The FTC deserves praise for targeting Web site operators who mislead

BY LARRY MAGID
Special to the Mercury News
October 17, 2001

I don't often go out of my way to praise government agencies, but I take my hat off to the Federal Trade Commission for striking a blow against unscrupulous Web site operators who deliberately mislead children and others into landing on and staying at sites that they never intended to visit.

Earlier this month, the agency issued a complaint against John Zuccarini for allegedly registering more than 5,500 Web sites with names similar to sites frequented by children and teens. Zuccarini, according to the complaint, ``registered 15 spelling variations of the domain name cartoonnetwork.com'' along with misspellings of PlayStation (such as playstaion.com), Disney, Powerpuff Girls as well as variations of the names of several celebrities. There were 41 variations on the name of Britney Spears.

He even went after kids interested in Harry Potter books with sites like ``harypoter.com.'' In other words, according to the FTC, he was taking advantage of the fact that children sometimes misspell names of popular sites they wish to visit. Come to think of it, so do adults. While children are the most innocent victims, no one should be subject to this form of Web jacking.

These stealth sites apparently contained code that instantly transfers the user to another site which typically contains advertisements for pornography, gambling, instant credit and other businesses, according to the FTC's 12-page complaint.

But it gets worse. In addition to tricking people into visiting the sites, he held them captive by opening up a barrage of pop-up windows while they were there or if they tried to leave.

The purpose of this scam, of course, is to get people to look at advertisements and to get money from sites that people were diverted to. The FTC estimates that Zuccarini ``earns between $800,000 and $1 million annually'' from the scheme. Even if a person never buys anything at the site, it's still considered a ``hit'' from an advertising point of view. So it doesn't matter much whether the visitor is a credit card carrying adult who is willing to spend money at the site or a kid who simply looks at the material. By opening a series of windows, you wind up being exposed to multiple advertisements which translates to multiple advertising hits and multiple kickbacks to the Web site operator.

While Zuccarini's guilt or innocence hasn't been determined in court, I am nevertheless pleased to see the FTC cracking down on this type of deception. It's hard enough keeping kids away from inappropriate Web sites that they choose to visit, but quite something else to protect them from sites that are trying to deceive them.

Zuccarini isn't the only person accused of this type of deception. It's been going on for years both in the United States and abroad. Four years ago, when my son was 11, I offered to help him on a homework assignment pertaining to geology by guiding him to an appropriate government Web site. Only instead of typing ``.gov,'' I accidentally typed ``.com'' which led us to a site that immediately transferred us to a porn site with explicit images on the front page.

I discovered similar porn sites by misspelling such popular URLs as nytimes.com and latimes.com and Disney.com. After I wrote a column about those particular sites, they were pulled from the Internet but, guess what, they're back. The pages themselves are pretty innocuous but if you click on prominent links, you can easily wind up at a porn site.

I find it particularly annoying that such sites trick you once by getting you to visit them and then trick you again by either not letting you out of forcing you to close window after window of sites that contain messages or images that are not only inappropriate for children but potentially embarrassing or disturbing for adults.

They can even get people in trouble at work or school by causing them to inadvertently violate their organization's appropriate use policy. Many companies, schools and agencies have policies that prohibit users from visiting certain types of sites at work or school. This type of practice not only gets you to such sites but also makes it harder to extricate yourself if your boss or a co-worker walks into the room.

This case has nothing to do with free speech, and it's not about whether it's right or wrong to use the net to promote pornography, gambling or any other activity. It's about deception.

I support the right of adults to post and view sexually explicit material or engage in other legal activities via the Net, and I worry that some of the proposed measures to keep kids away from porn would wind up also inhibiting adults from enjoying their First Amendment rights. Even when it comes to kids and porn, I make a distinction between kids who seek out sexual material and those who come across it by accident or by deception.

Imagine the public outcry if adult bookstores masqueraded as candy stores or children's book shops. How would society react if pornography were deliberately disguised as kids' literature?

Prosecuting people guilty of deception is exactly the right tact for our government to take to help protect children online. No one's Constitutional rights are threatened and we'll all enjoy the Internet a bit more knowing that we won't be forced into any virtual blind alleys as we surf the Net.