24ProtecPlus is a membership program manged by Adaptive Marketing LLC, a subsidiary of Vertrue Inc. Vertrue specializes in negative option marketing in which internet buyers are deceived into agreeing to a membership program during the check-out process. I was stung the same way when I used People-Finders from Intelius; Intelius has partnered with Adaptive Marketing, and they realize a kick-back on each of the memberships sold.
Vertrue has been sued by the AG's of at least six states for deceptive marketing practices. It typically agrees to reform and then goes on the same way as before. Vertrue and Adaptive Marketing both tend to flood the Internet with releases announcing how eco-conscious and employee-friendy they are, and how good their memberships programs are. This is just smoke, since the Internet is rife with complaints about these companies.
Trilegiant (formerly CUC) and WebLoyalty are also players in this business although Vertrue has been attracting the most attention these days.
Banks are complicit in this racket. For instance, there is currently a class-action suit against Wachovia for facilitating fraudulent transations from Vertrue in spite of internal memos from its own executives warning about the fraud.
159 days ago by Ross Burke [