Bing cashback exploit discovered, Microsoft sends in lawyers

Bing cashback exploit discovered, Microsoft sends in lawyers

By Tom Warren, 10 November 2009 - 14:09

A Bing cashback vulnerability has been discovered by Samir Meghani of the Bountii Team.

The flaw exists due to a software API oversight that allows users to fake transactions to Bing. Currently, Bing does not detect these faked transactions. The flaw affects both the customer and merchant. According to Samir, in his original posting, "merchants have a few options for reporting, but Bing suggests using a tracking pixel. Basically, the merchant adds a tracking pixel to their order confirmation page, which will report the the transaction details back to Bing." Samir detailed that the process was flawed but didn't pin point exactly how to generate fake transactions.

Bing Cashback is an initiative that pays people to search with Bing. Customers can also get cashback rewards, meaning you could get cashback from online purchases made when Bing is used.

In a follow up post over the weekend entitled "Surrendering to Microsoft", Samir posted a legal letter fromMicrosoft's legal team demanding he remove the original blog post to which he complied. Microsoft also terminated Samir's Bing cash back account. Some may argue that this is a heavy handed approach but clearly Microsoft doesn't take kindly to fraud.

Google Index to Go Real Time

Google is developing a system that will enable web publishers of any size to automatically submit new content to Google for indexing within seconds of that content being published. Search industry analyst Danny Sullivan told us today that this could be "the next chapter" for Google. [Read More]

Top Ten Mistakes in Web Design

Summary:
The ten most egregious offenses against users. Web design disasters and HTML horrors are legion, though many usability atrocities are less common than they used to be.

Since my first attempt in 1996, I have compiled many top-10 lists of the biggest mistakes in Web design. See links to all these lists at the bottom of this article. This article presents the highlights: the very worst mistakes of Web design. (Updated 2007.) By Jakob Nielsen.

1. Bad Search

Overly literal search engines reduce usability in that they're unable to handle typos, plurals, hyphens, and other variants of the query terms. Such search engines are particularly difficult for elderly users, but they hurt everybody.

A related problem is when search engines prioritize results purely on the basis of how many query terms they contain, rather than on each document's importance. Much better if your search engine calls out "best bets" at the top of the list -- especially for important queries, such as the names of your products.

Search is the user's lifeline when navigation fails. Even though advanced search can sometimes help,simple search usually works best, and search should be presented as a simple box, since that's what users are looking for.

[Read More...]

Why the Kindle and the iPad may change the way we search

Posted on Sunday 31 January 2010 From Pandia Search Engine News.

In spite of initial skepticism Steve Jobs has decided that the tablet has a future, and he is right. It will also change the way we search. Pandia argues that publishers should support a tool that lets tablet users surf the web and subscription based content at the same time.

[Read More...]

Today In "Thanks, Patent Office:" Google patents location-based advertising

From ReadWriteWeb, who remind us every day that the media can make us cry:

It looks like while half the Web will be holding its breath over how Facebook will wield its newly-found patent power, with its patent of the news feed, the other half just found a reason to take a big gulp of air and look around. Google was awarded last Tuesday a patent for location-based advertising, the potential bread and butter of a number of emerging mobile applications.

Bing, Google and Wolfram on the Future of Online Search

Query the Olympics!