Coupons Inc. acquires GroceryIQ iPhone app

Coupons Inc., a digital couponing firm, has acquired the GroceryIQ application for Apple’s iPhone from its publisher Free State Labs. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

The GroceryIQ application for the iPhone or iPod Touch comes preloaded with more than 130,000 products found in supermarkets across the US. The technology lets users organize their personal shopping lists by store, aisle and buying history. Coupons Inc. plans to expand the application to be available on other handheld sets including the Google Android phone.

“Over the course of the last year and a half, we have built a very robust mobile couponing service, but we did not have an iPhone application,” said Steven Boal, CEO. “The GroceryIQ application is very robust, and if we were to have designed it in-house, we would have done it the same way.”
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Monster suffers data breach

Job-seeker Web site Monster Worldwide has detected a data breach that could potentially affect millions of its users.

The site, which has more than 75 million users worldwide, declined to give specific numbers, but said that users in North America and possibly Western Europe had been put at risk. Hackers accessed information that included names, phone numbers, e-mail addresses, Monster user IDs, passwords, date of birth, gender and ethnicity. For some Monster users in the US, state of residence information was also put at risk. The company does not collect financial data or Social Security Numbers.

“Immediately upon learning of the breach, we chose to notify all customers and job-seekers and began investigation,” said Nikki Richardson, VP of corporate communications for Monster. “This kind of reaching out to stakeholders will help them better defend themselves against attacks.”
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