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E-tail Scrooges and how one woman defeated them

The nightmare of the mysterious debit card charges began this way for Caroline Butler:

She noticed that Privacy Matters 123, a membership program she had never heard of, was charging her $20 every month. She had no idea how to get her money back or even how to get the company to stop. All she knew was that they were draining the bank account used to help pay the medical bills for her 18-year-old daughter, a cancer patient.

Somehow, Butler, a freelance photographer from Paducah, Ky., unintentionally enrolled in the membership program during a visit to social-networking site, Classmates.com, … Read more

Feds: Top e-tailers profit from billion-dollar Web scam

Updated at 2:50 p.m. PST to include quotes from senators and names of retailers that do business with Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion.

Words like "scam," "fraud," and "arrest" filled the air during a Senate hearing on Tuesday that focused on the controversial marketing companies that allegedly dupe consumers into paying monthly fees to join online loyalty programs.

Vertrue, Webloyalty, and Affinion generated more than $1.4 billion by "misleading" Web shoppers, said members of the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, which called the hearing. Lawmakers saved … Read more