Would you believe that a cookie, a single cookie, could make your Christmas shopping cost more?

That's right, and this cookie, well it doesn't win an award for taste, it isn't ginormous and it doesn't even have gold speckles in it. It's just a small file on your computer that tracks where you have been. At least one retailer is making use of a cookie from the Bing cashback program to charge you more!

John Puskarich, co-founder of deal comparison site Bountii, shared the new negative cashback feature on the company blog highlighting one example of how using Bing's cashback service could cost you more.

If you're looking for great Black Friday deals you should read WalletPop's Black Friday Shopping Guide, which will tell you the best places to shop for specific items, but if you still need to compare the Black Friday sales we have five tools to help you find what you're looking for.

First off Cheapism.com points us to an interactive online Black Friday offer browser that lets you sort, compare and filter on many categories so that you can compare the Black Friday sales that matter to you. It is easy to sort by store, price, category, brand, and even if there is a rebate involved.

Cheapism also pointed out a Black Friday Twitter aggregation tool put together by the Washington Post that is pulling in Black Friday deals from companies that Tweet. This is a great place to watch for last minute deal announcements and coupon codes.

With so many retailers offering pre-Black Friday sales, Thanksgiving Day sales and of course Black Friday deals, you might have forgotten about the upcoming Cyber Monday sales!

Even though many stores are trying to keep their Cyber Monday sales under wraps until after Black Friday we found several places to go looking for the best bargains on Cyber Monday.

First off is the CouponShack which has a large collection of Cyber Monday coupon codes for Kohl's and many other small retailers who are offering Cyber Monday specials.

RetailMeNot is another great place to look for Cyber Monday discounts. The RetailMeNot Cyber Monday page currently has some coupons from last Cyber Monday mixed in but there are still some geed deals to be found. You can also install the browser toolbar for FireFox or Internet Explorer and be alerted coupons for any store you visit.

Black Friday is only a few days away, and in addition to the numerous pre-sales and Thanksgiving Day discounts going on, many smaller or niche stores are sharing their Black Friday deals with us; before they hit your Wednesday newspaper.

Of note today are deals from Bare Necessities, Victoria's Secret, T-Mobile, Amazon, and Pet Supplies Plus.

Lingerie:
Bare Necessities is currently running pre-Black Friday deals including, bra sales on Tuesday and steals starting at $9.99 on Wednesday. On Black Friday you'll be able to find discounts on Nautica flannel drawstring pants, slips, bras and panties starting at just $9.

Is the personal check on its way out?

The Dallas Morning News recently suggested that -- and, no, they aren't the first to suggest it, nor will they be the last -- but they point out that several stores lately have made it their policy to refuse personal paper checks: Diesel, True Religion, Ed Hardy and Lululemon Athletica, which are all clothing stores. And maybe there's something in the water, since the clothing giant Gap is also exploring the concept of no longer accepting personal checks.

My WalletPop colleague Martha C. White has also written about Whole Foods no longer accepting checks in some stores, as part of a get-rid-of-checks experiment.

T-Mobile is restarting its Sidekick sales again after last month's data loss that permanently left its customers without photos, contacts or information.

The only trouble was that a day after T-Mobile began selling its beleaguered product at a reduced price, it was reported that its UK staff was selling off customer information to the highest outside bidder. Severe data loss vs. security breach by employees ... which is worse?

At this point, does it matter? T-Mobile, which is using Microsoft's Danger for Sidekick technology and data services, can't shift the blame on Microsoft for this recent security breach. Instead, it was solely the work of T-Mobile employees destroying customer trust.

So even if T-Mobile is offering the Sidekick 2008 for $49 and the Sidekick LX 2009 for $149 (down $50 and $30 respectively from last month) with a two-year contract, it may not be worth it to consumers who have lost confidence in the company and can't trust their data won't be lost or stolen.

Customer service is the cornerstone of a retail business. So could the vending machine industry really make people more easily give their money to a machine rather than a person with a friendly smile?

The secret lies in technology and convenience, according to the National Automatic Merchandising Association (NAMA), which represents the vending machine industry.

With gas prices and the recession not sparing even this $30 billion segment of the retail market, vending merchants are looking at swanky machines that dispense everything from deep-dish pizzas to prescription drugs to nab more customers.

Around my house, we don't make the decision to pile into the car and head over to our local Cineplex as easily as we once did. It costs a lot of money these days to see talking animals, wild things and giant meatballs falling from the sky -- and don't get me started on the popcorn.

Going to see the latest kid's film use to be a no-brainer and if the adults slept through it, well, it didn't really matter, but no more. When a family of four has to pay a total of $40.50 to see a "regular" movie, or $56.50 to see that movie in digital 3D, or splurges to see that same movie in digital 3D playing on the "giant" IMAX screen for a whopping $60.50, it suddenly becomes very important that everyone is at least mildly amused or entertained.

To buy tickets to all of the new movies coming out would cost literally hundreds of dollars, and if you throw in drinks and snacks -- there goes college. How to find one that's family-friendly and worth the expense?

Movie reviews for kids are not new, but they are getting increasingly relevant as families demand more of a sure-bet for their entertainment budget. It's impossible to promise that everyone will like a movie, but if you know who to listen to there will be more hits than misses.

Most of the websites are free, such as Kids-in-Mind., Commonsensemedia, Parentpreviews, and Moviemom.

The Walmart Black Friday ad leaked out to many deal collecting sites earlier this week, but until yesterday they kept it offline under threat of legal action by the mega retailer. After the OK was finally given, the entire Walmart Black Friday ad has been posted and it contains a lot of deals. Best of all, you won't have to wait outside for any of the savings since Walmart will be open all night over Thanksgiving -- although you will have to wait until 5 a.m. to make your purchases.

Walmart's biggest Black Friday deals:

If you are spending less on shopping this Black Friday you're not alone. A recent survey performed by Dealnews.com found that a quarter of shoppers are planning to spend less on Black Friday.

The survey further found that fewer people will be shopping on Black Friday as a whole and that women shop for other people on Black Friday, whereas men shop for themselves.

It's no shocker that men do more shopping on themselves on Black Friday, since I know few fellows who would brave a Black Friday crowded for anyone other than themselves.

With Black Friday almost here and Cyber Monday just around the corner, there's no denying that the holiday season is upon us; and for many people that means online shopping. For Identity Thieves and scammers, though, this is the time of year to roll out new ways of going after your identity, your money and your credit.

WalletPop has already warned you about the numerous ways that online scam artists are trying to dupe you with fakes, but we wanted to make sure that you are as educated as you can be when it comes to safeguarding your information and money. We went to three industry experts to find out how to stay safe on Cyber Monday and through the rest of your holiday shopping.

To get a better idea of just how much phishing and identity theft scams will increase in the next month, we spoke to Lyn Oakes, Chief Marketing Officer of Trusted ID.

"We do expect that there will be more traffic being generated by identity thieves because of the holiday season than has been in the last several months," Oakes said in a phone interview. "We think phishing emails are going to rise."

Looking back at my childhood during the 1990s, I now realize that the Internet and I have a pretty good relationship – we grew up together.

As trite as this may sound, the Internet targeted everyone, but more specifically generation Y. I remember rushing home from school to plug the modem into the phone jack, creating a dead line that blocked all incoming phone calls, all to get connected to the Internet.

I lived for that free flow of information and connectivity to the world outside of my enclosed bedroom. That AOL voice that said 'Welcome' opened the doors to a central nucleus in which I was granted access to everyone from around the world at my fingertips.

The good thing was that it was all free. Even as a child, I understood that these "free" Web sites made money from those pop-up and banner ads that appeared everywhere. I knew that I was being targeted by outside companies, but I understood the value of the Internet, and continued to log on and participate.

Popular and boisterous tech blog Boy Genius Report this week ran what one of their contacts claimed to be Apple's Black Friday ad. The ad claimed that Apple would be going against tradition and offering huge cuts across the Apple lineup.

Just how big were the claimed discounts? The ad claims that Apple will offer up to 30% off of all iPods, up to 25% off of all Macs and up to 15% off of accessories, software and other Mac hardware. Needless to say, these would be big, and I mean BIG, discounts for Apple to pull out on Black Friday and Cyber Monday. If they were true, that is.

According to a data mining company, the old adage of being judged by the friends you keep translates easily into the digital friends you keep.

Rapleaf, a social media monitoring company, claims that by analyzing public information such as the friends you have on Twitter it can assess how creditworthy you are and how likely you are to respond to advertising.

Rapleaf monitors public digital conversations and stores away your Twitter and Facebook status updates, restaurant reviews, Amazon book reviews and plenty of other online public information in its database of 378 million profiles to profile you.