I can’t help but get a little bit of personal satisfaction out of this story.  It seems that Dell Computers was engaged in a large scale “shell” game or “bait and switch” scheme in New York.  A New York judge recently found that Dell misled consumers repeatedly by engaging in “false and deceptive advertising” of its promotional financing terms/incentives and service warranties.  The New York Attorney General’s (”AG”) office logged over 1,700 complaints from consumers.

Dell was luring consumers to purchase its computers by offering free financing, rebates, upgrades, and  other incentives for “well qualified” customers.  However, according to the AG, as few as 7% of consumers actually qualified for the promotions.  The vast majority of applicants were instead offered hefty interest rates between 16% to 30%, conveniently financed through Dell Financial Services.  The judge, among other things, enjoined Dell from advertising certain promotions without first  prominently disclosing to consumers how many applicants were likely to qualify for them.

On the service end of things, the judge found that many consumers were placed on hold for technical support for inordinately long periods of time, had to call repeatedly to get through to a technical representative (who I’ve found to be useless anyway), and many instances where the company refused to provide on-site service.  Some customers apparently waited for months or even years for service.  So much for their “next day” service guarantee.

As an owner of 2 Dell computers that have been nothing but trouble within months of buying them, it’s somewhat gratifying to see the company get slammed for its deceptive conduct.  Almost all of my experiences with Dell’s technical support have been, uh, well—what’s the Hindi word for “abysmal”?  I stopped calling them long ago and now use my own pricey IT consultant.  In any case, my frustrations are clearly widespread and well-founded.

As I’ve said before, the “unfair or deceptive” standard used by almost any AG’s office is an especially broad one that easily encompasses conduct which may not meet the higher standard used for “fraud.”  With fraud, it must be shown that a company actually knew that what it was doing was wrong—although in this case, the folks at Dell seemed to be fully aware of their actions.  How could they not be? 

But an AG doesn’t need to jump through hoops to prove fraud anyway.  Showing unfair or deceptive conduct is much easier.  And once the AG has a high-profile and wealthy corporate defendant in its sites that is the subject of 1,700 consumer complaints, rest assured that it will  pursue the company vigorously.  Given my own problems with Dell, I say: “Give ‘em hell!”

Just a quick follow-up to a post I wrote a few weeks ago about “Spam King” Sanford Wallace.  Wallace had been defaulted by a federal district court in California in a suit brought by MySpace for running a spamming and phishing scam on the site.

The court recently awarded MySpace $230 million against Wallace in what is apparently the largest spam award yet.  Of course, chances are that MySpace will never see a penny of that money—or if they do, it will be a miniscule fraction of the award.  Of course, no one will shed a tear if MySpace drives Wallace into bankruptcy.  It won’t stop him anyway.

And MySpace doesn’t need the money.  But it’s a symbolic victory and a great public relations plug for the company.  It gives MySpace bragging rights to its users, attorneys general of all 50 states, and the federal government that it takes these issues seriously and doesn’t waver—even though getting a default judgment is not all that difficult to do.  Hopefully, MySpace will pursue it further and try to actually collect on the award.

According to a new survey by Forrester Research, 41% of large companies (those having at least 20,000 employees) either read or analyze the contents of outbound e-mail.  They’re either paying other employees to read them or presumably using any number of commercially available software programs to analyze them. 

44% of the companies surveyed investigated a confidential data breach involving e-mail in the past year, while 26% said they fired an employee for violating the company’s e-mail policy.  Companies also expressed concern over employees leaking information on message boards, blogs, and other electronic media.

Quite frankly, I’m surprised only 41% of large companies are doing this (although it depends on the industry).  I would have expected it to have been much higher given the daily parade of data and privacy breaches in the news.  After all, it’s large companies that have the financial and human resources to implement widescale e-mail monitoring systems.  Smaller companies may be in a much different situation.

Of course, many employers find it distasteful to engage in this type of monitoring.  It can, if not handled properly, be destructive to employee morale and have lasting effects.  Nevertheless—for better or worse—many employees are slowly coming to grips with their employers’ monitoring efforts.  It’s just becoming a fact of life. 

But the truth is, I’ve had clients whose employees have e-mailed confidential and sensitive company data.  Some workers do it without thinking about it, while others are far more malevolent in their intentions.  This is especially the case when employees leave their companies on bad or poor terms.  So it’s a very real problem for employers that has very real consequences.  Thus, like it or not, monitoring will only continue to increase. 

Bottom Line:  Be careful.  You don’t have any right to privacy when you’re at work.  So don’t think that anything you send—whether to a spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, doctor, stockbroker, or anyone else—is private.  Even if you have to send it and it can’t wait until you get home, an employer is within its rights to read your e-mail, no matter how private the subject matter.  Of course, what it does with that information is another matter.

In today’s world, where fraud is just a mouse click away, it’s nice to know that every so often the good guys win.  Three international hackers were indicted by the Department of Justice (”DOJ”) last week for trying to steal and sell credit card information from customers of Dave & Buster’s, the popular restaurant/entertainment chain.

According to the indictment, the hackers were able to install “packet sniffers” on many of the company’s servers to copy credit card information as it traveled between restaurants and Dave & Buster’s corporate headquarters in Dallas.  The company detected the intrusion and alerted the authorities, but not before 5,000 credit/debit card numbers were stolen and sold to other criminals to make fraudulent purchases.

One of the foreign hackers was arrested in Miami.  No problem there.  The other two, however, were arrested in the Ukraine and in Germany by those countries’ authorities.  It’s certainly not a done deal yet.  The DOJ is seeking the extradition of the other two, but no word yet whether those efforts will be successful. 

While these sorts of arrests are still few and far between given the magnitude of data theft and online fraud, it’s a start.  The DOJ is obviously taking the problem seriously.  Hopefully, other countries will too and the cooperation will continue.  With any luck, if these hackers are extradited, tried, and found guilty, the court will make an example out of them.