Didn't Opt-in? Are you sure?

Didn't Opt-in? Are you sure? Almost all spam is accompanied by a disclaimer saying you asked for it. The problem is that almost every contest, survey or online purchase has a check-box connected with it. If you fail to uncheck it, you just opted in for spam. Better get your spam blocker program updated.

The core of the problem seems to be that electronic contracts are actually binding. From a legal standpoint, this was signed into law back in the late 90's. It's the legal arrangement that allows you to file your income tax entirely electronically. It also lets advertisers send a lot of spam mail under its guise.

The problem is, people tend not to actually read what they're "signing".

Along the same lines, when you installed that piece of free-ware on your system, did you read the details of the license agreement?

(paragraph 18)
".by installing this software application you agree that traffic passing over network connections may be monitored in a fashion that collects data that is not personally identifiable. Any information collected becomes the property of Jackassotron Systems."

Service providers like Prodigy pioneered this kind of license agreement back in the early 90's. Whether they actually did anything malicious with it is unclear. There was some circumstantial evidence they may have been collecting data from end-users personal files. The Prodigy "cache" file had been found to contain information from erased files. Prodigy claimed this was due to a bug. This seems possible, but suspicious.

Back