A U.S. Senate report has revealed that retailers (a number of which you may already know and trust), have accepted as much as $792 million to share customers' credit-card information with direct marketing companies. Could your card number have been one that was shared? Would you have known?
The companies engaging in such practices have been getting away with it because of terms buried in fine print, where customers accept offers without having to share their credit card info themselves, placing a certain level of trust in the retailers that are profiting off of sharing their info.
The executive summary of the 
So who are the companies that have been selling credit card information? Well, the following were paid over $10 million each to do so:
- 1-800-Flowers.com
- Buy.com
- Classmates.com
- Columbia House
- Confi-Check
- Expedia/Hotels.com
- Fandango
- FTD
- Hotwire
- InQ
- Intellius
- MovieTickets.com
- Orbitz
- Priceline
- Redcats USA
- Shutterfly
- Travelocity
- US Airways
- VistaPrint
Dozens more were paid between $1 and $10 Million. I won't name all of them (there is a full list here), but Yahoo is one of them. So is Avon, Barnes & Noble, eHarmony, Half.com, Pizza Hut, TimeLife, and Victoria's Secret.
People have often expressed concerns about buying stuff online from brands that they haven't heard of. It turns out that some of the biggest brands are not exactly as trustworthy as some may have thought. Customers are not pleased.
For the offending brands themselves, this has to be a PR and online reputation management nightmare. Read the whole report Advertisers Scammed By Invisible Impressions
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