Stupid Product Watch: EarthLink Makes Bogus ‘Anonymous’ Claim

EarthLink last week unveiled a service it claims will help its subscribers avoid spam.

Dubbed Protection Pack, the service includes a feature called Anonymous Email that gives subscribers five anonymous e-mails managed behind the scenes at EarthLink.

“Subscribers will have immediate access to these separate addresses for Web site registrations, online shopping, or sending and receiving email without exposing their identity,” the company said in a press release.

Apparently shopping in the magical land of EarthLink doesn’t require payment or delivery.

Not that the service is necessarily a bad idea. This is simply to point out that for EarthLink to claim it can do anything to help people shop anonymously is ludicrous.

And this is not the first demonstrably false privacy-related claim EarthLink has made.

In 2001, the ISP ran a scare campaign that, using special effects, showed a constantly changing person going through everyday activities and remaining anonymous. The voiceover said:

“They are watching you. Compiling your information. Invading your privacy. At EarthLink, we would never do that. We just provide the totally anonymous Internet.”

At the risk of insulting readers’ intelligence: The moment someone completes a transaction with a merchant, that person is no longer anonymous, no matter what EarthLink does.

EarthLink couldn’t possibly provide a totally anonymous Internet then, and it can’t provide anonymous shopping now.

Shame on EarthLink for claiming it can.