I have joined the few, the proud, the innundated with automatic advertisements. I have a GMail account.
I’m not sure what I think of the idea, actually, but it’s new and shiny so I figured I’d give it a try. They’re very careful to assure users that it’s not people that snoop through your e-mail looking for keywords so that you can be targetted for the right kind of ads, it’s only computers. Which does not mean that there’s aren’t people that are reading summaries of what’s getting fed to subscribers. Or, for that matter, summaries of certain bad words
that then get passed to the relevant authorities. Oh, I suppose there’s a privacy policty, but there’s also a Patriot Act, and I’ve got this feeling that the two might cancel out.
Of course, I don’t really need another e-mail account; I’ve already got no fewer than four addresses that I use regularly for various purposes, plus at least two more that I can think of off the top of my head. But hey, new and shiny. The magpie impulse is strong in this one.
So in case I’ve managed to pick up any readers who don’t actually know me (and hence know one of my other addresses), you can now contact me at the address com dot gmail at nutshell
, reversed wordwise and with proper punctuation substitutions.