Fake tan spoof website attracts a million hits

0 Comments | Sunday Mercury (Birmingham, England), March 29, 2009

A SPOOF Midland website claiming to offer internet users a free year-round tan through their computer screens has attracted more than a million hits.

Computertan.com - set up two months ago to promote the work of a skin cancer charity - promises to ensure sun-worshippers "look great in the office" by transmitting ultraviolet rays into their homes.

It even offers a mobile version of the program so that users can get brown by using their phones.

But when users click to access a "free five-minute tan trial", bars from a sun bed appear on the screen with a warning: "Don't be fooled - UV Exposure Can Kill".

The site then goes on to warn the public of the threat posed by skin cancer, which kills an average of five Britons every day.

Visitors to the site are also shown graphic images of the effects of the disease and are offered the opportunity to pass on the warnings by "hoaxing" a friend with a link to the spoof tanning service.

The Nottingham-based Karen Clifford Skin Cancer Charity, known as Skcin, described the success of the site as phenomenal.

The charity was set up by relatives of Karen Clifford, who passed away on New Year's Eve 2005 after a courageous battle against malignant melanoma.

Her husband Richard, from Nottingham, said: "The website's increased our profile as a charity and more importantly it's raised the profile of skin cancer generally.

"It is being effective - the info-mercial is so well done that quite a lot of people have been taken in by it."