If you've been a target of a chain e-mail scam, contact your ISP and forward the e-mail to the FTC at uce@ftc.gov. (You can also forward regular spam to this address.)

The Time Machine

TV stations are using technology to squeeze more commercials into your favorite shows. (They're probably squeezing them into shows you hate, too, but you don't care about those shows anyway, right?) An invention called the Time Machine enables television stations to compress their programs to fit in more commercials.

According to Wired News, the Time Machine works by going through programs frame-by-frame. When two identical frames appear side-by-side, one is removed. Usually, this can be done enough in a 22-minute program (the actual length of most sitcoms without commercials), to add 30 seconds of ad time. Right now there are about 100 Time Machines in use at TV stations across the U.S.

What you can do: Write to your local TV stations and ask them not to use the Time Machine to sneakily subject you to more commercials. You can find links to your local TV station at http://newslink.org/stattele.html.

Ads for Seniors

You've lived a long, full life in which you were exposed to millions of marketing messages and somehow survived. You decide the time is right to join a senior center for fun and recreation, and what do you find there? More ads.

Face it – you're not just a senior, you're a target market.

Prime West, of Mount Vernon, Washington, will help advertisers place their marketing messages on reader boards at senior centers run by communities or units of the government such as the county government.

According to Media Life magazine, the news and information centers are five feet tall by seven-and-one-half feet wide. A 39-square-inch magnetic calendar for use by the senior center fills the interior. Messages move across a color, remote-programmable electronic display at the top of the board, and there is also space for printed materials like daily menus on corkboard. Ads border the center on three sides.

Companies advertising in senior centers include:

Simply Sterling: Online feedback form

Wells Fargo Mortgage: Online feedback form

Marriott Assisted Living: mslscontactus@marriott.com

Denny's Restaurants: Online feedback form

Curves for Women
400 Schroeder
Waco, TX 76710
Phone: 800-848-1096

The company responsible for shoving ads in your face is Prime West: info@primewest.com.

Please write these companies and tell them that you don't appreciate being pelted with ads from youth through old age! Make sure to specify that you read about their foul practices in Media Life magazine so they know how to classify your complaint.

Video Game – or Advertising Vehicle?

An excerpt from the Yahoo! article "Game Designers Go for Realism in Product Placements," by Gene Emery:

As you frolic around on floating platforms trying to collect bananas in 'Super Monkey Ball,' the Sega arcade game for GameCube, you can't help but notice that every banana has a Dole Food Company sticker.

The game, along with many other computer games these days, is an endless advertisement for brand names.

Play 'Crazy Taxi'' and a lot of your passengers will ask you to take them to Pizza Hut or KFC (both owned by Tricon Global). Dive into 'Die Hard: Nakatomi Plaza,' the Vivendi Universal game coming out March 2, and you'll see Zippo lighters and Motorola cell phones. Ubi Soft's 'Surf Riders' has G-Shock watches and banners for Mr. Zog's Sex Wax, a surfboard wax.

The game creators call it "realism." We call it intrusive advertising. Do we really need to be pelted with brand images as we play video games?

Please write to these game companies and ask them to stop using product placements in their video games:

Ubi Soft
625 Third Street, 3rd Floor
San Francisco, CA 94107
Phone: 415-547-4000
Fax: 415-547-4001

Sega: Online Feedback Form

Vivendi Universal
375 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10152-0192
Phone: 212-572-7000
Press contact for games: Andrea Sarkisian

Google Nixes Pop-ups

Google – already one of the best search engines – has nixed pop-up ads, those annoying ads that open up in a new browser window while you surf. "We find them annoying," states Google. Details are available on this Google help page.

Please write to Google to congratulate them on their smart move. All companies should receive encouragement when they make their companies more user friendl y.

Thanks to J.D. Falk for the tip.

TRUSTed Spammers

Privacy seal group TRUSTe on Thursday announced the launch of a new service to help police unsolicited commercial e-mail, or spam.

Under TRUSTe's new program, participants can obtain an e-mail seal if they comply with four criteria. The sender must adhere to TRUSTe's fair information practice principles and e-mail best practices, which include giving consumers notice and choice about receiving e-mail solicitations. The subject line of the e-mail must be accurate, and the message text must always allow consumers to opt out of further communications.

What does this mean? It means that companies have the right to spam you as long as they provide a way to opt out of further communications. The spamming will continue until you take the time to request that it be stopped. This goes against everything that privacy and anti-spam activists are fighting for.

Imagine if every one of the 25 million small businesses in the U.S. decided to try opt-out e-mail marketing – your e-mail box would become useless. Businesses should not be able to send you ads via e-mail unless you have specifically given them your permission to do so.

Giving a TRUSTe seal to spammers only legitimizes unsolicited commercial e-mail, which is an invasion of privacy and which costs consumers money. Please write to TRUSTe's executive director, Fran Maier, and ask her to give the TRUSTe seal only to those companies that do opt-in e-mail marketing, where the recipient has explicitly given his or her permission to be sent ads.

Fran Maier, Executive Director
TRUSTe
1180 Coleman Avenue, Suite 202
San Jose, CA 95110
Phone: 408-494-4950
Fax: 408-494-4960
E-mail: press@truste.org

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has also announced that it's planning to institute a similar opt-out rule. You can write or call them:

Federal Trade Commission
CRC-240
600 Pennsylvania Ave, NW
Washington, D.C. 20580
1-877-FTC-HELP (382-4357)

You can read about the TRUSTe spam "solution" on News.com. We encourage you to write to the author, Stefanie Olsen, with your views; maybe she'll do a follow-up article about the opposition to the proposed "regulations."

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