Top Ten Opt-Outs
April 27th, 2009 by ComputerBob
With most things in life, you choose whether you want to participate in them or not.
You can choose to go to a place of worship, a school, a job, or a restaurant.
You can choose which car you want to buy. Which TV shows you watch.
In short, you “opt-in” to the things that you want to be part of.
For some reason, advertising works exactly the opposite way.
Everybody and their brother can call you on the phone to try to sell you whatever they want.
And fill your mailbox with junk mail.
And fill your email inbox with spam email messages.
And if you don’t like it, you have to ask each advertiser to stop bothering you.
And hope that they will honor your request.
In short, you are added to advertisers’ lists without your consent, and it’s up to you to “opt-out” — to go through the trouble of trying to be taken off of those lists.
And, as you know, the companies that you really want to never hear from again are exactly the same companies that will ignore your pleas to be left alone.
And they’ll sell your name and phone number and address and email address to other advertisers that you don’t want to hear from.
Here are Slashdot’s readers’ reactions to the World Privacy Forum’s Top Ten Opt-Outs.
Permalink:
http://www.computerbob.com/wp/top-ten-opt-outs.php
Tags:
Consumer Info