July 15, 2002

PRIVACY INVASION

WHAT YOU SHOULD BE THINKING ABOUT!

By Richard Altschuler

Would you believe that after I flushed my toilet yesterday, I saw a "pop-up" ad emerge from the hole in the back of the bowl?

It was on a piece of paper, floating in the water, and said, "Buy Charmin," in big, red, white and blue waterproof colors. At the bottom of the ad was the comforting line, "To have these ads discontinued, please call 1-877-OKCHARMIN. I dialed as instructed, and a truly entrancing female voice said my call would be monitored so the company could ensure "quality service" to its "valued customers."

As you may guess, I didn’t really see that flyer in my bowl. But I would not be surprised if I do see something like that soon - in my toilet bowl, or on my bedroom window, or elsewhere in my "privacy zones" - considering the extent to which advertising is rapidly encroaching into every aspect of our everyday lives - and in so many unwanted, unprecedented ways.

Consider the cell phone, the fax machine, and Internet, to name only three of the more recent advertising venues that exist today. Not only are sellers harassing us with their messages through these media - which are often situated in our own homes and personal work spaces - but each venue has a unique twist to it that, for the first time, makes us work to stop the ad-attacks.

I estimate that I now spend at least several minutes each day, for example, closing pop-up and pop-under ads on the Internet and deleting junk email. That means, in other words, that I spend about 20 minutes per week, 80 minutes per month, or 960 minutes per year (that is, 16 hours, or two work days) deleting ads on my computer! And to do that, I have to work - physically click the mouse or the keyboard keys to eradicate the electronic vermin.

In addition to the waste of time and energy to counterattack this "adsault," I may soon start researching software that purportedly "blocks" the electro-roaches from encroaching on my screen, and then I will probably buy a product and try it, after reading the manual and taking time to install it on my computer. These activities will, of course, delete another day or so from my productive work life.

And the most ludicrous thing about this whole scenario - involving activities I must engage in, time I must waste, and money I must spend - is that my best efforts will all be for naught. Why? Because the pop-up and pop-under advertisers will produce anti-blocking software - as they are already doing - that makes a mockery of my thwarting efforts . . . sending me back to the drawing board to get one up on them . . . in a seemingly endless cycle that will just waste more of my time, effort, and money.

As for my unwanted faxes, in addition to having to remove the paper from my machine and throw it away, I sometimes decide to make a phone call to (hopefully) have the offenders stop their unwanted adsault (and sometimes I must pay for those calls, which is part of the scam; so because I am never certain about that issue on a particular call, I usually just live with the unwanted faxes).

Cell phone users are now getting barraged with unwanted marketing calls, and because the ads often reach those with "unlisted numbers," the U.S. Government may step in to regulate or prevent such activity. That possible regulatory action means only one thing: too many Senators and Representatives are getting barraged with calls on their unlisted lines for stocks, condos, and viagra - and they are fed up with it!

In addition to cell phone owners, users of the good old, hardwired telephone now have to call a government number to place themselves on a list that prohibits telemarketers from contacting them. More work and more time just to try to avoid what we don’t want and never asked for in the first place.

The more we try to regulate advertising, however, the more I believe the advertisers will find new and better ways to reach us - no matter where we are, and through "any means possible," so long as it is even quasi-legal. To provide only a few examples of this phenomenon, consider that today, unlike a decade or so ago, there are ads at the beginning of the videotapes we rent and buy; in movie theaters, before the start of the picture we paid to see; at every live musical performance we go to see in a stadium setting with a purchased ticket, often as part of the set "design;" and ensconced within TV shows, often as part of the props, where the advertised products can’t be fast-forwarded through or deleted by Tivo and other such "adzapping" devices.

In addition to the telephonic and electronic media, the general environment is more pervaded by sellers’ messages than ever before, on everything from food packages to junk snailmail to vehicles roaming the streets to building walls used as billboards.

We can still avoid many of the ads today, as in the past, thank heavens, with only a modicum of effort, such as by averting our eyes from a billboard or skywriting; or flipping past the "buy me" pages in a periodical; or fast-forwarding through the ads at the beginning of videotapes.

Other types of advertising take a little more effort to avoid, but we can still get away from them if we wish. I can stay in the men’s room at my local movie theater, for example, until the feature film starts; and I can mute my TV or channel surf when ads appear between shows - or I can simply choose to watch only C-Span and PBS (lucky me) or I can pay a few hundred or thousand dollars a year for subscription and pay-per-view channels only.

As for the rest of the advertising adsault, however, I fear we are rapidly losing control over whether we can see the ads or not, and where we receive them. The Internet, fax, and cell phones, plus ads placed within TV shows and at arenas of all kinds are only the most obvious representatives of this growing infestation on us all.

And so, considering the magnitude of the adsault that is happening right now, is it really too farfetched to imagine that we will soon look out the windows in our living rooms and see ads looking back at us, projected onto the glass, from God knows where? Or that we will look in our toilet bowls and see a banner floating in the water to buy a particular brand of toilet paper, hemorrhoid cream, or deodorant? I think not.

Therefore, enjoy these, the final days of some privacy zones from advertising. You will never be more safeguarded from advertising than you are right now.