Driving across the country — it’s as American as Apple pie and baseball. Every time I mentioned my upcoming road trip from D.C. to Seattle, I was met with deep sighs of jealousy and only half-joking exclamations of “take me with you.” I think the 3,000-mile drive should be a required part of a college degree.

Each time I make the trek, I learn so much about myself and my country.  At least once each trip — and usually several times — I see something so beautiful it fills me with awe, pride and gratitude at my good fortune to be born in such an incredible land, and it fills my eyes with more than a little mist. By now, I've made the drive about a dozen times, usually in search of a new job or a new opportunity. In fact, that's how America's romance with cross-country treks began.

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In "The Grapes of Wrath," John Steinbeck dubbed Route 66 the Mother Road, back in 1939. The dusty, windy road from Chicago to Los Angeles was no drive in the park, but it gave hundreds of thousands of Americans a little bit of hope as they tried to escape the Dust Bowl. The road had actually opened in 1926, and in some places, it was barely more than a clearing in the tumbleweeds.

My own love affair with the cross-country drive comes from my father, who was an (almost) original Route 66-er. He served in the military in Arizona during the 1950s and drove back and forth from New Jersey to Fort Huachuca several times – legend has it he sometimes did it in two days. He became a teacher and never lost his wanderlust, so all us kids were packed in the car every summer and drove out west. I've loved rest stops, hotel ice machines and surfing for distant baseball game radio broadcasts even since.

But America's real sense of wanderlust dates almost to the beginning, with Lewis and Clark's harebrained trip to the West Coast. Tales of their journey filled generations of Americans with that quintessentially American sentiment: Somewhere out there, beyond the next mountain range, in the next town, along the next river, there's a better life.

Every journey is a vote for faith and hope. I wondered as I began my Hidden Fee Tour of America during what is still the worst economic calamity since the publication of "The Grapes of Wrath": Do Americans still have hope? Or has cynicism replaced optimism? I will be working on that story for the next few weeks and probably for the next several years. With consumers so beaten down by corporate misbehavior, with Wall Street raking in bonuses while 1 of out of 10 Americans can't make their mortgage payments, with a multinational giant turning our beautiful Gulf of Mexico into a useless sewer, you might think it hard to find hope.

I'm in Montana, which means I'm barely more than halfway across. But I've already found a lot of answers. Here are a few:

* America changes so much once you head west of Chicago.  It's so big, beautiful, clean and calm. As soon as I paid the last charge on the Illinois Tollway heading west, I felt my blood pressure drop.  The right turn up to Wisconsin can fill even the coldest soul with warmth. If you're feeling blue and you have the means, travel at least that far west. I promise you'll feel better.

* Big hearts grow up in small cities, but tragically, they don't stick around. In Fargo, N.D., I heard the same joke from several folks: "Our biggest export is our children." There's nothing to keep the kids at home. Despite a fantastic lifestyle, there are few opportunities. In every small town in America, the young folks are fleeing to the cities. The main industry in great second-tier U.S. cities like Fargo, Billings, Missoula or Bismarck seems to be coffee shops.  If you want more, you leave.

* There's an equal and opposite reaction to that exodus, however. At the very first stop on my trip, in Pittsburgh, I pulled up in front of my meeting place to find a group of men carrying furniture from an apartment into a truck. "Moving out?" I said to the woman there, smiling. "Moving back home," she said back, darkly. Only then I noticed the furniture was going into a garbage truck. She couldn't get a job in her chosen field, school counseling. She couldn't afford to live on her own any longer.

Young people who move to the cities are finding they have little hope of buying a home and raising a family there. They are welcome as young, struggling singles in one-bedroom apartments. But I didn't meet a single 25-year-old who felt confident in his or her prospects to get a yard and have a dog some day. They are faced with this impossible choice: Do they move home and give up opportunity or stay in the city and give up the family? This is the most troubling aspect of American economic life today. We must give our young people hope.

*You see signs bragging about "American Recovery and Reinvestment Act" projects on roads all around the nation — even along seemingly pristine roads that seem to see no more than one or two cars per hour. Because I spend most of my time in parts of the country where potholes are the size of small cars, this is infuriating. There are times where our federalist system seems perfectly silly.

*In a single day, you can easily drive from Columbus, Ohio, to Chicago or even Minneapolis — and drive through about 12 distinct cultures. That's what makes America great. Even in Columbus itself, you can find the Bible belt and you can find a small piece of San Francisco — the city hosts enormous art festivals and gay pride parades. Once you leave Columbus, you hear Rush Limbaugh on seemingly every AM radio station. When in arrive in Chicago, you find the crashing of cultures that gives us everything from Oprah to the Cubs to the blues. Oak Park is a neighborhood of authors and activists that probably rivals Berkeley.  Wisconsin and Minnesota are full of liberal farmers' sons and daughters. But leave Minneapolis and you'll find the heart of sensible conservative America and won't hit a safely liberal region until to cross the Cascade Mountains about two days later. Yet we all live together, somehow. It's amazing.

* Speaking of Limbaugh, he is everywhere.  It seems like his program airs on half the stations in rural America, and his booming voice is inescapable. Having been the target of Limbaugh's misplaced wrath recently, I have my opinion about whether Rush adds cynicism or optimism to the national debate. What's yours?

*Everyone is worried about the oil spill in the Gulf. Everyone.

* I’m still debating whether folks in the middle of the country have more common sense or are more naive than city slickers. I’m wondering who pays more overdraft fees, for example — more on that next week. But in the meantime, some thoughts. These folks sure don’t like cheaters. In downtown Fargo, there’s a huge billboard that reads: “Fargo’s Roger Maris, legitimate home run king.” Barry Bonds and Mark McGwire would probably not get a friendly reception there. On the other hand, many free Wi-Fi hotspots don’t even have sign-up screens, and they certainly don’t have 5,000-word disclaimers. Just connect and surf. It’s kind of nice. I hope the lawyers don’t discover Miles City, Mont. I haven’t paid more than $3 for a beer in the past two weeks, and that’s nice, too.

* Finally, thanks to billboards, small crosses, large memorials on bridges and pictures posted near city halls, you get a deep sense of the ultimate price that's being paid by American families during our wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. That pain hits hard in small towns, but their pride in serving seems to be an even greater force. On Memorial Day weekend, every one of us should take the time to thank a vet and remember the people who give the best years of their lives — and sometimes, their very lives — in an effort to protect us.

I have been humbled by all the efforts readers have made to make my trip easier. Red Tape fans have planned events, suggested roadside stops and, most important, helped me find stories all along the way. One of the best things about being a traveler — a stranger in a strange land— is the generosity you feel overflowing from folks who are so eager to show you their towns, their homes, their quirky traditions. I’ve been able to talk with folks in their cafes, their pubs, their living rooms and their dog parks. Some might have seemed cynical, some liberal, some conservative. But when it came time to see me, all of them shared one thing: They were welcoming. To welcome a stranger is the ultimate act of optimism. And that has led me to this unmistakable conclusion. Certainly, America has hit a bump in the road — no, a large pothole. There’s a lot of yelling and screaming on TV and in newspaper columns. But when you talk to people, when you have genuine encounters, Americans are a generous, loving and optimistic lot.

Not long ago, I saw Arlo Guthrie in concert. He was in Seattle, preaching to "his people," one would think. But he told an incredibly moving story that I'll paraphrase here: He's traveled every corner of the country, and when he was young, he tried to seek out those who agreed with his point of view on things. But the older he's gotten, the more he's seen that there are really two kinds of people in America, and they aren't Republicans and Democrats or liberals and conservatives. There are people who care and people who don't. And he found that he had much more in common with the people who care — whatever their views — than the people who didn't get involved in anything.

My trip has taught me that Americans are angry with being mistreated, neglected and bilked. They are tired of being taken advantage of. But they certainly aren't tired of caring, and that means we'll be OK.

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CHICAGO -- Gary Kopycinski teaches religion and ethics in a suburban Chicago Catholic high school, but his effort to practice what he preaches made him the perfect target for a debt settlement company.

Three years ago, Kopycinski was told by several advisers that he should file for bankruptcy. His finances were a wreck. He held $35,000 in credit card debt and was on the hook for a car loan that he'd co-signed for a family member. On his salary as Catholic high school teacher, it seemed there was no other way but to wave a white flag. But Kopycinski believed that bankruptcy "was a cop-out," so he went searching for an alternative. When he heard an advertisement for Debt Settlement USA, he thought he'd found it. Instead, he had hooked his fortunes to an industry that the attorney general of Illinois, Lisa Madigan, calls "a scam."

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The advertisements are hard to resist, with come-ons like these: "Debts settled for pennies on the dollar," "An open phone line has been established for consumers who need relief," and even, "Don't declare bankruptcy, that should be your last option."

Kopycinski, who  was already treading water in 2007 when the car loan payments landed on him, fell for the pitch.

"I was at the point where I was using Peter to pay Paul," he said. "Then I just wasn't able to keep up with the payments and I was falling behind. Finally, I was at the point where I was so far behind I didn't know what I was going to do." 

Phone calls from creditors were coming fast and furious, and as time passed, they got "nastier and nastier."

"Then I got really worried," he said. "I was getting to a place I didn't want to be."

A friend and a financial counselor both advised him to file bankruptcy, but he wanted another option.

"In my mind I understood that bankruptcy was a cop-out and that it meant you weren't fulfilling your responsibilities," he said.

Instead, he took up Debt Settlement USA on its offer. Agents told him they had special relationships with the credit card firms, and had great success at trimming up to 50 percent off customers'  bills. For 14 percent of his total debt, the firm said it would negotiate with creditors on his behalf. And agents told him he wouldn't have to deal with nasty phone calls or legal threats any more.

"Just tell them you are in debt settlement," he was told by one operator.

Instead of continuing to make his payments, Kopycinski said Debt Settlement USA employees told him to set aside $650 each month to build an account that would be used for settlement offers later. But as is typical of debt settlement firms, Debt Settlement USA made sure its bill was paid first. So it collected $442 of each monthly payment toward its total $4,552 fee.  After eight crushing payments, Kopycinski had only built $1,800 toward his debt, but Debt Settlement USA had been credited with $3,566.

Patricia Dose, Debt Settlement USA's general counsel, said her firm never tells consumers not to pay their bills, adding that by the time consumers come to them they've already stopped paying in most cases. She said she could not comment on Kopycinski's specific situation, citing privacy concerns, but that the firm charges up-front fees that are similar to fees charged by bankruptcy attorneys.

"It's all disclosed in the contract," she said. "… We're very up front with our consumers. Everybody wants to be paid for their services."

Kopycinski tells a different account. He says he started faithfully paying into his settlement savings account, but the phone calls never stopped. Some creditors even tried to talk sense into him.

"I remember one guy from a bank just started screaming at me, yelling, 'This is what's going to happen! This is what's going to happen!" he said. "When I tried to explain what I was doing, he just yelled louder."

When he told his Debt Settlement USA counselor about the exchange, he remembers the operator acting surprised.

"He said, 'Wow, I know him. I deal with him all the time. He must really not like you for some reason," Kopycinski said.

Then, he was sued by Chase, which was now seeking $17,000 from him.  A notice of the lawsuit was left on his back porch.

Afraid, he called his counselor at Debt Settlement USA, who transferred him to the company's legal department. There, an operator directed him to a website with free legal forms and helped him fill out a motion to dismiss the case for improper service. Kopycinski had to figure out for himself where in downtown Chicago to file the paperwork. 

Dose, however, said her firm might provide some "general information" but it does not offer legal advice.

In the end, the motion was filed incorrectly and Kopycinski received notice that a default judgment had been entered against him.

With his debt ballooning, his debt settlement strategy blowing up in his face and the legal walls closing in, Kopycinski knew he had run out of options. He went to a legal aid agency and filed for bankruptcy.  But he'd learned more about the process since then, so he filed Chapter 13 -- which means that while debtors can no longer harass him, he will be repaying  all his debt -- in his case, within five years. Today, he is making $1,190 payments every month, via cashier's check.

"It was very humbling, humiliating, but I did it," he said. "At least I am protected now."

Madigan, the Illinois attorney general whose office has filed seven lawsuits against debt settlement firms, is investigating Kopycinski 's complaint.

She said the worst part of his story is that his good nature and sense of responsibility were used against him.

"It just breaks my heart," she said. "... To me the crime of all of this is you've got good people who, when economy was different, got in over their heads."

Addressing Kopycinski, she added, "Now, you're trying to do the right thing to pay off your debt, but instead you get completely scammed. You're in a much worse financial circumstance, your credit is destroyed. It makes your life impossible."

Had Kopycinski began paying his debts through Chapter 13 two years ago, instead of signing up with debt settlement, his monthly payments would today be considerably less. And he would be $3,500 richer. He advises anyone else in the same spot to avoid the promises of debt settlement.

"You're going to end up with some joker on the phone pulling your strings and telling you where to go and giving you incomplete, inaccurate advice. Everything they say isn't true," he said, holding back tears. "They do not have relationships with the credit card companies. ... What was $35,000 in debt turned into maybe $60,000."

Madigan also recommends that consumers should steer clear of the debt settlement strategy.

"Consumers should never get involved with debt settlement companies," she said. "Hundreds of Illinois residents have come to our office who have fallen prey to what is essentially an outright scam.  You can do everything yourself.  You can figure out how much you make a month and reach out to creditors."

She said 40 percent of the people who sign up with debt settlement firms end up like Kopycinski, filing for bankruptcy anyway, and two-thirds drop out before even a single debt is settled.

"Folks are finding they are paying an enormous amount of money up front for fees and are getting virtually none of their debt settled," she said. "They are told to not contact creditors.  We see time and again people are told not continue to pay their bills. Well, the credit card companies don't take kindly to that. They sue people."

Dose, the debt settlement firm's lawyer, objected to characterization of debt settlement as a scam, adding sarcastically, "Then it's as much of a scam as consumer credit counseling is." Counseling services are paid in part by banks, she noted, and consumers who enroll in them must pay 100 percent of their debt.  She could provide no statistics on how many consumers complete their debt settlement program with her firm, but said many consumers benefit even from partial completion because Debt Settlement USA is able to obtain settlements on some of their debts.

In Illinois, what happened to Kopycinski will soon be expressly illegal. The state Legislature passed a law earlier this month that will prohibit debt settlement companies from collecting large up-front fees. Aside from a small sign-up fee, the firms will only be able to collect a percentage of the debt after they have earned settlements with debtors.

The ads persist, however, as other states have yet to enact strict regulation of the practice.

Dose said the Illinois law targeting debt settlement firms will harm the state's consumers.

"They probably won't have a lot of the options consumers in other states have," she said.  "None of this is easy. ... People who come to us understand that none of this is a cakewalk."

She added said that debt settlement is a better choice than bankruptcy for some consumers because settlement firms take their payments in monthly installments, while many bankruptcy attorneys require full payment before they will begin.

"Debt settlement is just one option out of three that people have," she said.

It's hard to find anyone outside of the debt settlement industry who sees its benefits, however.  Consumers who have large debts should visit a nonprofit agency like the National Foundation for Credit Counseling at http://www.nfcc.org/.  And no consumer should agree to pay an up-front fee of more than $100 for help with credit card debt.

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COLUMBUS, Ohio -- It's no secret that the recession has caused many drivers to postpone a new car purchase and hang on to an old clunker or buy a used vehicle instead. But there’s a drawback to keeping an older car: the threat of hefty repair bills. Enter opportunistic extended automobile warranty companies.

Linda Crowe of Columbus, Ohio, left, thought she was making a safe, conservative choice two years ago when she purchased a three-year old truck with 30,000 miles on it. But the vehicle's manufacturer's warranty was about to expire, and the deluge of extended warranty junk mail she soon received got her thinking: What would she do if the car's transmission failed in two years? So she signed up with California-based Auto One Warranty, and thought she'd purchased protection for up to 100,000 miles. Peace of mind, she thought, was worth the $2,918 price tag.

Instead, she had merely acquired a two-year headache, and a fight with a firm that would soon declare bankruptcy and ultimately face a lawsuit by Ohio Attorney General Richard Cordray.

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The industry has received a sizable black eye recently: Two other extended warranty firms were also sued by Cordray's office – and eight other state attorneys general -- in April.

While Crowe's story has a happy ending, her tale is a warning to other consumers who might consider purchasing additional protection for their vehicles: Always ask questions and do some research before signing on with unfamiliar companies for any product.

Crowe had second thoughts after purchasing her warranty, and within three weeks, she requested a refund. Her contract indicated she had 30 days to cancel the deal, but that promise turned out to just part of the sales pitch.

"They told me it would take up to 10 weeks to get a refund," she said. "I called after 10 weeks they said it was still in process." Thus began a ritual that continued for months. She would call, and an Auto One representative would say the refund was still in the works. "They lied and just kept on continuing to lie," she said.

(Auto One representatives could not be contacted for comment. Calls to the phone number listed on Auto One's Web site returned only an "all circuits are busy" message.)

After six months, she called American Express and tried to initiate a consumer dispute, but it was too late. Unscrupulous firms that want to avoid what are called "chargebacks" in the credit card business will often try to stall customers, as chargebacks are generally impossible after 90 days.

"My problem was I had faith they were going to give me back the money because they kept telling me 'It's in the works; it's in the works,'" Crowe said.

About that time, Crowe did some Internet research and discovered a cascade of complaints about Auto One. She also found out the company had an "F" rating with the Better Business Bureau. It was a harsh lesson.

"The big thing I want other people to know is before you buy anything, before you sign a contract look at the attorney general's site. Look at the BBB site, because it's all there," she said. "If we would have went there in the beginning...we wouldn't have made that purchase to begin with."

About one year ago, Crowe contacted Cordray's office and filed a formal complaint, and learned that there were dozens of complaints about warranty companies piling up.

More letters were traded, but Crowe still wasn't getting anywhere. She was told that Cordray was readying a lawsuit against the firm, but in March she absorbed the biggest blow yet -- an Auto One telephone operator told her the company was closing.

Losing nearly $3,000 would hurt anyone, but it was particularly painful for Crowe, a social worker who asked that her employer not be identified.

"I really thought, 'Well that's it. We've lost $2,900 and we're not going to get it back,' and it really made me sick because I am this far away from retirement," she said. "For me that's a lot of money just to throw away. I was really disheartened."

But Crowe just "couldn't forget about it."  And one last time, she pulled out all her paperwork and scoured it. Suddenly, she noticed a critical detail she'd missed before: While Auto One sold her the warranty, a firm named ACSC (Automobile Customer Service Corp.), based in Huntsville, Ala., was actually the warranty provider. So she tracked the company down and called.

"And they told me, 'I'm sorry ma'am. I hate to say this, but Auto One took your money. ... You won't get it back," Crowe recalled. She said the operator also told her that ACSC had never received any money from Auto One.

But Crowe, undeterred, shared this new information with Cordray's office, which intervened.

Raw video interview with Crowe on Facebook

Last week, she received a check for $2,912 in the mail from ACSC. The firm told her it was making an exception in her case, refunding money it had never received.

An operator at ACSC told msnbc.com that the company had "no comment" on Crowe's story.

Crowe, on the other hand, said, "I am very grateful to them. But I think the attorney general had something to do with it. I'm still a bit in a state of shock that I got the money."

Not all extended warranties are scams, but Cordray says consumers should beware that third-party companies often mislead consumers, offering  "bumper-to-bumper" plans full of exclusions that often aren't disclosed clearly to consumers.  And in the lawsuits filed against coverage providers, Cordray found many complaints of unfair coverage denials.

"These service contacts can be protection for you, but you just need to careful you understand exactly what's being offered, what the exclusions are, what the prices are and what the terms are," he said.   "They are being advertised as the same as warranties when in fact it often is not the case."  

Cordray also said that businesses that seem obstinate at first  will offer refunds or other compensation after an attorney general's office gets involved. That's why he encourages complaints (and maybe why he gets 30,000 of them each year.) Of course, not every one has a happy ending, and Cordray cheered Crowe's persistence and her decision to re-read all her paperwork when all seemed lost. But he gently chided her as well, and all consumers who sign up with a company before they read up on it.

"It tells you that the first time (she read the contract) wasn't good enough," he said.  "One rule of thumb ... if you don't understand something, then you shouldn't be signing it."

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Here's a new Beltway term you should get used to hearing -- "bill shock."  You've heard about cell phone users who suddenly find themselves burdened by a $5,000 or $10,000 bill for a single month, rung up by a hyper-texting child or excessive Internet downloads.  This week, the Federal Communications Commission very sensibly recommended that wireless carriers be forced to send a mid-month text message warning to any customer who suddenly rings up enormous charges.

That's one small victory for consumers, but the giant leap is still to come.

Red Tape Chronicles readers know a thing or two about "bill shock." Crazy cable bills, outrageous hotel fees, unfair overdraft charges -- American consumers are under siege at historic levels. A nagging recession and high unemployment levels make examination of scams and unfair fees even more critical.

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So after four years, 400 blog posts, 2 books, and 120,000 comments, Red Tape is taking to the road.  Starting today, I'll be visiting a dozen cities on a 15-day fee-fighting journey. My dog Lucky will be with me, helping me sniff out scams from Washington D.C. to Seattle. He's already helped -- you should see the fees some hotels charge when you are traveling with a dog! (In Pittsburgh, $25 a night extra was standard, but the Shadyside Inn wanted to charge me $90! The Red Roof Inn I'm staying at is charging less than that for both of us).

 So ride along on this trip. Along the way, we'll meet a widow who paid $1,500 for the extra security of an extended warranty, only to lose everything when the firm went out of business.  We'll talk with folks who fell for credit card settlement scams and the attorney general who just pushed through the boldest new law in the land to prevent such scams.  We'll meet kids trying to pay for college, adults struggling to pay off oppressive loans, consumers who have fired their banks in favor of credit unions, and plenty of Americans who are just plain fed up with unfair treatment.  We'll talk over coffee, tea, beer and dog walks. We'll visit local NBC stations, book stores, and neighborhoods. Many of the stops have been planned with the help of readers who have generously volunteered their time to help organize town hall-style meetings.

You can follow the day-to-day travels by signing up as a Facebook fan (click here)

This week, I'll be in Pittsburgh; Wheeling, W.Va.; Columbus, Ohio; Chicago, and Madison, Wis.  If you are along the path, check the Facebook page for updates on where I'll be on any given day.  And of course, we'll be bringing you several stories on msnbc.com through the Red Tape Chronicles. 

Welcome to the Red Tape on the Road Hidden Fee Tour of America. Now, on to Pittsburgh!

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As the battle of e-book readers heats up, Amazon is trying to beat the competition by continually adding new features to its Kindle product. But some privacy experts say that one Kindle gizmo tucked into a new software upgrade goes too far.

Readers of old-fashioned dead-tree books often like to underline or highlight passages they find particularly meaningful, or scribble notes for later reference.  All e-book readers offer an electronic equivalent of such note-taking. But Kindle users who highlight passages will now have a record of those highlights sent back to Amazon servers, where they will be compiled and sorted to help produce a new feature called "Popular Highlights."

The results are undeniably intriguing. Anyone can view the most popular passages of all time (currently a section from Malcolm Gladwell's "Outliers") or the most highlighted books (Dan Brown's "Lost Symbol" is first; "The Holy Bible" is second). Meanwhile, Kindle owners who buy e-books can use a nifty option that lets them see which sections were selected by other Kindle readers.

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Amazon does not reveal preferences of individual users. Only passages highlighted by three or more users are included.

Still, Larry Ponemon, who runs privacy consulting firm The Ponemon Institute, said some users will bristle at the notion that Amazon can track which passages they highlight while reading.  The feature "definitely steps over the line," he said.

"From a privacy point of view there's a creepiness factor," he said.  "Reading is one of those things that is very personal, something you do in your own space.  How you read and what you emphasize is really important to people.”  He compared the service to a Web site that tracks users’ surfing habits with even more precision than is available today.

"It's as if they aren't just tracking what I'm watching but what I'm focusing on when looking at the screen," he said.

Ponemon, himself an avid Kindle user, said it "would definitely change my behavior," and he will consider not using the highlight feature.

It's possible Kindle users are unaware that they are contributing to the "popular highlights " feature, which launched quietly to some users who downloaded the latest version of Kindle software beginning last month. Popular Highlights is turned on by default.

Users are told of the new feature through "forum posts, help pages, and when we release new software to the device," said Amazon spokesman Andrew Herdener. The new Kindle software will be deployed widely "in the coming weeks," he said.

Herdener denied that the new service raises any privacy issues with consumers, comparing it to the popular "Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought..." feature on Amazon.com.

"In both cases the data is aggregated to show the popularity of a given item or in this case passage," he said.  "The response from customers has been very positive. They are finding popular highlights to be fun, interesting, and helpful."

Users can opt out of participating, but only if they disable a feature that automatically backs up notes and highlights. Herdener would not comment on how many users had turned off the notes and highlights backup feature.

On a Web site named Kindleboard.com, devoted to Kindle fanatics, some users complained that they were being forced to pick between participating in popular highlights or losing their notes due to a system crash or lost device.

But other Kindle users say they like the new feature and trust Amazon to protect the anonymity of the information.

Paul Stephens, director of policy and advocacy at the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, said he thought the new Amazon feature was "concerning."

"There are a lot of sensitive things people might read on a Kindle book," he said. America has a long tradition of carefully guarding the privacy of reading -- special laws govern the release of library records, for example, he said.

"Librarians have been on the forefront of protecting people's privacy," he said.  "This is an interesting paradigm change here, if electronic delivery of books becomes the norm. What is going to happen to this strongly held belief that what you read is entirely a private matter?"

Even though the data is presented anonymously, a database of reading highlights could be a treasure trove for law enforcement.  Officials would be able to determine the authors of the notes or the users who highlighted a passage by obtaining a court order. The records would also be available to lawyers engaged in civil proceedings, such as divorce cases, Stephens said. For example, the fact that a spouse had highlighted sexual passages in books could become an issue in a contested divorce, he said.

Even before the advent of Popular Highlights, such legal searches were possible because of the way Amazon backs up notes and highlights.

Despite the privacy concerns, Stephens said he thinks the technology is "terrific," and he would have no problem with it if users had to actively opt-in to participate, rather than be automatically included.   But he said he is worried that despites Amazon's efforts to preserve the anonymity of the information, clever statisticians might be able to combine the Amazon information with other data to determine users' identities – a trick that has been employed successfully before with other anonymous data.

Ponemon, who polls Internet users every year in order to rate the privacy reputations of major corporations, said Amazon consistently ranks near the top.  So he said he is surprised the firm would risk that trust with the new feature.

"I feel like they missed the boat," he said.  "Going from recommended books to this is different. This is something very personal …  having an organization like Amazon start looking at reading habits not only at the book level but also at micro levels is actually a pretty serious issue."

 

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Shopping online became a little safer this weekend when Visa banned a long-standing practice that Sen. Jay Rockefeller had blasted as "deceptive," saying it triggered $1.4 billion in unauthorized charges on 30 million Americans' credit card bills.

The tale provides a good reminder of the importance of scouring your credit card bills every month.

Millions of consumers ended up paying monthly charges for useless travel clubs and similar services after shopping at popular Web sites like 1-800-Flowers.com, Buy.com, Classmates.com and around 450 other sites, staffers for Rockefeller, D-W. Va., concluded in a report issued last year.

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Consumers who shopped at the sites were enticed to click on an advertisement that offered free shipping or a discount.  In many cases, merely clicking on the link to find more information led to enrollment in a monthly service – even though there was not so much as a sign-up page or a place to enter a credit card number. Many consumers were surprised to find that their credit card numbers had been furnished to the third-party site without their permission -- a tactic called "data pass."

 

A new Visa ban against data passing took effect on Saturday.  Visa will now require that Web merchants prompt consumers to re-enter all 16 digits of their credit card number before allowing any third-party charges.

"Consumers who shop online using their Visa cards should be confident that they will only be charged for the products and services they legitimately intend to purchase -- not those that are foisted on them through deceptive data pass schemes," Martin Elliott, a Visa spokesman, said in a statement.

Rockefeller said he was glad Visa banned the practice, but said he would still push for legislation that would make data passing illegal.

"Tricking consumers into buying goods and services they do not want is completely unacceptable," he said. "It's not ethical, it's not right and it is not the way business should be done in America."

Rockefeller's staff found that 88 electronic commerce firms had earned more than $1 million each in commissions by passing consumers' credit card information to three Connecticut-based companies -- Affinion, Vertrue and Webloyalty.

In an e-mail, Webloyalty spokesman Adam Weiner said that the company offers numerous discounts that help consumers. He also said the firm has recently changed its sign-up procedure.

"Since January, the Webloyalty enrollment process occurs only if the consumer enters their entire 16 digit credit or debit card number," he said.  "Accordingly, no additional changes by Webloyalty were necessary in order to conform to Visa's recently announced policy concerning data pass."

A spokeswoman for Vertrue pointed to a statement the company issued last year when the Rockefeller investigation began, indicating the company had begun requiring new customers to enter the last four digits of their credit card numbers before joining their clubs.

"This new layer of enhanced consumer protection reinforces the company's existing, longstanding pro-consumer Internet marketing policies," the statement said.  More recently, the firm has required new customers to enter all 16 digits of their credit cards.

Affinion did not respond to requests for comment.

Brand-name companies like Priceline.com, Hotwire.com and 1-800-Flowers exploited the trust of consumers to trick them into signing up for the unwanted services.

Even as the U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation was holding its hearing on the practice, 1-800-Flowers tried a slight variation on the theme: It sent checks to consumers for small amounts, such as $9.30, in official-looking mailers. The checks (one of which was sent to this reporter) could easily be mistaken for refunds, and they were sent out at the same time that 1-800-Flowers customers were receiving e-mails about $10 coupons that were available as the result of a class-action lawsuit. But consumers who endorsed the checks and cashed them were enrolled in a fee-based travel discount service, using the same data-pass technique.

According to the check, the travel program -- called Elite Excursions -- was offered by Trilegiant Corp., part of Affinion. Connecticut-based Trilegiant paid $25 million in 2008 to settle a class-action lawsuit accusing it of billing consumers for products and subscriptions they'd never requested.

Joseph D. Pititto, spokesman for 1-800-Flowers, described the checks as an "old program, mailed out by a third party" and said the program was discontinued in December.

The Rockefeller report found that many consumers failed to complain to the original Web site they'd used because they often had no idea how they'd signed up for the travel club service. And the loyalty club companies went to great pains to keep consumers from making the connection.

An e-mail written by an Affinion executive to a 1-800-Flowers executive in November 2008, and obtained by Rockefeller's staff, revealed just how far the loyalty club firm would go to insulate clients from complaints.

"(Revealing partner information) is a STRICT no-no in our centers. We tell agents not to do it and don't give them our client's phone numbers and so on," the e-mail read. "If we hear instances (of) it in our monitoring/test calls, they will fail that call and get dinged on their incentive payments."

Other major credit card processors are also taking action against the data pass tactic. Lisa Anselmo, a spokeswoman for American Express, said the firm already monitors merchants for "excessive disputes" and potentially deceptive or unfair practices. The firm's merchant regulations will soon be amended to require that merchants to "directly" obtain card information from card members.

"Card members will have to re-enter their card information ...  in order to process the transaction," she said.

Chris Montero of MasterCard said that his firm's rules already prohibit data pass tactics.  Firms that engaged in the practice were violating those rules, he said.

"There is awareness now, and enforcement of (the rules)," he said.

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