Behind Your Business

How do you know that the sender of an e-mail that has landed in your inbox is trying to steal your money or your identity? The message comes right out and asks for it.

Tax season means computer criminals are going to be out in force, pumping out bogus e-mails that purport to be from the Internal Revenue Service. These messages ask you to supply personal information in all kinds of scams. Often the scam e-mails offer help speeding up the preparation of tax returns or securing a big refund.

The e-mails also might just be a cover for criminals to install malicious software on your computers, by tricking you into opening attachments or visiting poisoned Web sites.

Scam e-mails can be stunningly convincing, so you often can’t tell just by looking at them whether they’re real or fake. They can use authentic-looking IRS logos and even e-mail addresses: Scammers can make it appear as if they’re writing from a legitimate government e-mail address, so you can’t trust the “from” line in e-mails you receive.

So what should you do to protect yourself?

Don’t supply your personal information, such as Social Security numbers or credit card numbers, to anyone e-mailing you for it. The e-mails might state that they just need a few pieces of personal information to get started. The IRS doesn’t discuss tax matters with people by e-mail.

Also, don’t open attachments or follow links in unsolicited e-mails. When it comes to computer security, if someone’s offering you something online that you didn’t ask for, chances are you probably don’t want it.

Using your cell phone during checkout at Target could soon earn you discounts.

Starting Wednesday, the giant retailer will allow customers to take advantage of special mobile-coupon offers on their handsets.

The coupon is redeemed when the bar code on the phone is scanned at checkout. Offers are good only once and expire on the dates listed. “We believe it’s a competitive advantage for us,” says Target.com President Steve Eastman.

Target says it will be the first major nationwide retailer to exploit the bar-code technology in all its stores. It almost certainly won’t be the last.

For example, J.C. Penney is testing similar scanner-based technology at 16 point-of-sale registers in Houston. But at the rest of its stores, checkout clerks still must manually enter alphanumeric codes tied to discount coupons, rather than using scanners.

Scanning bar codes makes the process faster and easier, says Dan Kihanya, vice president of consumer marketing at Cellfire, the mobile-coupon company working with J.C. Penney on its Houston tests. “Any time you have data entry, you have to worry about errors.”

Mobile coupons, while not new, are still in their relative infancy. “It’s an area ripe for growth,” says ABI Research analyst Neil Strother. Not everyone clips coupons, virtually or otherwise. But most people crave a bargain when the economy is tough. And coupon technology works with more and more cell phones.

U.K.-based Juniper Research recently forecast that more than 1-in-10 mobile subscribers in developed regions around the world will use mobile coupons by 2014, generating nearly $6 billion in redemption value.

Kihanya of Cellfire says mobile coupons are redeemed at a 5% to 20% rate, compared with about 1% for print coupons. Cellfire does much of its business with grocery chains, such as Kroger and Safeway.

Shoppers interested in Target’s program must “opt in” by registering at the company’s online or mobile Web…

When you recycle a plastic bottle, it doesn’t necessarily become another plastic bottle.

Because of limitations in recycling technology, a common type of plastic used in water bottles and food containers weakens so much when it’s recycled that it can’t be used again for the same purpose. Some small amount of the plastic might make it into another bottle, but more often than not, it instead becomes synthetic carpet or clothing and can’t easily be recycled a second time. So when those products are used up, they end up in landfills.

Researchers from IBM Corp. and Stanford University believe they have developed a way to significantly improve the quality of recycled plastic and strip away those limitations.

A new recycling method the researchers are announcing Tuesday involves a way to break the plastic down so that it can be reused again and again in the same form. It is an advancement that could intrigue beverage companies and help cut the environmental damage from making plastic from scratch.

The innovation is a new family of catalysts that can reduce polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic to its basic building blocks, while retaining its original properties and making it “ridiculously economical” to build it back up again, said Bob Allen, senior manager of chemistry and functional materials for IBM’s Almaden research center in Silicon Valley.

The project is in the laboratory on a small scale. Researchers are planning a bigger pilot at the King Abdul Aziz City for Science and Technology, home to Saudi Arabia’s national laboratories. Allen said the technology could be commercially available within five years if the pilot goes well.

A critical question will be the price of the technology.

Andrew Williamson, a director with the venture capital firm Physic Ventures who has seen IBM’s research, said it could help solve one of the biggest challenges facing food…

#wanttospinWHreporters?

If you’re PressSec — White House press secretary Robert Gibbs’ username on Twitter — you join the powerful social media platform and push your message across the Internet, 140 characters at a time.

Blending behind-the-scenes nuggets with a defense of President Barack Obama’s record, White House and administration officials increasingly are communicating through Twitter.

The popular social network is operating as a Web-based clearinghouse for public statements on weighty subjects (the federal budget) and the mundane (personal grocery lists). It’s similar to a bulletin board where anyone can post short notes and users cull the pieces they see by choosing to “follow” individuals’ account.

Forget press releases. Gibbs and his deputy, Bill Burton, are now sharing news in Twitter messages. So far 35,000 people have signed up to follow Gibbs and more than 6,000 are tracking Burton. Those two officials have a ways to go to catch actor Ashton Kutcher and his 4.6 million followers.

“Wow unreal game… POTUS watched OT in his office right off the Oval Office — all of us are so proud of our great team,” Gibbs tweeted during the men’s Olympic hockey finals last Sunday, when the Americans lost the gold medal game to Canada in overtime. POTUS, of course, is the acronym for president of the United States.

Burton offered a midgame, inside-the-Beltway joke: “Tied! White House response, on bgnd, from a low- to midlevel administration official: USA! USA! USA!” (He was referring to a favorite administration request when talking to the press “on background” means the official won’t be identified publicly.) After the U.S. loss, Burton noted that America still led the overall medal race.

These are hardly the pronouncements one expects from the president’s top spokesmen. But as Obama’s team continues an online strategy set in place during the campaign and imported to Pennsylvania Avenue, it seems only…

Facebook may join other Internet companies in offering location-based services. The social-networking site plans to let its users to share their location and see the locations of friends, according to published reports.

Facebook could use the service to provide advertisers with targeted information such as the nearest ATM. The feature is expected to be similar to Foursquare, a location-based social network that enables users to “check in” with one another and meet up.

Some Internet users have accepted location services as a way to gain information they feel is valuable, such as a coupon for a nearby restaurant or personalized weather services. But others fear it’s another example of Big Brother watching and, in this case, knowing where they are.

User Control

Facebook has been working on the feature for more than a year and is expected to make it available to its millions of users, reports say. The company also plans to provide application programming interfaces to third-party developers who want to add location features to their Facebook applications.

The company is tight-lipped about the service. “We are constantly experimenting with new ideas and products internally,” said Meredith Chin, a Facebook spokesperson, in an e-mail. “We don’t have anything more to share at this time.”

Facebook may want to announce the feature at its F8 Conference next month.

U.S. companies offering location-based services must comply with the CAN-SPAM Act, which requires users’ consent. Under the 2003 act, companies have given users control of location services on web sites and in mobile apps.

In Europe, the European Union has taken steps to protect users from information gathered through location-based services.

Some companies have taken extra steps by adding privacy-enhancing technologies.

The Rummble Example

Companies hoping to give advertisers ways to target audiences have been implementing location-based services for some time. Rummble, a location-based social network,…