From ghegyes@nalusda.govSat Feb 25 21:22:00 1995 Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 11:32:22 -0500 (EST) From: Gabriel Hegyes To: SANET-mg Subject: ANNOUNCE: Federal Trade Commission "ConsumerLine" (fwd) ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Fri, 24 Feb 1995 08:48:41 -0500 >From: Richard Civille To: Multiple recipients of list RURALDEV Subject: Federal Trade Commission "ConsumerLine" ANNOUNCEMENT: February 23, 1995 Introducing the Federal Trade Commission "ConsumerLine" TO: GOPHER SITE MANAGERS, WEB MASTERS AND INTERESTED FOLKS (Our apologies if you receive this notice several times from different lists. We hope this announcement is appropriate for the lists submitted to. Please feel free to repost.) Are you interested in pointing your gopher or web site to a great new resource for consumer education materials? The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) recently established the "ConsumerLine", a gopher server that offers FULL TEXT of more than 140 consumer and business publications. The FTC gopher server can be accessed at: CONSUMER.FTC.GOV 2416. That last number is a port address. You also can use a Web browser such as Mosaic or Netscape. The uniform resource locator (URL) is: GOPHER://CONSUMER.FTC.GOV:2416 Categories include: Credit -- Investments -- Health and Fitness -- Telemarketing -- Homes and Real Estate -- Products and Services -- Automobiles -- Working at Home -- and more! These publications are concise and informative. This is "use-it-now" information that anyone can immediately put to work. The FTC has long made this kind of consumer information available in brochures. The FTC believes that these brochures ought to be widely disseminated to the public over the Internet, because a larger audience can be reached for these materials this way, at little or no cost to the consumer. * The (FTC) is an independent agency with a mandate to protect the public against unfair, deceptive and fraudulent advertising and marketing practices. The agency works to achieve its goals through law enforcement and education efforts. FTC ConsumerLine is the latest addition to those efforts. The Center for Civic Networking is assisting the FTC in developing this and other information applications that can reach large consumer audiences over the Internet. If you are a Webmaster or managing a gopher site and you choose to establish a pointer to the ConsumerLine, we are very eager to hear from you. This will help us understand what kinds of audiences these consumer education materials are likely to reach. Notifying us will help us develop and improve outreach efforts like this one in the future. We would be happy to help answer any questions you might have about the ConsumerLine. We very much invite your comments as well. Your comments will help the FTC and other agencies learn how to use the Internet to disseminate information to the public. Thank you very much for your interest. We hope to hear from you soon. Richard Civille Executive Director Center for Civic Networking rciville@civicnet.org