According to sources like U.S. News and World Report, cell phone elbow is described as a nerve condition that affects “high tech talkers.” People who spend long periods of time holding a cell phone to their ears, their arms bent at more than a 90 degree angle, are choking the blood supply to the ulnar nerve, a nerve in the arm that runs from the collar bone to the pinky and ring fingers. Eventually, the fingers get tingly, painful or numb. Compressing this nerve for long periods can lead to hand and forearm issues, including cubital tunnel syndrome (similar to carpal tunnel syndrome), with the worst case being loss of hand strength (the J-Walk Blog mentions that sufferers have trouble opening jars and playing musical instruments, among other challenges).

How can we prevent cell phone elbow? For starters, use a headset instead of holding the phone. If you must use your hands, switch hands frequently to allow your arms to relax and get back to normal. If you ignore the pain and tingling for too long, it could eventually require surgery and physical therapy to decompress the nerve, so listen to your body; if your pinky is feeling the pinch, put down the cell phone. After all, as Lifehacker wonders, how can we make cell phones less of a pain on our bodies? For now, the handsets aren’t exactly conducive to our health, and the impact doesn’t stop with cell phones… When you think about it, ANY phone, including a land line, can have this effect on our arm nerves. The problem is in the design, not in the calling plan.

Of course, the best way to avoid the impact of talking on a phone is to avoid talking at all. That keeps conditions like cell phone elbow at bay and also prevents the loss of focus that talking hands-free can cause, especially while driving. It’s almost impossible to avoid talking on the phone throughout the day, so use good judgment when you talk, and try to save the phone time for important conversations.

If you’re trying to make the minutes that you DO talk on the phone count, you probably want to cut down on any telemarketing calls you get. That’s where Privacy Council can help! Sign up for our list removal service, and we’ll make sure you’re removed from all the major marketing lists and placed on the Do Not Call list. Reduce your junk mail and your unwanted phone calls with our service today!

TrapCall is a free service from NJ-based company TelTech that identifies the source of the blocked calls you receive to your cell phone. According to sources like lifehacker, when you miss a call (or choose not to answer it), this service forwards the call to TrapCall’s toll-free number. TrapCall deciphers the source of the call and sends it back to your phone, this time with the source number in plain sight. Then, you can choose whether to answer it or not (ignoring it this time will take the call to your regular voicemail). The caller never knows about this process; they hear only ringing on their end.

As Gizmodo notes, TrapCall’s upgraded (not free) options include recording incoming calls (which cell technology has never been able to do before), voice mail transcription, and other features (the “Mouse Trap” and “Bear Trap” options). They also point out that the only way to defeat TrapCall is with TelTech’s other notable service, SpoofCard (what a surprise). 

Does it work? Yep, according to those who have tried it. Does it have any flaws? A few: TrapCall isn’t available on all carriers yet, for one thing. For another, call blocking has long been one of the methods of defense for victims of domestic abuse and others who must hide their identity for safety reasons, and TrapCall could out those victims. But that’s a consideration for another time. For now, TrapCall works, and it’s gaining popularity.

At Privacy Council, we strive to put an end to unwanted SPAM, junk mail and phone calls. TrapCall may help with the phone calls, but don’t forget to sign up for Privacy Council’s list removal service today to cut down on the rest of the unwanted communication that annoys you (and harms the environment)!

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Here are the things that really jump out at me from this spam message:

1. Of course, it was unsolicited, which is what makes it spam. But it’s so far from anything I might have wanted to know about that it’s not even remotely linked to my buying preferences and interests. I can’t imagine a moment in which I might want to read about colon cleaners in my email, and yet, here it is.

2. “Lose weight with your mate” – What does this have to do with anything? Does my mate have to be a part of this cleansing process? What if I’m mate-free? This phrase is probably there for the rhyming catchiness and for the fact that everyone likes to do things with their mates (although hawking a colon-cleaning product as a bonding benefit for couples might not work the way they expect).

3. “Flush out up to 25 pounds” – I get the charming “flush” reference, but 25 pounds?? I suspect that my entire intestinal weight is less than that, let alone what’s in my system. So now I have a healthy fear of this product, since I’m pretty sure most of my internal organs would have to be removed in order to reach that touted 25-pound weight loss. Truth in advertising? I certainly hope not.

4. “Remove deadly toxic buildup” – There are deadly toxins building up in my body?? Maybe so, but I doubt a laxative will fix that. The use of “deadly,” however, is a classic scare tactic to motivate buyers. Too bad the spammers probably lost most readers before they even reached that line, thanks to number 5…

5. The text above is the entire contents of the spam message. It has no graphics, no fonts, no testimonials, and no more information about the product. It’s so small and plain that it breaks almost every rule of visual marketing. As a means of sucking people in, this falls very short. After all, even if I hadn’t been in the market for a colon cleaner, a snazzy message with bright colors and happy customers might have intrigued me. In theory, anyway.

6. FREE – They mention “free” twice, in big letters. Really, they claim, it’s free! Except for that tiny asterisk that notes the added, undisclosed cost of shipping and handling. They also say you can “try it” free, not just get it free; in most cases, “try it free” means “you get a short trial period until we start charging your credit card for the astronomical recurring costs of this product,” at which point you end up frustrated and trying to cancel the charges before they add up. In just about every case, “FREE” isn’t free at all, but spammers love to use it.

7. The date – What you can’t see in the text alone is that the email was date-stamped on 1/18/2037. Since that’s in the future, the email will stay on the top of the inbox as long as the user doesn’t delete it, keeping the lovely colon-cleansing ad front and center for as long as possible. Lots of spammers mess with the dates on emails in order to manipulate where they end up in the inbox. Some take the opposite tactic and put a much older date on the email, making the new message appear at the bottom of the list so that the user has to hunt for it in order to delete it.

8. The small bit of good news: The spam does include an unsubscribe link and an address for the company, and while either or both of those might be bogus, it’s a nice touch that almost makes it appear that the marketing company would rather not send you colon cleaning ads if you don’t want them.

So for this spam ad’s unsolicited nature, random content, dishonest advertising, manipulation of the calendar and unappealing design, it officially becomes part of the Marketing Hall of Shame! Congratulations! Sort of.

Some consumers mistakenly think that being on the Do Not Call list means that they will receive no solicitation calls for any reason, but there are exceptions to Do Not Call. One exception is for political campaigns, and another is for charities. Legitimate charities are not restricted in their telemarketing calls by the Do Not Call list; less-than-legitimate charities, though, are one way that some people try to skirt the Do Not Call list and make some money. So how can you tell whether the charity calling you for your holiday contribution is really legitimate and trustworthy?

First, ask questions to find out where the money really goes. On average, charities get just 40% of the money that telemarketing companies collect in their name. In some cases, the telemarketing company keeps 90% or more of all the money they collect on behalf of the cause they are purportedly working for. As awful as it sounds, this practice is legal; the Supreme Court case Madigan v. Telemarketing Associates ruled that telemarketing companies can keep almost all the money they bring in, as long as they don’t claim that more goes to the charity than it does. Charities claim that even a small percentage makes a difference for them, but if you want to give to a worthy cause, you probably shouldn’t do it via telemarketer, since you’ll also be lining the pockets of the telemarketing company.

I’ll give you an example from my personal experience: A man called me once on behalf of the “fraternal order of police,” asking me to contribute to police officers in my area and delivering an emotional plea for the cops who needed me. I asked him, “Are you with the police?”

“No, ma’am,” he replied.

“So you work for a third-party company doing the solicitations?” I asked. (This is exceedingly common, of course, and doesn’t mean a charity is less than reputable.)

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Is your company a for-profit company, or a non-profit company?” I asked.

“For profit.”

Ah. Now we were getting somewhere. “So what percentage of my donation actually goes to the police?” I asked.

“Well,” he said, back on script, “Ten percent of the money that goes to the police goes to…”

“No,” I said. “What I mean is, if I give you $100, how much of that $100 goes to the police, and how much stays with your company?”

“Um, I don’t know that, ma’am.”

“Because you see, I know your company wants to make money, and I know that many telemarketing companies who solicit for charities only donate a small percentage to the charity itself. So why would I give any money to you, when I can just give it directly to the police in my area and make sure that it ALL goes to the cause that I support?”

“Well…” he didn’t have an answer.

I hung up with a clear conscience, knowing that any “donation” I made to this caller’s company would have mostly gone to the company itself, not to the cause they claimed to support.

By law, the telemarketer has to give you their full name, the company they work for, whether they’re paid for their job, etc., but you have to ask first. They’re not required to volunteer that info, and they’d usually prefer you didn’t ask. Legitimate charity calls will not have anything to hide when you ask them these questions.

Protecting yourself and your charitable donations doesn’t stop there, though. Make sure you never give out sensitive information, such as a credit card number, Social Security number, or bank account information, over the phone. Don’t give out your mailing address; instead, offer to confirm the address they have on record, and even if the address is wrong, confirm it anyway. If they have the wrong information for you, it might be a way of trying to trick the RIGHT information out of you, so don’t tell them what the real information is. Don’t give out your email address, and don’t let the telemarketer send you to a website to pay your charitable pledge, since that website might be a scam site that was set up to look legitimate and collect personal info from victims.

If you want to make a contribution but want to be safe about it, ask the telemarketer to send hard copy donation information to the address they have on file. If it’s wrong, just play along until you say goodbye and hang up, then look up the address of the charity you want to support and send them your contribution directly. That way, you’ll know that your money is going where you want it to go. All charities are happy to take direct donations if you offer them, and bypassing the telemarketing company entirely means that your identity is safe.

You can’t do much about charity telemarketing calls, since they’re exempt from the Do Not Call list, but you can take steps to keep your identity safe and make your contributions count among the charities you prefer.  

Sources for this article: Associated Content, North Carolina Attorney General’s Office, MSN.com 

Those contests that pop up in malls, festivals and sporting events are less about giving away a free vehicle and more about collecting consumer data. When you fill out the card, you have a minuscule chance of winning the bike (or boat, or car, or RV), but you usually DO give the company conducting the contest the right to contact you with other offers. In fact, other contests, brochures, catalogs and offers may also start to appear in your mail as your information is sold to third parties. You will also get phone calls, and they often start with something like, “Ms. Smith, you filled out an entry form at the Bass Pro Shop in June of 2006, and we’re calling to extend another great offer to you…” It can take years for the calls to stop, even if you tell them point-blank to take you off their lists. Unfortunately, this is the voice of experience talking; I didn’t win the boat I registered for, but I still get calls with new offers to this day.

The same advice goes for sweepstakes forms you receive in the mail. If you want to enter to win that fabulous grand prize, read the fine print and see whether you can “opt-out” of being put on any mailing lists when you enter. If you can’t stay off their mailing lists, don’t enter the sweepstakes! Your low odds of winning don’t compensate for the high odds of getting more junk mail. The contact information for the people who enter those contests is almost always sold or rented to other contest companies, sweepstakes and lotteries.

The bottom line is this: No matter what contest you enter, whether at the mall or in your mail, ALWAYS check the contest rules to see how your information will be used. Some contests are more likely to be the source of future junk mail headaches for you than others, and the fine print will usually disclose that information if you investigate. Look for any suggestion that you’re giving consent to receive future information, extra offers or additional communications.

If you do fill out that contest form and regret it later, what can you do to stop the sweepstakes junk mail from rolling in? You can start by calling the company sending the information. They usually print a number on their forms, so you can contact them and ask to be removed. Sometimes, the company will include a reply envelope in their pile of junk mail (with which you’re supposed to enter the contest that they’re advertising), so you can try putting instructions in that envelope to remove you from the mailing list and then send it back to the company.

And the next time you see the seemingly-innocuous kiosk at the mall that advertises a free car to a lucky winner who fills out an entry form, keep walking.

Sources for this article: The Maryland Attorney General’s Consumer Publications, Privacy Rights Clearinghouse, Contests at About.com