In the US, "Ask the Audience" and "Phone a Friend" had corporate sponsorship at different periods. The original AT&T sponsored "Phone a Friend" during the original ABC primetime show and the syndicated version's first season; the current AT&T sponsored the 2009 primetime episodes. From 2004 to 2006, AOL sponsored "Ask the Audience" and allowed users of Instant Messenger to participate in the lifeline by adding the screen name MillionaireIM to their contact list. When a contestant used the lifeline during the show, users would receive an instant message with the question and the four possible answers and vote for the correct answer. The computer tallied these results alongside the results from the studio audience. Contestants pre-select multiple friends for "Phone a Friend". As soon as the contestant begins to play, producers alert the friends and ask them to keep their phone lines free and wait for three rings before answering. On 11 January 2010, the US version eliminated the use of "Phone a Friend" in response to an increasing trend of contestants' friends using web search engines and other internet resources to assist them during the calls. Producers came to feel that the lifeline was giving contestants who had friends with internet access an unfair advantage; they also believed it was contrary to the original intent of the lifeline: friends provided assistance based on what they knew. During recordings of the current British version, security personnel from the production office stay with contestants' friends at their homes to ensure integrity. During "The People Play" specials in 2012 and 2013, friends travelled to the studio and stayed backstage. When a contestant used the lifeline, the friend they called appeared on a monitor in the studio, and both the friend and contestant were able to see and communicate with each other. Unique lifelines During the course of the game show's history, there were a number of unique lifeline additions in various versions of the programme: Switch the Question – Used in the US version between 2004 and 2008, and in the UK original during celebrity specials between 2002 and 2003 and standard episodes between 2010 and 2014, this lifeline became available after a contestant answered the tenth question of the game. The computer replaced the current question with another of the same difficulty. The contestant could not reinstate any lifelines used on the original question. A variation of this lifeline for the