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ASA raps ‘killer’ phone firm scare tactics

Children and babies are especially vulnerable to electrosmog

A Northampton company was reprimanded by the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA)after it used scare tactics to sell anti-radiation mobile phone products.

Clear Communications used an ad headlined: "This page could save YOUR LIFE". "Televisions, computers and mobile phones are silently destroying our health," and "US Military admit that invisible killer is on the loose", it claimed.

The company used an image of a baby apparently using a mobile and said: "Children and babies are especially vulnerable to electrosmog".

The ASA ruled: "the advertisers' approach was an unwarranted appeal to the fear of parents".

It added that the advertisers "had not proved that exposure to EMR from use of mobile telephones and VDUs was harmful". The ASA also disputed the efficacy of Clear Communications' product - a magnetic oscillator that increase the brain's alpha and beta rhythms to compensate for radiation from phones.



IBM has also landed with in hot water with the ASA after resellers sold ThinkPads at higher prices than in an IBM advert.



Big Blue placed ads in the national press trumpeting that the pricing of its ThinkPad 240 had dropped to £1,197 ex VAT.

One customer who ordered a notebook through his local reseller was charged £143 more than the quoted price. The ASA said IBM was wrong to have put a certain price in the headline when it stated only in a footnote that: "Resellers may set their own prices so actual prices may vary". ®

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