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FOXNews' new ID theft web page--puts users at privacy risk

Posted on May 5, 2006 by Tom Fragala

FOXNews.com has a new web page dedicated to stories on identity theft. That’s great. However, there is a text advertisement in the middle of the page for a service that is downright scary. The ad takes you to a website named clearcreditoptions.com. As soon as I visited it, my internal bells started clanging. I knew it was trouble. Sure enough, I clicked on their privacy policy. Hmmm, maybe they should call it the no-privacy policy. Here’s an excerpt.

…you grant to us the right to use your personal information for any legal purpose including, without limitation: a) effectuating a purchase from us that you make at the Website; b) transferring your personal information to a third party to effectuate a purchase from a third party advertiser at the Website; c) marketing purposes such as sharing your information with third party advertisers; d) providing promotional offers to you by means of e-mail advertising, telemarketing, direct mail marketing, pop-ups, pop-unders and/or online banner advertising; e) tracking compliance with our Terms and Conditions; and f) for validation, suppression, content improvement and feedback purposes.

Holy crap! Wait there’s more…

You agree that we may contact you at any time with updates and/or any other information that we may deem appropriate for you to receive in connection with your continued use of the Website.

And I love this:

In addition, you agree that by submitting your personal information at the Website, such act constitutes a purchase, an inquiry and/or an application for purposes of the Amended Telemarketing Sales Rule, 16 CFR §310 et seq. (the "ATSR"). Notwithstanding that your telephone number may be listed on the Federal Trade Commission's Do-Not-Call List, we retain the right to contact you via telemarketing in accordance with the ATSR.

Good grief. This is another example of why selling context-based advertising is not always a good idea.  To make it worse, a lot of these companies that offer to improve your credit score are scams and ripoffs. Just stay away people. FOX, you might want to reconsider who buys ad space on your web site. I mean, you wouldn’t let pornographers buy ads on a FOX site for kids would you? Having said that, my old blog scamsafe.com displays Google ads. I bet there’s some creepy companies showing up there, too. I am going to check that out.