Get On, Clip In, Fall Off

Misleading popup of the day

Having turned popup windows on in Safari in order to do some stuff that insisted on them working, I forgot to turn them off afterwards (of course) and as a result was rewarded with this popup earlier. It's slightly too large to embed in the page, so follow the link to look at it. To keep the image size down I've cropped off the picture of a young man who I believe is called Eminem on the left, and the row of various blingmungous types across the top.

Given the market it was aimed at (teenagers and students, I assume), the "no, I don't wish to be spammed into oblivion" text is a small masterpiece of obfuscation and double-negatives. I had to concentrate hard for a few moments to unravel it and figure out whether the box (which was checked by default) should be checked or unchecked to give tacit permission to these guys to choke my phone with uncontrolled SMS spam. As an added bonus, the bit saying "[Privacy Policy]" at the bottom was, er, nothing more than the words "Privacy Policy" without any link. I even checked the source to see if that was some rendering oddity as a result of my browser not being IE6 on Windows, but nope - it's just plain text.

The last thing I want right now is a free polyphonic ringtone (my phone either vibrates or goes "bring bring" quietly) so what to put in that box wasn't an issue for me, but I wonder how many kids are going to open themselves up to unscrupulous marketers through devious exercises like this?