Exploiting the Fear of Cell Phone Related Cancer

It’s time to introduce the “Bozo of the Month,” my way of rewarding those who rip off, mess up, prevaricate, and otherwise shame the world of technology and embarrass themselves in the process.

Generally speaking, my Bozos (I write a business blog for our sister publication InfoWorld)  almost always come from the ranks of big companies when they take advantage of their customers (hello, AT&T and Facebook), or do something egregiously stupid that hurts their shareholders (glad to meet you, Hewlett-Packard). But little companies? No. My policy is that when little companies mess up or try to sell junk, I figure no one cares so I just ignore them.

But not today.

A company called iMobifone is trying to exploit people’s fears of cancer by selling what must be one of the dumbest products I’ve ever seen – and with nearly 20 years covering tech, I’ve seen some really dumb ones. It’s an old-fashioned handset, complete with a curly rubber phone wire that plugs into a cell phone. This $24.95 kludge is billed as “The solution for cell phone radiation.”

Right. You’re afraid that you might be exposed to brain killing radiation by talking on your cell phone. So buy this cool retro device and you’ll be safe. Maybe tin foil hats are next. The ads and other marketing material for the handset are filled with scary stuff about the alleged correlation between cell phone use and brain cancer. One ad reads: “Cell phones emit radiation whenever they send voice or text messages, and a decade long Interphone projectstudy discovered a strong correlation between heavy cell phone usage and three types of brain cancer.”

Hilariously enough, whoever wrote the marketing copy never bothered to follow the embedded link. If they had, they would have noticed that the Interphone study did not link cell phone usage to cancer. Here what the researchers who conducted the British section of the 13-nation research project actually said:

“Use of a mobile phone, either in the short or medium term, is not associated with

an increased risk of glioma. [brain cancer]. Overall, we found no raised risk of glioma associated with regular mobile phone use and no association with time since first use, lifetime years of use, cumulative hours of use, or number of calls. We note that this result is consistent with most of the previous studies in this field and the significant body of research reporting no health risk from using mobile phones.”

There are, however, serious people who doubt that conclusion, and if you’re really worried, there are steps you can take.

At first I thought the e-mail pitch I got from a guy named Sean Ryan — who works for the Rosen Group, a New York PR agency — was a bad joke. But he assured me that it wasn’t. and iMobifone’s website has a working e-commerce section where you can buy this turkey.

Even if it were a joke, it wouldn’t be funny. Know any cancer patients? I bet they’re not laughing. Even worse is the blatant exploitation of people’s fears. Fortunately, these guys are such clumsy bozos I don’t think many people will take them seriously or waste money on their useless product. Sean Ryan and iMobifone, congratulations! You’re Consumer Tech Radar’s first Bozos of the Month.