ARTS & FARCES internet

Until recently—very recently—I’ve always thought very highly of Consumer Reports (the publication) and Consumers Union (the parent company). No longer.

Consumer Reports WebWatch is planning to run an ad next week in the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today. And it’s pitching web publishers to commit to a set of trustworthiness guidelines. The ad pitch to web publishers is a very simple affair: two columns; one black text on white background, and one the inverse, white type on a black background. At the top of the left (white) column is the head: TRUST WORTHY. On the top of the right (black) column is the head: TRUST WORTHY? Underneath each is a list; those that are trustworthy and those that aren’t.

The trustworthiness guidelines are fairly straightforward, dealing with identity, clearly delineating advertising, customer service accessibility (especially with regard to third-party financial relationships), corrections policy, and privacy guidelines. Almost all legitimate websites already strive to meet these criteria.

Fair enough if the pitch to be included (free of charge) in the list of TRUST WORTHY. publishers were the end of it. But it’s not.

In the middle of the pitch to be included in the ad is a most disturbing graf:

Should we not receive a prompt response, your company name may appear on our Web site and other communications as a site that has not complied with our guidelines.

What honey-baked-ham-handed kind of threat is this? Hard to say because two email’s to Consumer Reports WebWatch director, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address), have bounced like so:

Reporting-MTA: dns; smtpout-2.iphouse.net
X-Postfix-Queue-ID: 753032B12A5
X-Postfix-Sender: rfc822; .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Arrival-Date: Tue, 18 Oct 2005 16:56:11 -0500 (CDT)

Final-Recipient: rfc822; .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Action: failed
Status: 5.0.0
Diagnostic-Code: X-Postfix; 
host mx7.daemonmail.net[216.104.160.37] said: 554
    : 
    Relay access denied (in reply to RCPT
    TO command)

Questionable idea—this is little more than the joke that is/was TRUSTe—unquestionably horrible execution.