Over-the-counter dental whitening products are drawing scrutiny, as rival vendors carpet-bomb the web with graphic advertisements promising cheap and effective treatment for discolored teeth.

The ads have been inescapable in recent months, appearing on major U.S. web sites and search engines including Google, Yahoo, MSN and Microsoft's Bing at a time when Yahoo CEO Carol Bartz has publicly offered investors a chagrined promise to do better screening out low-quality ads.

Now fraud busters are zeroing in on at least one tooth-whitening vendor – Cyprus-based Farend Services, doing business in the United States as Dazzle Smile and Dazzle Smile Pro – in what could be the first shot across the bow for an industry that's spawned a web-wide advertising eyesore to rival the X10 wireless video cam, Viagra and penis-enlargement products.

In a little-noticed action last month, Utah’s consumer-protection division cited Farend (.pdf) for trapping customers with fine print on a network of fake blogs that signs them up for an expensive subscription to the tooth-whitening products rather than the low-cost or free single unit they think they’re ordering.

"After realizing I was scammed, I tried four times to cancel, two times through live chat ... and two times by phone, a free trial offer to Dazzle Smile and was told that the auto-ship subscription was canceled; however the free trial subscription could not be canceled [and] to my surprise, I also found out that they auto-enrolled me in another service, World Club Fitness," reads a complaint to the Oklahoma attorney general, one of thousands related to online tooth-whitener scams reported recently to law enforcement and consumer-rights agencies.

Attempts to reach the company for comment were unsuccessful.

The citation is the first indication of a backlash against tooth whiteners and the companies that market them, fueled by the intensity of recent online ad campaigns touting several competing products.

In a sign of widening interest, the Better Business Bureau this month joined the fray, opening an investigation into multiple tooth-whitening brands, including Dazzle Smile.

"The use of negative marketing options [that offer] a free trial and then you get billed every month over and over again, is being used to sell so many products online right now, and it's just a scourge of the internet," said Alison Southwick, spokeswoman for the Better Business Bureau. "People are getting ripped off across the country for any number of products [including these tooth-whitening products] when they think they are getting a free trial."

Despite the deluge of complaints over deceptive sales practices, some home tooth-whitening products may be safe and effective, according to medical experts.

The FDA has approved tooth-whitening pastes and lozenges with the active ingredient carbamide peroxide (first used during World War I as an anti-inflammatory antiseptic), a widely used substance that works by oxidizing stains on teeth.

The American Dental Association agrees that carbamide peroxide can work as advertised, when properly applied by professionals. "Data accumulated over the last 20 years indicate no significant, long-term oral or systemic health risks associated with professional at-home tooth-bleaching materials containing 10 percent carbamide peroxide (3.5 percent H 2 O 2 )," the group said in a statement; but the ADA cautioned that "these data were collected from studies conducted by dental professionals, and there is no safety evidence on bleaching materials that do not involve dental professionals, regardless of H 2 O 2 concentration or application venue."

Be that as it may, marketing practices in the industry are anything but stainless.

One tooth-whitening vendor contacted by Wired.com admitted to engaging in deceptive marketing practices in the past, but claimed that it has since stopped. Dazzlesmile (not related to Farend or Farend's Dazzle Smile brand) is a division of Optimal Health Science and sells FDA-approved tooth-whitening paste and lozenges with carbamide peroxide.

Epic Advertising pairs two teeth whiteners in a single ad, according to Dazzle Smile CEO Roger LeFevre, a former client.

In an interview with Wired.com, Dazzlesmile CEO Roger LeFevre said his company was duped by its outside marketing agency, New York-based Epic Advertising, which he claims engineered the deceptive language used in its offers without his knowledge. (Epic claims it "is not involved in any deceptive creative development including any trademark infringement issues Mr. LeFevre has with another advertiser.") LeFevre said Epic currently represents Farend, and that he ended his relationship with Epic when his customer-service department began fielding irate calls over unauthorized credit card charges. (Epic claims that he "asked for additional traffic.")

"Epic is the one that creates all the ads, their own creative people create all the landing pages, and companies like ours just get led down the primrose path," he said.

Dazzlesmile and Optimal Health Science on Tuesday filed a trademark-infringement cease-and-desist letter against Farend and Epic, targeting Farend's dazzlesmilepro.com web site.

"The legitimate Dazzlesmile has wrongfully been the subject of Better Business Bureau inquires, and has been contacted by the consumer-protection division and state attorneys general of Utah, Delaware, Vermont and Oklahoma about the deceptively similar and false advertising of www.dazzlesmilepro.com," the company wrote in a press release announcing the action.

Epic chief marketing officer Michael Sprouse confirmed that the company represents Farend, and that Dazzlesmile is a former client.

He denied that Epic facilitates fraud for any of its current or former customers, including Farend and Dazzlesmile, adding that Epic enforces strict anti-fraud standards.

Nevertheless, he agreed fraud is a big problem in the industry in general. "This is an area that for the betterment of all online marketing needs to be talked about and cleaned up," he said.

Sprouse said he believed that Farend may have run into trouble with one or more different networks running its ads, and that the networks may have been responsible for the fine print, leaving customers confused and leading to complaints about unauthorized credit card charges.

"Advertisers that utilize [our promotional] networks don't only utilize Epic, they utilize several networks," said Sprouse. "If either of these advertisers or both are running through other networks, there is a chance that through those other networks, if they don't have the same standards that we do, that there will be the fine-print issues that you [mentioned]."

Meanwhile the fraud allegations could further embarrass reputable sites like Yahoo and Microsoft, for whom such ads serve as a daily reminder of the economic challenges facing online publishers today.

A Yahoo representative declined to comment specifically about Farend's ads, but said the company is aware of the general problem of low-quality ads appearing on its sites and has taken steps to address it. "We are making more-stringent editorial decisions about display-ad content and have several categories that we have removed," this person said.

Microsoft also declined to comment on Farend's ads. "While we can't comment on the specifics of this case, Microsoft is committed to protecting the advertisers on its network and aggressively combating online ad fraud."

The question is: Can they do both?

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