AMERICAN NEWS MAGAZINE

EDITOR
Theresa J Thurmond Morris
Twitter - TJTM
EMAIL: TJMorrisACIR
@gmail.com
theresamorris@live.com

News
Comment
Business
Money
Sport
Life & Style
Travel
Driving
Arts & Ents
Archive
Our Papers
Subscriptions
UK News
World News
Politics
Science
Environment
Weather
Tech & Web
Video
Photo Galleries
Topics
Mobile
RSS

Artists, Record Labels, Managers, Publicists, Talent Agents, Publishers, Radio Stations, Syndicators,

We also welcome our ACE FOLKLIFE HISTORICAL SOCIETY MEMBERS from Around the WORLD! We welcome all Artists, Collectors, Doctors, Engineers, Entertainers, Educators, Folklorists, Scientists, and all other professionals around the world.

Welcome to the 21st Century American News Magazine Media Online Press GUIDE.

We offer a News Media Online Press Guide for Everyone in over 50 languages.

We are an open source public domain free website. Open to the world where anyone can join and be a subscriber or contributor.

Trouble in FarmVille: Facebook, gaming company face lawsuit over deceptive ads
Mitch Lipka
Dec 10th 2009 at 6:30AM evb_url = ''; evb_small(evb_url); More Text SizeAAA
Filed under: Kids and Money, Technology, Fraud, Consumer Ally
tweetmeme_source = 'walletpopper';

For the players of Mafia Wars, Vampires, FarmVille and a handful of other Facebook games, the temptation of earning "virtual currency" by clicking on the various offers that popped up on the page was too much to pass up. Unfortunately, what these gamers didn't realize at the time was that the advancement of their virtual characters came at the expense of their own personal bank accounts.

Now, some are fighting back by filing a lawsuit against Facebook and Zynga, the maker of the games. The suit, which is seeking class action status, claims that some offers in the games prompted a series of unauthorized charges or triggered enrollments in programs without the user's knowledge. More than 100,000 people fell victim to these offers, losing more than $5 million, the lawsuit claims.

Among several other examples, the lawsuit cites an IQ test that requires the user to provide their cell phone number. After doing so, some were billed for a text messaging service. Another example from the lawsuit involved an offer that asked consumers to sign up for a "risk-free" trial subscription to a green tea herbal supplement program. Yet somehow that trial became a difficult-to-cancel subscription that every month delivered tea and pills from China.

The only named plaintiff in the lawsuit, Rebecca Swift of Santa Cruz, Calif., said she was charged more than $165 for two months' worth of pills and tea before she was allowed to cancel. She said she first tried to cancel during the trial period, for which she was supposed to pay $5.95 to cover shipping.
adsonar_placementId=1436312;adsonar_pid=986767;adsonar_ps=-1;adsonar_zw=230;adsonar_zh=260;adsonar_jv='ads.tw.adsonar.com';
In a written statement to WalletPop, a Facebook spokeswoman said the company was not involved in the ad placement and didn't profit from it. She also said Facebook has been working to clear its pages of scam ads and the company is committed to fighting the suit.

"The ads in question appeared in third-party applications, were not from Facebook, and provided no benefit to Facebook," she wrote. "However, we are concerned about any potential threat to our users' experience. As a result, we have, and will continue to, take action against both the ad networks and developers who violate our principles or policies. We do not see any merit in this suit and we will fight it vigorously."

Facebook said it is committed to banning ad providers that deliver content in violation of Facebook "principles or policies" and already has cut off four providers.

Zynga, billed as the most popular social gaming company, is in a different situation. Its CEO had the misfortune of being videotaped explaining that his hunger for cash outstripped his interest in keeping his users from being subjected to unsavory offers.

In the video, CEO Mark Pinkus said: "I did every horrible thing in the book to, just to get revenues right away. I mean we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this ... toolbar which ...I downloaded it once and couldn't get rid of it. We did anything possible just to get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business."

A Zynga spokesperson said the company would not comment on the lawsuit, but said it will no longer let scam ads appear with its games.

"Our mission is to provide users with the best possible experience. We deeply regret any difficulty this may have caused users and to make sure we continue to offer the best user experience, we took all offers down," a Zynga spokesperson said in an email to WalletPop. "We take our responsibility to our users very seriously and will continue to take steps to ensure they have a fun and positive game play experience."

RSS News Feeds
Theresa J Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, American News  Magazine, Social Paranormal, TheresaMorris.com and TJThurmondMorris.com now offers a free News Feed service. In order to subscribe, you'll need a separate program or plug-in that can read RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds -- an XML-based format for distributing content. (For more information, see the following list of available RSS clients: (http://blogspace.com/rss/readers)
Once you have the RSS client software installed on your computer, add the following URL to your RSS subscriptions:
http://www.theresamorris.com,
http://socialparanormal.com
http://americannewsmagazine.com/newsfeed.xml
If you're a webmaster, we encourage you to integrate our newsfeed into your web site, so long as you do not post our full-text articles, and so long as you provide proper attribution to Theresa Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal and a link back to our site (http://americannewsmagazine.com), (http://socialparanormal.com), (http://www.theresamorris.com)
RSS Terms of Use
RSS (really simple syndication) service is a means by which AmericanNewsMagazine.com offers feeds of story headlines and brief summaries in XML format ("RSS Content") to visitors to AmericanNewsMagazine.com (the “Site") who use RSS aggregators. These Terms of Use govern your use of the RSS service. The use of the RSS service also is subject to the terms and conditions and Terms of Use which governs the use of all TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, owner and paid for by Theresa Morris aka TJ Morris and Theresa J Thurmond Morris websites and affiliated information services and content. These Terms of Use, as with American News Magazine, Social Paranormal, and Theresa Morris.com as TJ Morris tm ACIR sm Terms of Use, may be changed by American News Magazine, Social Paranormal, Theresa Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm at any time without notice. If you do not agree to all of the terms, do not use this Site’s RSS Feed.
Use of RSS Feeds
TJ Morris tm ACIR sm owned by Theresa J Morris encourages the use of the RSS feeds to augment content on your own site or blog, provided that you do not publish the full text of our stories. You must use the RSS feeds as provided by Theresa J. Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal, TheresaMorris.com and you may not edit or modify the text, content or links supplied. You must also provide proper attribution (included in each RSS feed) by listing “ TJ Morris, tm ACIR sm, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal, Theresa Morris.com” in text as the source for each article. Theresa J. Morris, TJ MORRIS tm ACIR sm reserves all rights in and to any Theresa J. Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal, and all other creations including logos, trademarks or trade names contained in any RSS feed, and your right to use with these logos, trademarks or trade names is limited to providing attribution in connection with these RSS feeds. Any other uses, including without limitation the incorporation of advertising or other promotional content into, or the placement of advertising associated with or targeted towards the RSS Content, are strictly prohibited. You agree not to associate any Theresa J. Morris, TJ MORRIS tm ACIR sm, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal, and all other used RSS feeds with any content that might harm the reputation of Theresa Morris, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal, TJ Morris tm, ACIR sm, its affiliated sites, authors, employees, contributors or partners. Without limiting the above, you may not use the feed on any site that displays pornographic material, exploits children, provides instruction on or promotes illegal activities, or is in any way misleading, obscene, defamatory, libelous, or invasive of personal privacy.
No Fees Permitted
The feeds are free of charge for use by individuals and by organizations for commercial and non-commercial use. Users of Theresa Morris’s RSS feeds content cannot charge additional fees or licenses for the RSS feed content.
Attribution/Links You agree to use the RSS Service only to provide headlines and summaries as provided by all of Theresa Morris’s websites including www.TheresaMorris.com,American News Magazine.com, and Social Paranormal.com, each with a functional link to the full story on the websites that shall display the full content immediately (e.g., no jump pages or other intermediate or interstitial pages). You further agree not to frame or otherwise control the browser window (if any) in which our content opens, including limiting the size or position of such window.
Copyright/Ownership
All RSS Feeds are protected by the copyright laws of the United States and international copyright treaties. All ownership rights and intellectual property rights in and to the RSS Feeds shall remain with Theresa J. Thurmond Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal and no part thereof shall be deemed assigned or licensed to you.
Storing Materials
You agree not to copy, duplicate or store any data retrieved from or derived from any of our feeds beyond the normal amount provided by as approximately 15 headlines and summaries. Without limiting the above, no content may be entered into a database or other organizational structure without the prior written consent of Theresa Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal to the attention of TJMorrisACIR@gmail.com., or TheresaMorris@live.com

Right to Discontinue Feeds
Theresa Morris, Domain Name Owner and owner of various websites and creation content and chosen other RSS feeds may modify or remove the list of available RSS feeds (or the content in the feeds) at any time without notifying you. Additionally, Theresa J. Morris, TJ Thurmond Morris, TJ Morris tm ACIR sm, TJTM, American News Magazine, Social Paranormal reserves the right to revoke RSS syndication privileges at any time, for any reason or for no reason.

(ANY and ALL RSS Feeds as LINKS and on BLOG ROLL pertain to the RSS , Really Simple Syndication rules as well.)

TJ MORRIS ANM, SPN, ACE, owns other websites as well.
TJ MORRIS tm ACIR sm Publishers, Morris Publishing, Morris Productions, Morris Books, TJTM, TRM, partners, affiliates programs.