In a message dated 4/20/2002 7:58:14 PM Central Daylight Time, jcowan@reutershealth.com writes:He can't use it; he's a Windows victim. Well, aside from not feeling particularly victimized today, I will protest implicitly raising an issue that I am forbidden to raise from the other side. Apparently, then, spam is not a problem for anyone really: some eliminate it before it arrives, others just delete unread it as part of their regular mail reading routine. some of us even get a kick out of some of it. As for the privacy issue, as someone said, that was settled a couple of decades ago at the latest. Unless you are incredibly careful -- never subscribe to anything, never use a credit card, never buy any large item, never shop at the same store twice, don't have a social secuity paying job, don't have insurance, don't pay taxes and so on -- anybody who wants to can get as much information on you as the Yahoo questionairre gives, mostly free and the rest for a minimal price. The advantage of Yahoo's file is that it can be made reasonably accurate, while what is picked up from most sources tends to lump you into categories that may not really apply (as someone noted, pitchers are incompetent in the sense of rarely getting the individual right but hitting the mass pretty well). As a recent retiree (thanks former employer and federales) I get irrelevant medicare supplement ads one of the fringe benefits of my old job -- there were no core benefits -- is just such supplement from my old employment insurance, as the advertisers could easily discover). As a recent home buyer (thanks county governement and title insurance agencies), I get a lot of refinancing ads, even though there are no finance charges accumulate on a cash deal. As a male of a certain age, I get Viagra ads. And so on. At least Yahoo gave me an opportunity to cut those ads off (not that I think that the advertisers paid any attention). |