Are you an advertisement?

I’m not sure how I feel about this.

First note: I don’t use Yahoo!, except on the occasion that some blog post leads me to Yahoo! News.

Second note: I do, obviously, use Facebook, but I’m not what you would call a fan of the site.

Either way, I’m uncertain about the idea of such targeted advertising. Indeed, when using the “Login with Facebook” feature at various websites, I take a moment to make certain I’m not littering my timeline with a bunch of automatic notifications. And because of the way Facebook likes to tell everyone what its users are doing, I generally don’t respond to invitations to play various games, or enter my birthday on a calendar, and so on.

To the other, it’s Facebook, so … yeah. I kind of knew what I was getting into when I signed up for an account.

But I would prefer my social networking to network according to my wishes. I do not accept the proposition that my friends, or the world in general, need to know everything I’m doing online.

Dear Yahoo! ….

Memorandum
22 September, 2011

To: Yahoo!
re:Blocking your domain

Recently I have begun experiencing an increase in a curious form of spam; Yahoo! Groups invitations from nonsensical would-be groups with names like vnekve and ybupf keep arriving in my email box.

Indeed, I have consulted your

The point is well taken.

Going forward, all Yahoo! Mail addresses coming into my box will be blocked as spam. This is simply the most effective return on the effort invested to tailor email filters to accommodate the circumstances. No Yahoo! Mail address will be trusted; no Yahoo! email user will be considered reliable.

-bd