November 2003

Today's economy tries to do everything to push your nose into products you don't want. Commercial spam.
It doesn't matter really much on which website you come, there's pretty much always some kind of advert flashing in your eyes. And there's pretty much always a cookie set in your computer.
Unless ofcourse you have your security on high. In that way you're supposed to be able to keep a bit of the trash out. And ofcourse there are the firewalls, anti-spam programs and such. I have one of those running, too. I manage my own cookies, in as far as I'm able to manage them. I'm not the biggest whizzkid, so I don't really know what's going on behind my back, but most of the cookies get a harsh "no" from me. And the firewall and anti'spam should keep some other unwanted adverts out.
But then I came across a website, to which I was registered member, and probably one of many, which had changed its policy since the last time I had visited it.
I never had any problems logging on, but now all of a sudden I was refused access. And why? Because in the firewall program I had switched on the ad-blocking. I was only allowed access if I switched off the ad-blocking for that site.
Now I wonder where my freedom of choice is? I'm being forced to load those adverts, otherwise I can't access my information. Isn't that limiting my freedom of choice?
I guess you can say, "well, then don't go to that page anymore", but hey! I used to go to that page without problems, without ads.
It's getting worse and worse. These days in my hotmail-account I get approximately 80 junkmails daily. That you can ignore and delete. But where is it going if I can't log on anymore to get my information before I've looked at or clicked on some stupid advert?
I'm sure there's some way to hack around it, but that would make me as bad as the people who made those scripts...