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It's Cyber Monday, and while you're busy shopping online, chances are you'll see lots of user reviews on various products. While the majority of those reviews do come from real users like yourself, who are passionate enough to share their opinions on a product, many of them could be fake, left by the vendors themselves to either promote their product or, in some cases, smear competitors.

While it's exceedingly difficult to absolutely prove that a review is faked, here are a few tips on spotting those that aren't from real users. These will come in … Read more

Black Friday was a bright day for Internet retailers, as online sales for the key shopping day surpassed $1 billion for the first time.

Bargain hunters spent $1.042 billion online the day after Thanksgiving, a 26 percent increase of last year's Black Friday, according to new figures released today by market analyst ComScore. Online shopping on Thanksgiving Day also increased, totaling $633 million in receipts, a 32 percent increase over Thanksgiving 2011.

"Despite the frenzy of media coverage surrounding the importance of Black Friday in the brick-and-mortar world, we continue to see this shopping day become more … Read more

It's that time of the year again, when savvy shoppers like yourself head to your favorite online retailers to avoid the ridiculous shenanigans and flesh-pressing of Black Friday. But just because you know enough to buy online doesn't mean that there aren't some good tips worth paying attention to. Here are a few worth repeating for habitual online shoppers.

Change your passwords now because chances are, you haven't in a long time. Change your e-mail account password, change your banking password, and change the passwords for online shopping accounts like at Amazon. A good tip for … Read more

Online retailers will have good reason to make merry this holiday season.

People shopping via the Internet will spend to the tune of $43.4 billion during November and December, according to a report out today from ComScore.

That figure is a 17 percent gain over last year's online holiday spending, which itself rose 15 percent over 2010's number. It's also way ahead of the retail industry's expectation of just a 4.1 percent rise in overall consumer spending this season.

"The strength leading up to and during the holiday season-to-date, in addition to a … Read more

Parents are more worried about advertisers having access to their children's online data than about their children talking to strangers online, according to a report published today.

The Pew Internet Project and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University collaborated on the report, which is based on a survey if 802 parents of children aged 12 to 17 with questions about social-networking sites, namely Facebook. As more and more teens and pre-teens use social media as a part of their every day communications , the study finds that parents worried about a variety of online dangers -- … Read more

If you've ever dated someone who isn't quite what he or she initially seemed, please take comfort.

You are not alone.

You are not alone in meeting lovers who drink themselves unconscious before your very eyes. You are not alone in meeting lovers who will suddenly start uttering insane gibberish, just when you thought this might be "the one."… Read more

The quirky e-commerce site Fab is giving its customers free shipping just as the holidays approach.

A fast-growing startup -- the 17-month-old company counted its 9 millionth user earlier this month -- Fab launched the new promotion today. The company will pay for shipping for orders that total $75 or more, but only on certain products.

The free shipping counts toward 98 percent of all of Fab's products, all of which are identified by a truck icon, Fab CEO Jason Goldberg wrote in a note to users.

After transforming from a gay social network into flash sales retail site … Read more

The Winklevoss twins, known for their long legal battle with Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, have made another investment as venture capitalists in their post-Facebook lives.

Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, also known as the "Winklevii," led a $750,000 investment round for Hukkster, an online shopping startup that lets shoppers track online merchandise and receive notifications when prices drop, The New York Times reported today.

New York-based Hukkster was founded by two former retail consultants, Katie Finnegan and Erica Bell, and has more than 10,000 users. Retailers such as J. Crew, Bloomingdale's, and ShopBop pay a referral … Read more