Where is Seth When You Need Him?

Now that advertisers are starting to wake up to the power of cell phones to reach people, Seth Godin needs to go on another Permission Marketing crusade - and quickly.

I followed a link today that said "Do you Look Like Johnny Depp?" to see what kind of revenue model this advertiser had.  It took me to a site called "whichcelebrityami" dot com, said it was remarkably easy to tell me which celeb I look like, and then asked me for my gender, first name, whether I liked to sing or dance, what I liked to do in my free time, and then my phone number.  My phone number?  Wait a minute, I wanted to see if I still look like that chick from Battlestar Galactica.

Of course, as soon as I see them asking for my phone number I know what their revenue model is.  My dad just bought a new cell phone that had 5 advertisements in incoming text messages before he even set up his voicemail.  So I start looking for a privacy policy and see that, if you scroll down below an expanse of blank space, there is small print.  The page looked clean and link-free - you really had to scroll down to find this small print.  And it says...

... that when you sign up for the service you will be billed $5.99/wk or $19.99/mo depending on your carrier.  Whoa!  And this happens without your even having to enter a credit card number because it bills directly to your phone.  So you might not even know this was going to happen.  From a usability perspective, I can pretty much guarantee that most people who are entering their phone number to find out which celebrity they look like won't know they'll get this charge.  And they're not likely to examine their cell phone bill to see where the charge is coming from either.

So I enter a fake cell phone number (it rejects 555-1212 as invalid) and ta-da!  Some poor soul (sorry!) has just received a special pin number to find out if they are a celebrity.  I can click to resend the pin.  Oh boy, another way to prank somebody.  And there's a small box "I accept the terms and conditions" that needs to be checked off when you enter your pin.  That's all that's alerting you to the fact that you are about to be billed $6/week for playing this little game ($7/week if you have Boost).

The site's "terms and conditions" (no mention of a privacy policy) say you have to be over 18.  But with all the questions they ask, age is not one of them.  So this site is violating COPPA, the Children's Online Privacy and Protection Act.

Then something scary happened.  I hit the back button.  And I got an interesting alert message.   "One of your MySpace friends has a crush on you.  Click here to find out which one."  Clearly targeted at the teen crowd, the sister site "myluvcrush" dot com has cartoon drawings of kids and asks similar questions.  The subscription is a love horoscope.  The privacy policy reads, in its entirety:

"At my1purelove.com we value your privacy. We will never share your mobile number with any third parties."

Not even the same URL, and not much of a promise.  Someone's figured out a way to steal - oops I mean mint - money.  Like taking candy from a baby.  Seth, where are you when we need you?