Pogue’s Posts Blog: An App That Sorts Your E-mail Shopping Offers

Everybody loves to hate e-mail. It eats up too much time, it’s used improperly, it’s filled up with junk. Entire careers have been launched around the premise of getting your in-box to zero.

I don’t agree. E-mail is the hub of life. It’s correspondence, collaboration, ideas, news, warnings and congratulations. It’s a to-do list, Rolodex and record of past projects. Sure, I try to keep the roar of junk mail to a minimum (I use a program called SpamSieve, and I never, ever enter my primary e-mail address into a form on the Web). But otherwise, e-mail is a pretty great medium.

Maybe, instead of killing it off, the world should be working on making it more useful. A new, free app for iPad and iPhone, bizarrely called PeeqPeeq, is a good start.

It works only with big-name IMAP-style e-mail accounts like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL. Not Hotmail, not Exchange, not POP accounts.

And what it does is extremely clever. It analyzes your mail, on a quest to identify promotional shopping messages. Not general spam â€" no herbal Viagra or Nigerian millionaires â€" but marketing stuff you’ve actually signed up for: clothing stores, airlines, department stores. It’s Newegg, L.L. Bean, Groupon, Think Geek, Gap, Macy’s, Zappos, REI and so on.

These, it puts into a dedicated folder.

But that’s behind the scenes. What the app does is convert the contents of that folder â€" all of the promotional e-mail â€" into a lovely, full-screen catalog. Each message becomes an attractively designed, uniform “page,” six of them per iPad screen. You flip through them as you would the pages of an actual catalog, tapping one to enlarge it if it piques your interest. You can bookmark one or send it on to friends by e-mail or text message.

Behind the scenes, the company (called RokketLaunch) has subscribed to every such promotional mailing under the sun. So within the app, you can also summon mini-catalogs of e-mailed offers you haven’t subscribed to, in categories like Post Labor Day (sales), Clothing, Deals, Electronics & Gadgets, Sports and so on.

Now, particularly if you’re a guy, you might be aghast at the whole concept. It’s an app that elevates junk mail?

And yes, there’s a difference between the way men and woman think about promotional shopping e-mail. Lee Ott, the company’s founder, has done a lot of research.

Women, he says, tend to look at this kind of e-mail as entertainment, during “I’m bored” moments: standing in line, waiting for an appointment. Men tend to check them, if at all, only when they’re already on the way to the store to buy something, wondering if there’s a discount.

In both cases, PeeqPeeq makes the job easier and more attractive. For example, you can search the company’s entire stash of up-to-date offering messages to see if there’s a sale somewhere on whatever it is you’re about to buy.

That’s one of the software’s coolest features, actually. It performs character recognition on the images in these messages, so that it knows what they say. Some store might send you an e-mail with a picture of a starburst that says, “40% off â€" ends tomorrow!” You wouldn’t find that text by searching within your e-mail program, but this app does.

In fact, the app conveniently puts diagonal banners across the corners of pages that announce time-limited offers. “Ends today,” one might say, or “Ends soon.”

Weirdly, it even puts an “Expired” banner on deals that you’ve already missed. Why? Why not just hide those messages, instead of tormenting you? (The company says an option to hide them will come in an updated version.)

You know, as a guy, I’m not sure I’d rely on PeeqPeeq to check for sales as I head out the door. I’m a huge devotee of RetailMeNot.com, which rounds up discount codes and sales for just about every online retailer in existence. I search that when I’m about to buy something: tickets, electronics, books, whatever.

But as much as I detest junk mail, I realize that many people deliberately subscribe to their favorite stores’ mailing lists. If you’re among them, then PeeqPeeq’s presentation of each day’s deals is certainly a better way to peruse them.

Pogue’s Posts Blog: An App That Sorts Your E-mail Shopping Offers

Everybody loves to hate e-mail. It eats up too much time, it’s used improperly, it’s filled up with junk. Entire careers have been launched around the premise of getting your in-box to zero.

I don’t agree. E-mail is the hub of life. It’s correspondence, collaboration, ideas, news, warnings and congratulations. It’s a to-do list, Rolodex and record of past projects. Sure, I try to keep the roar of junk mail to a minimum (I use a program called SpamSieve, and I never, ever enter my primary e-mail address into a form on the Web). But otherwise, e-mail is a pretty great medium.

Maybe, instead of killing it off, the world should be working on making it more useful. A new, free app for iPad and iPhone, bizarrely called PeeqPeeq, is a good start.

It works only with big-name IMAP-style e-mail accounts like Gmail, Yahoo Mail and AOL. Not Hotmail, not Exchange, not POP accounts.

And what it does is extremely clever. It analyzes your mail, on a quest to identify promotional shopping messages. Not general spam â€" no herbal Viagra or Nigerian millionaires â€" but marketing stuff you’ve actually signed up for: clothing stores, airlines, department stores. It’s Newegg, L.L. Bean, Groupon, Think Geek, Gap, Macy’s, Zappos, REI and so on.

These, it puts into a dedicated folder.

But that’s behind the scenes. What the app does is convert the contents of that folder â€" all of the promotional e-mail â€" into a lovely, full-screen catalog. Each message becomes an attractively designed, uniform “page,” six of them per iPad screen. You flip through them as you would the pages of an actual catalog, tapping one to enlarge it if it piques your interest. You can bookmark one or send it on to friends by e-mail or text message.

Behind the scenes, the company (called RokketLaunch) has subscribed to every such promotional mailing under the sun. So within the app, you can also summon mini-catalogs of e-mailed offers you haven’t subscribed to, in categories like Post Labor Day (sales), Clothing, Deals, Electronics & Gadgets, Sports and so on.

Now, particularly if you’re a guy, you might be aghast at the whole concept. It’s an app that elevates junk mail?

And yes, there’s a difference between the way men and woman think about promotional shopping e-mail. Lee Ott, the company’s founder, has done a lot of research.

Women, he says, tend to look at this kind of e-mail as entertainment, during “I’m bored” moments: standing in line, waiting for an appointment. Men tend to check them, if at all, only when they’re already on the way to the store to buy something, wondering if there’s a discount.

In both cases, PeeqPeeq makes the job easier and more attractive. For example, you can search the company’s entire stash of up-to-date offering messages to see if there’s a sale somewhere on whatever it is you’re about to buy.

That’s one of the software’s coolest features, actually. It performs character recognition on the images in these messages, so that it knows what they say. Some store might send you an e-mail with a picture of a starburst that says, “40% off â€" ends tomorrow!” You wouldn’t find that text by searching within your e-mail program, but this app does.

In fact, the app conveniently puts diagonal banners across the corners of pages that announce time-limited offers. “Ends today,” one might say, or “Ends soon.”

Weirdly, it even puts an “Expired” banner on deals that you’ve already missed. Why? Why not just hide those messages, instead of tormenting you? (The company says an option to hide them will come in an updated version.)

You know, as a guy, I’m not sure I’d rely on PeeqPeeq to check for sales as I head out the door. I’m a huge devotee of RetailMeNot.com, which rounds up discount codes and sales for just about every online retailer in existence. I search that when I’m about to buy something: tickets, electronics, books, whatever.

But as much as I detest junk mail, I realize that many people deliberately subscribe to their favorite stores’ mailing lists. If you’re among them, then PeeqPeeq’s presentation of each day’s deals is certainly a better way to peruse them.

F.T.C. Says Webcam’s Flaw Put Users’ Lives on Display

WASHINGTON â€" The so-called Internet of Things â€" digitally connected devices like appliances, cars and medical equipment â€" promises to make life easier for consumers. But regulators are worried that some products may be magnets for hackers.

A TRENDnet Web-enabled video camera.

On Wednesday, the Federal Trade Commission took its first action to protect consumers from reckless invasions of privacy, penalizing a company that sells Web-enabled video cameras for lax security practices.

According to the F.T.C., the company, TRENDnet, told customers that its products were “secure,” marketing its cameras for home security and baby monitoring. In fact, the devices were compromised. The commission said a hacker in January 2012 exploited a security flaw and posted links to the live feeds, which “displayed babies asleep in their cribs, young children playing and adults going about their daily lives.”

“The Internet of Things holds great promise for innovative consumer products and services,” Edith Ramirez, the commission’s chairwoman, said in a statement. “But consumer privacy and security must remain a priority as companies develop more devices that connect to the Internet.”

TRENDnet officials did not respond to a request for comment.

While the Internet of Things is still evolving, the concept currently embraces both industrial and consumer products. In a factory, sensors can be used to monitor manufacturing processes, warning that a machine needs maintenance and potentially avoiding a breakdown. At home, so-called smart appliances like refrigerators or thermostats can feed information via the Internet to manufacturers and service providers to keep the products humming.

In a speech last month, Ms. Ramirez noted that such developments required more diligence by consumers and regulators. While many individuals consent to data collection, consumers rarely are consulted about where their personal information goes afterward. The F.T.C. plans to conduct a workshop in November to discuss the issue, with an eye toward drawing up rules that allow for both innovation and the protection of consumers.

Robert R. Belair, who formerly served in the commission’s division of consumer protection and who is now the managing partner of the Washington office of Arnall Golden Gregory, said it was not yet clear whether the Internet of Things “changes the nature of the privacy threat, or just exacerbates the threat in certain ways that require a little more vigilance.”

In detailing the security lapses, the commission said the company transmitted customers’ login information over the Internet in clear, readable text rather than encrypting the data. It also said TRENDnet’s mobile application, which allows customers to control the home camera from a smartphone, did not properly protect users’ credentials. When the company became aware of the flaws, it uploaded a software patch to its Web site and tried to alert customers.

As part of the case, TRENDnet agreed to sanctions that include a 20-year security-compliance auditing program. The company also promised not to misrepresent the security of its cameras, the confidentiality of the activity that its devices transmit, or consumers’ ability to control the security of the cameras or their recordings. The agency’s four current commissioners voted unanimously for the sanctions.

The F.T.C. does not have the legal authority to impose fines in such cases. But TRENDnet agreed to a consent order prohibiting similar practices, so the commission has the ability to seek penalties in the future.

Despite its recent action, the F.T.C.’s authority in this area has been called into question. The Wyndham Hotel Group is challenging the commission’s ability to penalize companies that do not do enough to protect consumer information, like credit card numbers. Wyndham has argued that the agency has not published any formal rules on data security. The case is pending in Federal District Court in New Jersey.

The case against TRENDnet highlights the potential vulnerabilities that consumers face when they connect everyday, in-home products to the Internet. As with e-mail accounts, online banking and shopping Web sites, enterprising hackers can get around security systems when vendors are sloppy.

In 2010, TRENDnet began selling its digitally connected cameras under the product name SecurView. With the device, individuals and businesses could, via an individual Web site, monitor family members, customers or security concerns. In three years, its camera business produced nearly $19 million in revenue, accounting for 10 percent of the company’s total revenue in that period.

According to the F.T.C., a hacker in 2012 identified a security flaw and circulated the information publicly. Though the company was notified of the breach within three days, others saw the message and quickly posted links to live video feeds of about 700 cameras.

The commission said that the hacker was able “to identify a Web address that appeared to support the public sharing of users’ live feeds.” While only some customers opted to share their feeds publicly, the hacker found that all of the feeds could be viewed and shared, the commission said. After the episode, news accounts sometimes included photos taken from the feeds.

Consumers “had little, if any, reason to know that their information was at risk,” the commission said.

That kind of exposure “increases the likelihood that consumers or their property will be targeted for theft or other criminal activity,” the F.T.C. said, and “increases the likelihood that consumers’ personal activities and conversations or those of their family members, including young children, will be observed and recorded by strangers over the Internet.”

A version of this article appears in print on September 5, 2013, on page B1 of the New York edition with the headline: Webcam’s Flaw Put Users’ Lives On Display.

Bits Blog: PayPal Refreshes Mobile App to Woo Shoppers and Fight Off Rivals

For PayPal and its mobile application, the fifth time could be the charm.

On Thursday, the company released a new version of its application for both iPhone and Android devices, one that it hopes will help increase adoption and secure the company’s footprint in the mobile e-commerce market. It’s the fifth iteration since the online payments company first released an application for the iPhone, in 2008.

Anuj Nayar, PayPal’s senior director of global initiatives, said that over the past few years the company had realized that mobile wallets on their own were not always that compelling, or more convenient, for users. Pulling out cash or a credit card is often much easier than fumbling with an application to pay. Instead, Mr. Nayar said, the company wants to focus on bonus features and benefits that can come from using the PayPal mobile application.

“It’s what you build on top, like offers and the ability to order ahead,” he said. “These are the things that will drive consumer adoption.”

The company has reshuffled the main screen of its application to highlight the features that it hopes will appeal to users most: The ability to send money to friends or pay for certain items in some store. The company is also promoting offers and coupons in the new version of its mobile application. In addition, the application now lets users place and pay for orders ahead in some restaurants and shops, like Jamba Juice.

Mr. Nayar said that PayPal has tested many of these features in Sydney, Australia, where PayPal usage is high. Those trials have been successful enough that the company wants to introduce them in other major metropolitan cities around the world.

PayPal’s mobile update comes right as other mobile-commerce companies, both large and small, are rolling out their own ways to let people pay with their mobile phones, although no one has so far been able to woo the masses in the United States.

The company declined to share information about how many people currently use the PayPal app to make purchases, but it said it has 132 million PayPal accounts around the world.

Bits Blog: Americans Go to Great Lengths to Mask Web Travels, Survey Finds

Most Americans say they believe the law is inadequate in protecting their privacy online. The e-mail or social media accounts of one in five have been broken into. And most American consumers take great efforts to mask their identities online.

These findings are part of a survey by the Pew Internet Center that was released Thursday. They come amid a cascade of widely publicized revelations about the depth of United States government surveillance on the electronic communications of its citizens. And they challenge the conventional wisdom advanced in support of both commercial tracking and official monitoring of Web services: “If you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear.”

Apparently, most Americans do have something to hide - at least from complete strangers trying to profit from knowing what they do online. The Pew survey found that 86 percent of Americans were trying to scrub their digital footprints by doing a variety of things, like clearing browsing histories, deleting certain social media posts, using virtual networks to conceal their Internet Protocol addresses, and even, for a few, using encryption tools.

“Our team’s biggest surprise was discovering that many Internet users have tried to conceal their identity or their communications from others,” noted Sara Kiesler, an author of the report and a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. “It’s not just a small coterie of hackers. Almost everyone has taken some action to avoid surveillance.”

The findings come at a time when many lawmakers have reacted with outrage about government surveillance but done very little to curb private tracking of Americans Web browsing. Google and Facebook, among other popular services, profit almost entirely on the behaviorally targeted advertising. What we write in our e-mails, what we browse online and what we buy, both online and offline, are compiled and analyzed, all in the service of showing us what the digital advertising industry calls “relevant” advertising.

Efforts to develop global standards for Do Not Track browser settings have been stalled. Anyway, as consumers move to smartphones, companies and advertisers have devised new ways of tracking them.

The legislature in California recently approved a measure to require Web sites to tell users whether they honor Do Not Track signals on browser settings. The bill does not prohibit tracking, but requires all Web services to spell out what they do when faced with a Do Not Track signal, which some browsers turn it on automatically. It is now pending the California governor’s signature.

The Pew survey was carried out on the phone with 792 adult Americans in July. It contained a margin of error of 3.8 percentage points. In the survey, 55 percent said they were worried about the breadth of personal information that exists about them online, considerably higher than the 33 percent who admitted to being worried in 2009.

Public concern seemed also to stem from apprehension about the law. Two-thirds of those surveyed said they believed the nation’s laws were “not good enough in protecting their privacy online.”

Users experimented with a variety of strategies to mask themselves. About half said they posted material using their real names, or aliases commonly associated with them. But one in four surveyed said they “posted material without revealing who they are.” Young people were more likely than others to switch back and forth, suggesting what previous studies have suggested: that digital natives, as the generation who grew up with the Internet are called, heavily curate their online identities.

The sometimes painful consequence of disclosure was also reflected. Just over 20 percent said an intruder had broken into their e-mail or social networking account; 12 percent said they had been “stalked or harassed;” and 10 percent had lost sensitive information to online thieves, including bank account information.

These findings are echoed by a poll also issued Thursday by TrustE, a San Francisco company that vets the privacy policies of Web sites and mobile apps and gives a seal of approval to those that meet its criteria. It found that nearly four out of five smartphone users in the United States were reluctant to download apps they did not trust.

More than two-thirds of mobile users did not like being tracked for the purposes of behavioral advertising. And even as about half of all smartphone users said they were willing to share some personal information in exchange for shopping discounts, most were loathe to reveal their exact location or their Web browsing activity.

The TrustE survey was conducted online with over 700 Internet users in the United States in June.

In March, before a former National Security Agency contractor began to leak details about the agency’s surveillance apparatus, a survey by Forrester Research picked up on a trend of heightened privacy concerns among consumers about online tracking for behavioral advertising.

Commissioned by Neustar, an Internet service provider company, Forrester’s survey found that 27 percent of Americans were using an ad blocking tool when they browse the Web; 18 percent had turned on a “Do Not Track” setting in their browsers.