April 16, 2002
Digital debris is on the rise ...
I typically get about 40 emails a day, offering me free vacations, guaranteed diet programs, discount coupons for Internet shopping malls, and every kind of electronica from DVD burners to two-way radios.
Now, let me be clear: I didn't ask for these emails, and I don't want them.
The latest one to get my goat was an email enjoining me to stuff envelopes for $2 apiece. They even did the math: "Stuff 1000 envelopes: Get paid $2000.00!"
Overlooking misspellings and a "Chief of Operations" officer whose entire name was signed "Bob" followed by the initial "B," the text of the email said, "Let's face it. We live in a monthly billing society," at once reminding me of my monthly bills. It seems this company was hiring "homeworkers," it said, "like [my]self."
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Bob B's email was direct: "Let me assure you that you are dealing with an honest company. We know that our homeworkers are happy and making an excellent income just from reading their testimonials. This makes us happy and enables us to succeed and continue our success together."
All that happiness. Who could resist? Unfortunately, I was moving from bad to worse. I looked for the unsubscribe info, and ran into this: "You have opted-in to receive information from our company and partners regarding various topics. If you no longer wish to receive email notices from us, or did not personally register your information, please use the following unsubscribe link."
So, what's wrong with all this? Let me count the ways. First of all, I never consciously opted-in. It was buried in the small print of the privacy policy on some web site I visited. And the envelope stuffers realize that. The clue is actually right there in the notice: I may not have "personally" registered my information.
Well, I can tell you right now -- you can bet I didn't.
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For me, this is even more inconvenient than it appears. You see, I take my email offline. I download it all at once and respond back in one bulk load. To unsubscribe, I've got to go online and link to this site. And how do I know that linking won't mean that I've automatically opted in to their web site? Or that I won't get a cookie as a reward?
The common advice is to only deal with well-known and reputable web sites. And to this I say, "Oh, really?"
The #1 Internet destination worldwide is Yahoo! Several weeks ago, Yahoo! reset all the Opt-In/Opt-Out marketing settings for its 219 million users. To opt out, now you must go to the Yahoo site and manually edit your marketing preferences. In fact, you've got to reset some 13 separate categories.
No one needs to comment on how much digital debris all this is generating, much less whether or not this will prove smart in the long run. But just in the time I've taken to write this commentary, I received an invitation to learn the job skills of food preparation and food service, a free magazine subscription and a mortgage loan with under 3% interest, tailor-made if I have no income and plenty of credit problems.
In any event, just be prepared. It looks to me like this is going to get worse, before it gets better.
I'm Moira Gunn. This is Five Minutes.
