Junk Mail

I am an old man , with grey hair , and I remember many things.

Do you remember Junk Mail ? It came every sunday in your mail box, and no matter how many signs you put up saying "No Junk Mail" "No Advertising" "No Flyers" etc , it just kept coming in. Most of it was from the local grocery stores or pizza shops or other places.

I remember working one summer for a distributer , we got paid 1 cent for every piece we delivered ( I was just a kid , it was summer holidays , it got me a soda pop and a chocolate bar at the end of the day).

Do you remember that you didn't care that it came from the local grocery store, it was still JUNK MAIL ?

Now we have the online version of it , called SPAM. Guess what ? I still don't care if it came from the grocery store, or the electronics store, or my own ISP, I'm not interested.

But of course these people have a different idea of what is , and isn't spam, and money to back up that idea. Whether it be through bribing ISP's to let their mail through the spam filters , or disembowling government anti-spam legislation, or even paying hackers to shut down a web site that actually provides a working anti-spam service (true story) , there's always a way.

I have to ask. When did it become ok for MY COMPUTER to spy on me ? When did it become ok for it to keep track of what sites I surf so they can determine what kind of advertising would most effectively work on me ? When did subverting MY PROPERTY , my own personal property , so someone else could make a buck , become an ok thing ?
When did the option to opt out vanish ? When did the argument "everyone else does it, so we have to do to stay competitive" become acceptable ?
When did it become ok for me to buy and pay for a video game (matrix online) and play it on my computer , and find out it's filled with real world advertisements ? Something I bought and paid for outright , computer , game , and monthly fee, and there's no opt-out button for the ads ?

When did stupid advertising tricks become more important than inventing a good product people actual want or need ?

And just like putting up those futile NO JUNKMAIL signs on your old mail box, the new signs (anti-spam software) are just as futile.

The more things change, the more they don't.