Christmas is a great time to score a bunch of sweet presents, down some nog and eat your weight in turkey and stuffing. Oh, and to visit family too, if you’re into that kind of thing. But if you spend any time online, and I bet you do, it’s also a good time of year to be cautious justifiably paranoid. Why? Because online scammers are out in force, like a little army of cyber-grinches. And they want to ruin your Christmas.

A couple weeks ago, the cyber-security whiz-kids at McAfee released their very seasonally-titled article “The 12 Scams of Christmas”. It details a number of ways (twelve in all, I’m pretty sure) that all those bad Santas out there use the good cheer of the holiday season to scam people online. And, given the increasing amounts of money spent online at this time of year on eCommerce and charitable giving, it’s inevitable that a lot of scammers will make a lot of money using tricks like these:

• Charitable Phishing Scams – Phishers send emails pretending to be from the various charities that are especially active during the holiday season. Feeling generous, you follow a link in the email to donate cash, and the phishers take your money and spend it on things other than hospitals in the third world.
• Fake “Luxury” Jewelery – They warn that a lot of those spam emails advertising Rolex watches for fifty bucks are actually scams. Surprising, I know.
• Auction Site Fraud – McAfee warns that a lot of fake auction sites are set up in the weeks preceding Christmas. They recommend you use a known site like eBay. Though, as you’re about to read, using eBay doesn’t exactly protect you 100% either.

So yeah, watch out for that stuff. But of course, there’s plenty of other stuff to worry about at this time of year too. Apparently data and identity theft enjoys its own Christmas rush too. As online shoppers increasingly turn to eCommerce, they become increasingly exposed to unscrupulous vendors and advertisers looking to pilfer their credit card details, and any other info they can get their hands on.

Now, all these warnings always raise a question for me – do any of these scams actually work? Are the scammers actually able to make more money doing this stuff than by, say, getting a job? Well, have you heard about “The Man”? He’s an English con-man who headed an international syndicate dedicated to selling counterfeit goods on eBay. He was just caught, and as the authorities unravelled his enterprise, they learned that the made enough money to buy 10 luxury houses in Thailand, a restaurant in Australia, and part equity in a multi-million dollar yacht. And what were the goods he was counterfeiting? Golf clubs. He’d have the clubs made in China at a couple bucks a pop, then slap a fake Taylor-Made or Calloway logo on them, and sell them online for more than a hundred bucks each. And he made millions.

So the lesson here is, don’t believe anthing anyone tells you online ever, don’t buy a Rolex off a link you received in a spam email, and don’t let your dad look too closely at that new 9-iron you bought him for Christmas.

The world used to be simpler. There was the brick n’ mortar world, and there was the internet-y world. But with the passage of time, everything’s getting all mixed up. Here are three products and services that in some way blend the two worlds in ways that both useful, and confusing for someone of advancing years, such as myself or your Dad. And yes, they’re all available for purchase in time for the upcoming holiday season.

TweetBookz – Tweets, by design, are meant to be ephemeral and short-lived. You see a funny picture, think up a witty pun, or have an interesting bowel movement, and you tap out a quick 140 character post about it. It gets sent out to your friends and associates and is quickly read and forgotten. Or so we all thought. But TweetBookz take this uniquely online world and give it a permanent, paper-y presence on your coffee table. Or, more likely, in a dusty box in your attic. The idea is simple: you pick 200 of your very best tweets and this company turns them into a book, with one tweet per page. For the sake of veracity, you’re not allowed to go in and edit your tweets after the fact to make them more awesome. And you’re also not allowed to borrow any from some funnier, smarter or sexier Twitter user. It’s gotta be all you. So if I were to create a TweetBook myself, it would consist of 200 identical pages, each saying: “Got up, did some writing, watched reruns of The Office. Tty tomorrow!”  They cost around $25.50 for the hard-cover edition. And you have to go hard-cover, because this will be something you’ll want to read and re-read for decades to come.

Amazon’s Instant Video Streaming with DVD Purchase – What’s the crappiest part of buying  a DVD from an online retailer, instead of down at Best Buy? That’s right, it’s the infernal waiting for it to arrive in the mail. Well, the wait is over. Now when you purchase certain hard-copy DVDs from Amazon, you get instant access to a streaming version of the movie. It’s only available to US purchasers at the moment, and only for about 300 TV shows and movies. And, for now, it’s only for a limited time. But if it’s popular, you’d have to think they’ll roll this feature out on a much bigger level. The best thing about this is that you can buy DVDs as gifts for people, and still get to watch it yourself via the streaming version.

VeriFone’s iPhone Credit Card Payment System – So you’re selling some vintage Scobby Doo collectibles to a guy who saw your Craigslist ad. You meet him (somewhere public and well-lit, I hope) and he doesn’t have any cash. No problem. Just swipe his credit card through this little iPhone gizmo, and his money will instantly be yours to enjoy. It brings the joy and convience of ecommerce to the brick and mortar world of, well, wherever you happen to be. To operate this, you have to pay a monthly subscription fee, so it’s really only meant for relatively high-volume sellers, like delivery pizza parlors, door-to-door salespersons and prostitutes. But if there’s anyone like that on your holiday shopping list, you know what to buy them.

Less than a year ago, YouTube announced an aggressive plan to start making money by distributing paid content (as reported here on Senses). That hasn’t quite happened yet, though they have spent the last year starting to experiment with a number of money-making tactics, like pre-roll ads, and working with Vevo, the music industry’s video site.

But now it seems the eCommerce portion of YouTube’s plan to actually make money is finally close to fruition. Google, which owns YouTube, is in talks with TV networks and studios to begin streaming full episodes of TV shows. And, just like iTunes, they plan to charge users for the shows.

Reportedly, YouTube wants to charge $1.99 per episode. It’s much the same business model as that used by both iTunes and Amazon. Though there is a difference. The competitors offer episodes as downloads, while YouTube will only be providing streaming access to the shows.

According to YouTube, they’re confident they’ll be able to arrange some kind of deal amenable to themselves, the TV networks and studios, and end users. YouTube, it would seem, is banking on their strong brand, incredibly high traffic, and the fact that people already come to the site, in droves, in order to watch videos. Whether that’s enough to convince consumers to pay a similar premium for streamed content, versus downloadable media, remains to be seen.

Web trackers ComScore recently predicted that $900 million in sales could be spent online today (Cyber Monday), when retailers offer steep discounts and free shipping on their sites. That big number follows an 11% surge this recent Black Friday ($595 million in sales) making this first holiday shopping season after the great economic meltdown of 2008/09 somewhat of a success. I’m going to go one step further and say on behalf of Thirdi and the Senses team that $1 billion could be spent today when all is said and done, because why the hell not? Doesn’t that sound more impressive?

Ecommerce has truly emerged as an increasingly important engine of consumer spending these past few years, and improvements in shopping cart software, website design, and online marketing through social media and other avenues continues to push ecommerce to the forefront of consumer behavior.

Some believe that the next step will be an integration of social media and TV, but there’s been a counterpoint to that claim (by an un-named source close to this Senses blogger who is developing a social media TV platform- apparently it’s tricky!) I think it’s obvious that it will be tough to do the social TV thing because being social and paying attention to Gossip Girl at the same time can be very difficult, as Gossip Girl can be very intense.  So intense that I am commonly silenced and banished from the living room when it is on. So next Christmas shopping season will you be watching the classic Christmas cartoons and ordering things off e-bay during commercials? Probably not, but as the start to this holiday shopping season has shown, the game is changing. TV will obviously have to adapt, as retailers have now discovered. Social media marketing has been a great success as Black Friday sales attest to, and online sales have risen dramatically this Cyber Monday thanks to the evolution of ecommerce.

So much attention has been paid lately to protecting consumers online that many have begun to complain that we are beginning to stifle e-commerce with regulations. New European e-commerce regulations passed to assist online business on that continent have been criticized for  being counterproductive. Shocking isn’t it? Can you imagine a major government bureaucracy doing anything counterproductive to businesses? Recent internet legislation in the US put forth by John D. Rockefeller IV of West Virginia and and Sen. Olympia J. Snowe of Maine, aims at bureaucratizing the entire internet within a federally mandated internet security office. To quote Rockefeller  and the Washington post: “People say this is a military or intelligence concern, but it’s a lot more than that,” Rockefeller, a former intelligence committee chairman, said in an interview. “It suddenly gets into the realm of traffic lights and rail networks and water and electricity.” So the internet has now become as essential as the roads, rails and wires we’ve built from coast to coast and the government intends to defend it as such with their full capabilities. But let’s step back for a moment and discuss consumer safety in the “real world” because the government has been largely unable to protect the consumer there as well. Though many are concerned about cyber- security and ecommerce safety , and rightfully so, there is a current outrage in Vancouver BC over a debit terminal fraud that has emptied the bank accounts of thousands of lower mainland residents.

The problem is widespread and consumers have been angered at the lack of transparency concerning the locations where cards were compromised. Unfortunately for those who have been scammed this is  the protocol for dealing with these kinds of bank card frauds. It’s considered the responsibility of the bank, not the government, to protect consumer’s who use the hardware that’s been compromised- but the criminal investigation relies on confidentiality.

Though the security of bank cards and their pin numbers have been the responsibility of the banks themselves, the Canadian government has taken the lead on  identity theft.  While banks maintain responsibility for cards and pins the government is responsible for those who use them. The passing of Bill S-4, An Act to amend the Criminal Code means that it’s now a criminal offense to obtain and possess identity information with the intent to use the information deceptively, dishonestly or fraudulently in the commission of a crime. It is also a criminal offense to transfer or sell information to another person without considering the possible criminal uses of that information and to unlawfully possess or traffick in government-issued identity documents that contain another person’s information. These steps effectively neuter identity theft operations before they’re able to gain momentum and do some serious damage, or at least that’s the hope.

In finding a balance between the freedom of business and the paternalism of bureaucracy we can create the systems we need to allow for flexible and secure ecommerce. But judging by what we see going on in the physical realm we need to have a co-operative approach. Government and institutions can only do so much- we as consumers need to be vigilant and cautious. Scammers will continue to find new and creative ways to completely screw us over and the more we let them do it (by letting our guard down)  the easier it is for bureaucracies to come tilting at windmills, for better or worse, with legislation and regulation. Suffocating us, and the internet, with their love.

If you shop at popular eCommerce retailers like Orbitz, Travelocity, Buy.com and 1-800-Flowers.com, the US government would like you to know that you could be getting ripped off. Senator Rockefeller, who has a somewhat mixed reputation among internet types, may have won a few new friends by undertaking an investigative report on “Aggressive Sales Tactics on the Internet and Their Impact on American Consumers”.

He ordered the research in anticipation of an upcoming hearing on the subject, by the US Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. The US government hasn’t exactly been successful in previous attempts to police the Wild West world of eCommerce, and who knows if this latest committee will actually lead to any action. But it’s interesting to see people in the highest levels of power in the US start to look at some allegedly devious practices by a few big name online retailers.

The report was looking at one particular controversial practice – “post-transaction marketing”. According to the report, this occurs after a customer has made a purchase on one of the offending sites. That customer is offered cash-back if they hit a confirmation button. But when they hit that button, surprise! Their credit card information is immediately passed along to a marketing company, who signs them up for a subscription to a package of not very useful services. And, to add insult to injury, they don’t even usually receive the cash rebate.

It’s pretty devious stuff, which is why it’s so surprising to see such big names appear in the report as companies who take part in post-transaction marketing. Besides the retailers mentioned above, some of the other ones on the list include: FTD, Priceline, Barnes & Noble, Avon, Hertz and even Pizza Hut! Because apparently Pizza Hut can’t make enough money by charging $22 for a large pizza…

While “decompressing” in Ohio after years of slugging it out in Silicon Valley,  Simon Rothman (formerly of eBay) had an epiphany “E-commerce doesn’t seem to work for normal people” as he put it in a recent Business Week article. Although I find blanket statements that include the term “normal people”  to seem overgeneralizing it’s hard to argue that small-town America (or how about the red state people, or maybe country folks?) have a lot of stuff just sitting around that could be sold but they don’t trust computers. Computers were invented by big-city folk, (or heathens or sodomites…whatever we people that live in the big coastal cities are commonly referred to by small-town folk).  According to Rothman many people he had come in contact with (salt of the earth blue-collar people I have to assume)  felt that ecommerce was cumbersome, time consuming, and possibly putting people at risk of hacking, malware and viruses.  Hey wait a minute that’s what I think too and I’m a raging liberal west coast urbanite.  So he came up with a platform that would overcome these roadblocks and tap into this $3 billion market for used goods that he felt was out there-  introducing  Glyde.

Rothman has been working very quietly behind the scenes for the past year with some seed money and a simple but good idea. Glyde will charge 10% of the sale number with no upfront fees and $1.25 for custom mailing envelopes provided by the company.  Instead of operating on a buyer/seller honor system where sellers are rated for the quality of product or timeliness of shipping Glyde will employ comprehensive analytics to track sales and shipping activities. The company has also filed for numerous patents on features and processes; as the Bilski Supreme Court case continues in we’ll see if those can even be claimed in the near future.

Though Glyde might not be something new and daring like the original eCommerce platforms it’s worth commending them for reminding us that sometimes you don’t need to reinvent the wheel, you just need to make it better.  Making e-commerce easier and faster should definitely allow Glyde to tap into the less computerized portions of the population and probably take some of us more tech savvy consumers with them along the way.

And for the record, I would love it if we the collective software and internet marketing community could agree upon a standardize form of the word eCommerce (ecommerce? e-commerce? eCommerce?) let’s tackle this one at the next big trade show how about?

The world of retail book-selling is developing into one of the biggest front lines in the battle between offline and online commerce. Like with any product, eCommerce book retailers face some challenges and hold some advantages versus offline retailers. On the one hand, many customers prefer to touch and look at a book before they purchase it. But on the other hand, many other people are more than happy to buy books site-unseen from Amazon and the like, based purely on word-of-mouth and professional and customer reviews. Throw eBooks into the mix, and its clear that the fate of offline book retailers is a huge question mark.

And it’s this growing threat that prompted a large offline book seller, Borders, to begin offering free shipping on any product that is out-of-stock in one of their retail outlets. So if a customer goes in looking for the latest bestseller, and can’t find it on the shelf, they’ll ship a copy to that customer for free. On the surface, this new service doesn’t seem like that big a deal. But it does mark an interesting new way that brick and mortar retailers can start to blur the line between their own operations and eComm.

There are any number of advantages to shopping online, but one of the big ones is that a customer rarely has to worry about a product being out of stock. With this new offer, Borders is looking to mitigate this advantage from its online competition. They’re clearly hoping that an increasing number of customers will choose to visit their store, flip through a few books, then buy them, either on the spot or for future delivery.

Another interesting battle in this war is the combining of offline retail with eBook purchases. America’s largest offline book retailer, Barnes and Noble, has recently come out with their own Kindle competitor, the Nook. When a Nook owner visits a Barnes and Noble store, they have the option of browsing their eBook catalog while in the store, and downloading any books that interest them. Or, in a more line-blurring possibility, that customer could flip through a paper copy of the book in-store, then purchase it as an eBook at the push of a button.

There’s no doubt that offline book retailers will have to adapt to survive. And maybe evolving won’t be enough to save them. But what is clear is that those same brick and mortar bookstores are turning to the eComm business model for some ideas on how to better serve their customers, and possibly prolong their own existence.

It may be a little early for Christmas shopping, but if you’re into books by authors like Stephen King and Dean Koontz, you may be able to benefit from a price war by three of the biggest eCommerce book sellers on the planet. About two weeks ago, Amazon and Wal-mart started selling a number of bestsellers at way below market price. In marketing terms, it’s called a loss-leader…selling a much sought-after product at a steep discount to attract customers who will hopefully buy other stuff while they’re poking around on your website.

In this case though, the deals were so good that the online retailers realized they were shooting themselves in the foot. The deal affected ten books bound for the bestseller list in the holiday shopping season. Hardcover copies of these books, that would normally retail for anywhere from $25-$35 each, were on sale for as low as $8.98. Since they were selling the books at below-wholesale price, small book sellers ran in and scooped up multiple copies so they could re-sell them in their own stores.

Now, two weeks after the sale started, the big retailers realized what was going on, and have just placed a limit on the number of copies each customer can purchase. Now you can purchase anywhere from 2-5 copies, depending on the retailer and the book; plenty enough for your gift list, but not enough for a smaller retailer looking to cash in on the re-sale bonanza. As usually happens when Amazon goes head-to-head with smaller book-stores, you had to know that, sooner or later, Amazon would make sure the little guy couldn’t scratch out any sort of advantage.

Halloween is supposed to be scary, but just how frightening is the recession making things for the companies that sell candy, costumes and decorations? According to the National Retail Federations 2009 Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey (I dare you to say that 10 times fast), the average American shopper is expected to spend $56.31 on Halloween goodies this year. And that’s down significantly, from $66.54 last year.

But what’s bad news for retailers overall, may be not quite so dire for online retailers. In an economic climate like this one, people tend to spend more time seeking out the best deals. And for Halloween stuff, often the best deals are online. One large online retailer, Halloween Express, is actually guaranteeing they’ll sell you your favorite costume for less than you’ll find offline. They promise that if you can find the same costume cheaper, they’ll refund the difference, plus 10%.

The Halloween push towards ecommerce means there’s a lot of competition for your costume and candy dollar. A Google search for “Halloween costumes” returns, oh, about 23,000,000 pages. And that’s probably why the aforementioned Halloween Express puts a lot of effort in the months leading up to October, into search engine marketing. According to their spokesman, Brad Butler, “the difference between no. 1 and no. 2 in a search engine is almost a 20% difference in sales.”

So if we are each spending around $56 on Halloween, what are we buying? The average person is expected to spend about $22.50 on candy, and just a little more than that on their costume. We won’t know until after Oct. 31 how much of that is actually spent online, but it should be interesting to see if consumers really do flock to ecommerce to save themselves a few bucks (which they can then spend on even more candy).