7) Web retailers sell out

7) Web retailers sell out

Hackers once spooked shoppers away from Web retail. Maybe, consumers should have feared online merchants more.

Orbitz, Continental Airlines, Ticketmaster, Pizza Hut, Movietickets.com, eHarmony, Hertz, and Live Nation were among 80 companies paid to help dupe their own customers into joining loyalty programs, the government reported in 2009.

After making secret pacts with marketers, such as Webloyalty, Affinion, and Vertrue, the e-tailers presented buyers with what appeared to be an offer of free goods or services. Tucked into the fine print, however, were terms that said by providing an e-mail address, a customer agreed to join a loyalty program and allowed one of the marketers to charge their credit card about $20 every month.

A former employee of Webloyalty said such charges were known in the industry as a "stupid tax." If you fell for it, you were stupid.

The Senate Commerce committee held hearings and shamed the retailers into halting the practice. Andrew Cuomo, New York state attorney general, in recent weeks succeeded in getting two of the marketers and a handful of retailers to pay refunds and fines.

(Pictured: far left, Rich Fernandes, Webloyalty CEO and Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D-W. Va.) during hearings on marketing tactics.)