, but college graduates are more likely to use four more of these services, Pew found, as well as those with relatively high household incomes and those under the age of 45.

Urban and suburban dwellers are also twice as likely as those living in rural areas to use four or more of these services, Pew found, while about 25% of that same category haven’t used any of the platforms the survey measured.

4. People with cars still use ride-hailing apps: The survey found that 3% of American adults use apps like Uber or Lyft on a daily or weekly basis, and around two-thirds of those people either own their own car or regularly drive a personal vehicle, Pew found. Though this means that regular ride-hailing app users have cars, as a group they’re still less likely to own or drive a car than people who only use such apps occasionally or not at all.

5. Ride-hailing apps are convincing folks they’re not transportation companies: Though many users aren’t sure the relationship between these services and drivers, Pew says that in the abstract, people “tend to view these services as software platforms rather than transportation companies, and they view their drivers as independent contractors rather than employees.” About 58% of ride-hailing users see these apps as software companies, 30% view them as transportation companies, and 66% think drivers are independent contractors.

However, 68% of ride-hailing users believe that both drivers and the services themselves should be responsible for making sure drivers are trained properly, and 62% think both drivers and service should make sure cars are clean and safe.

6. About 11% of adults have used something like Airbnb, VRBO, or HomeAway to stay in someone else’s home: Americans of all ages are using home-sharing platforms, Pew found, though folks ages 35-44 are almost twice as likely as people ages 18-24 to have used one.

7. There’s confusion on the employer/worker relationship here, too: Similar to ride-hailing app users, consumers using home-sharing services aren’t quite sure on the relationship between the platform and the people renting out their spaces. About 58% of home-sharing users say such services are just software companies, while 26% see them as hospitality companies that vouch for the quality of the properties they list, and have control over the customer experience.

Again, much like with ride-sharing apps, those who use home-sharing services ascribe varying levels of responsibility on the parties involved when it comes to managing the day-to-day user experience: 67% believe that both homeowners and the home-sharing platforms themselves should make sure properties are like they’re described, while 8% think it all rests on the shoulders of the app or service, and 23% think it’s up to homeowners.

8. One-in-five Americans have given to online fundraising projects: Close to 20% of American adults have given money on sites like Kickstarter and GoFundMe, and 3% have created their own project on such sites. Most of those folks who have contributed have done so only a handful of times — 87% have given to a total of five projects or fewer.

9. People like to donate money to those in need: A full 68% of adults who’ve contributed on crowd funding sites have given money to help someone facing hardship or financial challenges.

Another 34% have given to fund a new product or invention, while others donate money for school projects or fundraisers (32%), to musicians or other creative artists (30%), and to projects for new businesses (10%).

Shared, Collaborative and On Demand: The New Digital Economy [Pew Research Center]

by Mary Beth Quirk via Consumerist

How Does Taco Bell Turn Everything, Including Fried Chicken, Into Taco Shells?

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Last fall, we began hearing reports that Taco Bell was testing taco shells made from fried chicken, because that’s an actual thing that people would definitely eat. The fall test was in Bakersfield, CA, and they also tested them in Kansas City last month. Where do they come from, though? Is it simply a Tex-Mex Double Down?

Buzzfeed’s Venessa Wong was able to learn more about the creation of the shell product, which has since been renamed the Naked Chicken Chalupa. The shell comes from one of Taco Bell’s apparent guiding principles of the last few years: fold a variety of flat foods in half and call them tacos.

The Naked Chicken Chalupa will be going nationwide fairly soon, and the company’s test kitchen wizards explained to Wong how they make these shells in-store. The shells arrive flat, but already breaded and seasoned. They’re fried in the shaping basket contraption that you see above to give them a taco-shell shape, which is also how they turned various breakfast foods into taco shells in-store.

Here’s How Taco Bell Makes A Taco Shell Out Of Fried Chicken [Buzzfeed]

by Laura Northrup via Consumerist

Does Venmo Hold Moochers Accountable, Or Let Cheapskates Show Their True Colors?

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Between PayPal’s Venmo, Facebook’s Messenger, Chase’s Quickpay, Square’s Cash, and other money-sending services, there’s no shortage of ways for friends to quickly send each other a few dollars to split the check at dinner. But with the convenience of such apps, are we forgetting our manners or just finally holding our friends accountable? 

While this ability to quickly move money around without having cash in your wallet certainly… party, it can also be a source of conflict or create hurt feelings.

Quartz recently shared the stories of several Venmo users who detail how the money-sending service has transformed some friendships from a give-and-take to a business transaction.

For example, one person says she stopped by her friend’s home for a little Netflix watching and wine drinking. At the end of the evening, she says she was surprised to receive a notification from Venmo showing her friend was asking for $6 to cover the cost of the split wine.

In another instance, a Venmo user tells Quartz that a roommate charged her $3.32 for a shared garden rake.

It’s not uncommon for roommates to split costs, such as rent, utilities, or grocery bills, but when it comes to a physical object, it can be harder to swallow.

“When he moves, am I supposed to ask for my $3 back?” the woman asks Quartz. “Venmo is making everyone stingy and strange.”

Sure, receiving an email requesting reimbursement for a glass of offered wine or a shared rake might be jarring, but there’s another side to the money-sharing story.

When you go out with friends you probably expect them to do the right thing and offer to split the bill. That’s just common courtesy, but we all have that friend: the one who conveniently never has cash or promises to get the next one but never does.

With money-sharing apps, consumers can now hold these friends accountable.

Quartz also points out that while money-sharing apps might disrupt long-held feelings about friends and money, it can also bring out the generosity of people.

One woman tells Quartz that she’s known friends to discreetly send funds to others having a difficult time making ends meet to put toward rent or bills.

Venmo is turning our friends into petty jerks [Quartz]

by Ashlee Kieler via Consumerist