Secret Admirer – or Secret Advertiser?

Even though the Internet is a democratic environment in which surfers can come and go as they please, it does have rules that must be followed to ensure long-term success and happiness online. For example, the first rule of the Internet: You do not give out your e-mail address to strangers.

If you violate the first rule, you will be inundated with mass quantities of spam from which your in-box will never recover. Your only survival tactic is to abandon it and set up base in a new location, a location that you now know cannot be revealed to the world at large if you want to stay there.

Unfortunately, an important corollary to the first rule seems to have remained unlearned to surfers-at-large, that being the following: You do not give out e-mail addresses for other people either.

If you do – no matter how good your intentions, no matter how funny the link you're forwarding them – your friends will likewise be driven from their cozy in-box homes.

Katharine Mieszkowski documents one pitfall awaiting gullible surfers in her Salon article, "The Bot Who Loved Me." Mieszkowski explores the workings of secret admirer sites Crushmaster.com and SomeoneLikesYou.com, and the details aren't pretty. Here's how they work in general: You receive an e-mail message that says, "Someone has a crush on you!" To find out who your secret sweetheart is, you must visit the site and enter e-mail addresses for as many people as you can think of. If you enter the e-mail address of the person who has a crush on you, his or her identity will be revealed and eternal love is ensured.

Except, that is, that no secret admirer may exist. In the process of finding your admirer, you enter, say, ten e-mail addresses. Each one of those people then receives an e-mail that says, "Someone has a crush o n you!" – even though you never claimed a crush on these people. In all likelihood, that's how your "crush" originated as well.

Crush sites are pyramid schemes in disguise in which the number of e-mail addresses available expands geometrically. What's worse, Crushmaster and SomeoneLikesYou appear to use purchased e-mail lists to create their initial crush messages, and any new address added to their files may receive unsolicited advertising.

If you don't appreciate a marketer using someone's desire for romance for nefarious purposes, drop a "love note" of your own to Crushmaster and SomeoneLikesYou mastermind Greg Tseng (gtseng@post.harvard.edu). Just be sure not to use an e-mail address you care about too much.

August 22, 2002

Clearly, This Is Unwelcome

Check out the promotional copy for Clear Channel Outdoor, a division of advertising giant Clear Channel:

Clear Channel Outdoor is one of the largest outdoor advertising companies in the world, strategically positioning advertisers to intercept customers during the course of their daily lives.

Outdoor is great because you can't turn it off, throw it away, or click on the next page. That means your message is reaching consumers everywhere – all the time, everyday.

The numerous Clear Channel Outdoor products present consumers with exciting and dramatic marketing messages throughout the course of a day.

The genuises at Clear Channel Outdoor, knowing that the number of marketing messages that are both exciting and dramatic has been rather slim of late, have developed a new scheme for intercepting customers, one that indeed can't be turned off without the help of a large brick.

This marketing breakthrough, called the Smart Top, is a display of six computer screens that sits atop a taxi and displays a series of HTML or Flash advertisements. Thanks to a paging network and PC in the cab's trunk, advertisers can send up-to-the-minute text info to annoy customers during the course of their daily lives. The Smart Top costs more than $2,000 a month – more than seven times the price of a conventional cabtop ad – so hopefully most companies will turn their noses up at this intrusive offering.

If you feel you already have enough excitement and drama in your life without the unwanted addition of a Smart Top, feel free to get in touch with Paul J. Meyer, President and CEO of Clear Channel Outdoor, and let him know that this interception clearly goes over the top.

Paul J. Meyer, President and CEO
Clear Channel Outdoor
2850 East Camelback Rd., Suite 300
Phoenix, AZ 85016
Phone: 602-957-8116

August 19, 2002

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