[Privoxy-users] Concern about Privoxy sponsor

[Lee]

On 2/7/18, Ian Chard <ian at chard.org> wrote:
> On Tue, 6 Feb 2018, Lee wrote:
>> On 2/5/18, Ian Chard <ian at chard.org> wrote:
>>> Hi Privoxy people,
>>>
>>> I recently received an email in these terms from a company called
>>> Comparitech about the sponsor currently displayed on Privoxy's website.
>>> I don't make a judgement either way about your sponsor but thought you
>>> should know that this is happening.  Right now the sponsor is a binary
>>> options trading website.
>>
>> Hi Ian,
>>
>> First off, thanks for mentioning privoxy on your website.
>>
>> I took a quick look at the site mentioned in your .sig and didn't see
>> any references to privoxy.  I then tried a search on your site and the
>> search engine found only one link from a 2014 post, so my initial
>> reaction was that Comparitech was just looking for free advertising.
>> Does that seem about right to you?
>
> Very possibly.  I only mention Privoxy once and it's in that 2014 post.  I
> suspect they've just trawled a search engine and emailed anyone who links
> to Privoxy taking no account of context.
>
>> And since you claim to be an amateur law nerd, what are the consumer
>> protection laws like in the UK/EU?
>> In the US, the Federal Trade Commission has put out guidelines for
>> affiliates & it seems to me that if comparitech was a US company they
>> could get in trouble with the FTC (but I'm not a lawyer, so I could be
>> totally wrong there :)
>
> IANAL either and this isn't something I know much about.  However I
> wouldn't have thought that consumer law is engaged here because they're
> not advertising or marketing directly to me.

I would think that their email would be considered marketing directly
to you.. and their bit about "I'm sure you don't want your visitors
getting scammed" surely invites you to evaluate the scamminess of
_their_ site before adding a link to them.  But if you didn't take a
look at their web site then yes... I guess I can see how UK consumer
law wouldn't be engaged here.

>   As to whether Comparitech is
> meeting its obligations when endorsing products on its website, honestly I
> have no idea.  I would agree though that their behaviour has been
> disingenuous at best.
>
> If nothing else hopefully this thread can serve as a search target for
> anyone else receiving such a message!

Yes - thank you for that!  And hopefully it will also cause people to
think about what it takes for marketing material or a website to cross
the line from acceptable to not.

Best Regards,
Lee