PC Magazine recently published a list of their editors’ picks for the top 100 “undiscovered” websites. The list spans a variety of categories from reference to music to health. Consumerism Commentary readers are probably familiar with a few of these sites, particularly those in the “money” category. Here are some of the highlights throughout.

Hard to Find 800 Numbers: Some companies do a decent job of hiding their toll-free customer service numbers in an attempt to use e-mail (and possibly avoid complaints). Others gladly provide a long distance phone number to save money. This site lets you browse for your favorite companies to find those hidden toll-free numbers.

Cork’d: This site is billed as the “simple way to review and share wine.” I can never keep track of the wine I drink, so every time I go out, I have to guess at what I might like. Now, if there were only a device that would allow me to check reviews while at the restaurant…

Menupages: Speaking of dining out, this undiscovered website indexes menus for over 6,000 New York restaurants. This is a great way to decide where to eat rather than using other options, including visiting the restaurants’ individual websites, which may or may not include their own menus.

Kiva: This microlending site has been mentioned quite a bit by other financial blogs. Kiva provides a mechanism to provide small loans to needy entrepreneurs all over the world, improving the lives and communities of people who will likely be very appreciative.

Rentometer: I discovered Rentometer in March and found it to be an interesting way to determine whether you’re getting a good deal on rent. At the time, my rent was on the low side for my area. I’d like to see how my new apartment compares, but the site is not responding at the moment.

Trulia: If you’re planning to make a real-estate-related move, Trulia should be one of the websites you check first. It has financial information as well as details about school districts and communities. Right on the front page, I can see that Trenton, New Jersey has made the top 5 in median listing price increases.

Topix: Here is a powerful news and blog aggregator that can organize listings by location or, as one would imagine, by topic. Some pages, like the one for Princeton, New Jersey are edited by humans, but when no human has been assigned, Topix’ intelligent robots take care of the job.

The Bargainist: For those who like to make their purchasing decision based on what’s on sale, The Bargainist provides a nearly-constant feed of coupons and deals. The only deal that stood out to me is the 40% of a CD at Borders. Even with that discount, you can find much better deals on music online.

Do My Stuff: Why do something yourself if you can pay someone else to do it for you? This site lets individuals and companies bid on your mundane and annoying tasks.

Yapta: After seeing this site featured, I joined Yapta immediately. I entered the confirmation code for my upcoming flight to California and will now allow Yapta to track my route’s prices. If the tickets become available for a lower amount of money between now and my flight, Yapta will inform me how to receive a refund for the difference. The likelihood of my holiday travel suddenly becoming available for less money is low; the flights are sold out now.

Remember the Milk: If you’re highly organized, unlike myself, you may enjoy making lists. You can tie your to-dos listed on Remember the Milk into your email or SMS (text messaging system) to allow you to be reminded of your tasks any where. Become a slave to a list—you know you want to.

Those are some of the “undiscovered” websites I found interesting or possibly useful for Consumerism Commentary readers. There are lots more—89, to be precise—with commentary in the PC Magazine feature.

Top 100 Undiscovered Web Sites [PC Magazine]

Yesterday I received an email apparently from eBay, informing that my account was used for malicious purposes, and I should change my password post-haste. I’m very skeptical of emails apparently from eBay. Normally I delete them without thinking. But this email managed to catch my attention. Here’s a portion of the text:

It appears your account was accessed by an unauthorized third party and used to send unsolicited emails to other community members, including email offers to sell items outside of eBay. It does not appear that your account was used to list or bid on any items. Additionally, the email address on your account may have been tampered with, which is why you may not have received any emails about this activity.

At this time we have taken several steps to secure your eBay account. Rest assured that your credit card and banking information is safe on the eBay site. This information is kept encrypted on a secure server and cannot be viewed by anyone.

Click on the screenshot to see that the email is authentic looking. I’ve removed all the naughty bits to protect my identity. To check the email’s authenticity, I tried to log into eBay in a new browser window—not by clicking on any links in the email.

I was unable to log in, as the email explained further. eBay had changed my password after it detected malicious activity. I reset my password after verifying my identity and logged in. In my message inbox was the same email I received externally. Apparently, my account had been used to send “questions” to the hosts of a variety of auctions pointing them to some external website. I checked my sent messages folder within eBay, and I saw 25 messages sent on July 2 to a number of other eBay users.

The account was not used to bid on any items, so I didn’t have to worry about that. I did go through and change all of my passwords as the message from eBay suggested. I’m not happy with this situation, and after being conditioned that all email appearing to be from eBay is most likely spam or someone trying to trick me into entering my password somewhere, I could easily have overlooked this warning.

There are several ways my password could have been used by a hacker. There’s the slight possibility I clicked on one of those fake eBay emails. I find that really hard to believe as I am very careful about such things. One of my computers may have a keylogging program installed on it. My home computer is protected by AVG, which has never discovered any malicious programs running, so either that’s not the answer, or AVG Anti-Virus Free has failed.

Most likely, the password was guessed through software designed to do such hacking. I could have chosen a stronger password to use.

If there’s anything to take away from my experience, it’s that not every email from eBay is fake, strong passwords aren’t strong enough, and even rarely-used accounts with unimpressive stats are targets.

I’m willing to bet that if you’re reading this website, you are connected to the Internet at a speed faster than a dial-up connection. Perhaps you’re reading from work on a T-3 or you’re reading from home on a cable or DSL connection. Perhaps you’re at school and you’re sharing your college’s OC-12.

If that’s the case, let your grandparents know about this deal. Some customers might qualify for AT&T DSL service for $10 per month for a year. To find out if you or your luddite relatives qualify, fill out this form. If you qualify and DSL is available in your area, the $10 plan will be listed among the other plans offered.

Thanks to Consumerist for the heads-up, where they also mention that DSL will soon be offered to those without a phone line.

My former boss at the company I currently work for knows that I have a side interest that involves personal finance and the web. Obviously, I do not supply too many details to him as I prefer to maintain some level of anonymity on Consumerism Commentary, considering the personal information I’ve been posting since 2003. He contacted me today to make me aware of an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. (The article is available for free online, for now.)

The article addresses the trend of twentysomethings (I’m 31) sharing their personal financial information online using social networking websites. One of the social networking sites mentioned is NetWorthIQ. NetWorthIQ allows people to create profiles and update their financial standing every month. These profiles can be set to either public or private. You can even look at trends and comparisons between individuals.

While I like NetWorthIQ, I never got into using it much. I like keeping my information on my website, first of all. Also, I think the social networking aspect encourages comparisons between individuals or groups of individuals, which I’d rather not be a part of. I’m a fan of internal comparisons for tracking progress, but comparisons between people are almost meaningless. Also, balance sheet information doesn’t mean much without an income and expense report, which I don’t believe is supported by NetWorthIQ.

Nevertheless, I think it’s a great tool, especially if you want to take some of the work out of publishing your own reports.

The article also mentions Wesabe, which provides a way to access the information one might enter in software like Quicken from anywhere. The article didn’t mention Mint, which is still under testing, but it may turn out to be a better application than Wesabe.

Two additional websites sound interesting and are worth a look.

At other sites, such as the just-launched Covestor LLC, which allow investors to share their portfolio information, members manually input transaction data for their brokerage accounts or provide their account passwords to have the firm automatically track their trades. Members can choose to remain anonymous, and the actual dollar values of trades and specific holdings of each member always remains confidential, with only percentages displayed…

On Geezeo, members can create discussion groups with other users about specific financial topics. The site lets members create a consolidated view of their financial accounts and use text-messaging technology to get quick balance updates from their mobile phones. Starting this week, users will be able to provide feedback on financial products, such as student loans, credit cards or savings accounts.

The idea of tracking your finances publicly is gaining a lot of attention and popularity. I never thought this would be something that would catch on and have “mass appeal.” That’s the beauty of the internet—people with strange interests can come together to form communities, convincing those involved that their perceptions are “normal.”

Here are five reasons according to Forrester Research people spend 15% more on the average online transaction compared to a traditional transaction from a brick-and-mortar store.

You don’t have time to think. Once you have items in your cart, retailers want to move you through the checkout line before you can reconsider. If you’ve already entered your credit card or shipping information with a particular retailer, you’re out the electronic door with a mere twitch of the mouse.

They guarantee you won’t regret it. More than 40% of all online shoppers say product reviews are important to them… However, 80% of online reviews are generally positive.

They won’t let you forget. It uses [your purchase] information to make recommendations for new items and remind you that you didn’t pick up that item you wanted before.

They’ll throw in free shipping. The lure of free shipping is an important tool in getting customers to spend more on each visit. Even if shipping only costs $4 or $5, shoppers will put extra items in their basket that cost several times that much just to qualify.

They’ll reward their best customers. most of the rewards that retailers shell out are just incentives thrown in to get you to buy more, such as a 20% off coupon or free upgrade to shipping. Often, retailers will send these perks out to you right after a purchase, so if there was anything you didn’t get the first time around, you’re motivated to pick it up now.

These are all legitimate ways that, on average, people might be enticed to spend more than they “normally” would, only half-knowing that they are being slightly manipulated. Now, I love the internet. When I’m buying gifts for friends and family, I can go to their Amazon.com wish lists to get them a gift I know they will like, and I will pay less online than I would if I were to buy the same products at the local Borders. (I’ve compared prices.) On the other hand, the accessibility of the internet means I can find things to buy that I wouldn’t be able to find without extraordinary effort.

I have no faith in the statistics in the article. Sucharita Mulpuru says the average online transaction is 15% higher than the average brick-and-mortar purchase. How was this calculated? Perhaps it is based on data from credit card companies. If so, one bias is immediately apparent. Almost all transactions online are done with credit cards, while credit cards may be used mostly when shopping in person, but small purchases are likely to be paid with cash. All those trips to the bodega on the street to pick up a daily newspaper and/or a stick of gum wouldn’t be included if this were the source of the data. If those small cash transactions are not included in the study, the data might be skewed downward.

Here’s another possible source of bias for these statistics. The Internet still has not permeated to the entire purchase-making public. Some people simply do not use the internet, and they may be individuals who have low-value or high-value transactions. The sample populations are likely not identical enough to calculate a direct comparison.

It’s probably likely that the average online transaction is higher than the average in-person transaction, but the reason for the difference—and its accuracy—can’t be deduced without more details about the research.

I received an email from the DreamHost abuse team—DreamHost is the company that provides the web services for this website, pfblogs.org to an extent, the MoneyBlogNetwork and its forums, and a number of others. They made me aware that my web space was being accessed by a computer user in Romania. The user was logging on with my identification and running programs that created a lot of network traffic, clogging up the pipeline and probably slowing down a number of websites.

The DreamHost representative asked if I knew anyone in Romania. I do not. I am also not sure how the perpetrator got my password; it’s difficult to guess and I constantly run a virus scanner on my home computer. DreamHost cleaned up the trojan programs and I changed my password. I hope this won’t be an issue again; I’ve had enough problems with DreamHost in the past and they’re just starting to make me happy with them, as I was six years ago.

I heard on the radio this evening that Reuters is opening a “bureau” to cover news in the virtual world—an online role-playing game—called Second Life.

This world is so immense and detailed, it allows the “players” to participate in any activity they could in the real world. You can open businesses, participate in communities, buy land, and hire people to build homes in 3-D through the Internet. This virtual world uses its own currency, called Linden dollars. Each day, the exchange rate between US dollars and Linden dollars is calculated based on supply and demand. Your membership fee is charged in US dollars, but to own land or to make other purchases, you pay in virtual Linden dollars.

However, Lindex dollars aren’t exactly virtual. Thanks to the many people who play the game, there is a demand for the fake money. The fact that people are willing to buy Linden dollars to participate in the game legitimizes the currency. One prominent virtual real estate broker makes $100,000 a year. In real money. This income isn’t even taxed! Have no fear, Congress—the real, not virtual Congress—is looking into that.

Adam Reuters, the Virtual Life citizen representing the Reuters organization, interviewed the CEO of the biggest (possibly the only) bank in Second Life. To me, it seems like this economy is not quite ready to be legitimate. Nevertheless, you can currently trade L$275.5 for US$1.

Want more Second Life news? Visit the Second Life Reuters News Center, headed by Adam Reuters (also known in the real world as Adam Pasick). Here is his interview with Marketplace, a real-life radio program.

It was time for me to renew one of my domain names, and I found these coupon codes for GoDaddy. Feel free to use them and share.

Coupon code: CHRIS1 for 10% off any order (added 9/29/2006)
Coupon code: CHRIS2 for $5 off any order $30 or more (added 9/29/2006)
Coupon code: CHRIS3 for $6.95 .com domain names (added 9/29/2006)

If you know of any others currently working, leave them in the comments, and if I find any more I’ll add them here. Working codes seem to come and go, and ones I’ve seen posted on forums expire quickly.

I’ve been using GoDaddy for a long time, and I’ve never had any problems. (Also, I’m not an affiliate.)