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Unethical Website of the Month February 2006
The Alibi Network
"Our personal alibi specialists are available 24 hours a day…"
This isn't a quote from a vintage Monty Python skit, unfortunately. It is part of the pitch on this month's Unethical Website, and a more deserving choice for the honor would be hard to imagine. The Alibi Network provides members with a wide variety of deceptive services, from fake phone calls to their bosses to verify phony sick days, to providing "virtual employment" for out-of-work jobseekers who want to fool potential employers into believing that they have a job, to elaborate "alibi packages" created to support extra-marital affairs.
The latter is obviously the website's true calling and the reason for its existence. While such services as "Discreet Shopping" and "Business Services" are vaguely and unconvincingly described on the site, alibi activities related to spouse-cheating are the only ones that included elaborate details and prices. A fake conference invitation, complete with a receptionist who will field phone calls from home while you rendezvous with your paramour? Just $55.00. E-Ticket confirmation to Newark when you'll really be scuba-diving with bodacious Trixie in the Bahamas? Also $55.00. How about a phony digital photo of you with other conference "attendees"? That's $75.00; the framed certificate of attendance is only $35.00.
Equally as objectionable as the services provided by the Alibi Network are the site's smug justifications for its "business." "Live the Way You Want!" one banner proclaims. The word "freedom" appears over and over again, while more appropriate words like "cheating" and "fraud" or phrases like "lying one's head off" never show up at all. "Privacy" is another favorite word on the site, as in "privacy" while one is betraying one's wife and children, "privacy" while one is cheating one's employer out of a day's pay, and "privacy" while failing to inform your live-in lover that you are HIV positive.
The Alibi Network isn't merely unethical. It spreads a virtual plague of bad ethics, facilitating and encouraging deceit and dishonesty by making it easier and less risky. The service debuted in Europe and South America, and is now spreading its plague to the United States. Dozens of local TV stations in the US and Canada have eagerly devoted segments to the Alibi Network, thus helping it reach its target market. "Is this service unethical?" one asked.
If it isn't, nothing is.