(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

While many applauded this (because at least they were going to anonymize it), many others say it doesn't go far enough.

When asked why they need personally identifiable information in the first place, their answer is for service optimization. I, as others, question what identifying someone has to do with search engine optimization at all.

(Image is in the Public Domain)

Seattle pediatrician Rupin Thakkar's first inkling that the pharmaceutical industry was peering over his shoulder and into his prescription pad came in a letter from a drug representative about the generic drops Thakkar prescribes to treat infectious pinkeye. In the letter, the salesperson wrote that Thakkar was causing his patients to miss more days of school than they would if he put them on Vigamox, a more expensive brand-name medicine made by Alcon Laboratories. "My initial thought was 'How does she know what I'm prescribing?' " Thakkar said. "It feels intrusive. . . . I just feel strongly that medical encounters need to be private."

It appears that several drug marketers have been tracking what physicians have been prescribing in order to custom tailor their marketing pitches.

Data brokering is dangerous and uncontrolled

(Image used under: Creative Commons 3.0 [SRC][Mod])

You know all those times I've complained about data brokering and how companies are able to hit us where we are weakest because of all they learn and profile about us? I'm not just making this stuff up.

Mr. Guthrie, who lives in Iowa, had entered a few sweepstakes that caused his name to appear in a database advertised by infoUSA, one of the largest compilers of consumer information. InfoUSA sold his name, and data on scores of other elderly Americans, to known lawbreakers, regulators say. InfoUSA advertised lists of "Elderly Opportunity Seekers," 3.3 million older people "looking for ways to make money," and "Suffering Seniors," 4.7 million people with cancer or Alzheimer’s disease. "Oldies but Goodies" contained 500,000 gamblers over 55 years old, for 8.5 cents apiece. One list said: "These people are gullible. They want to believe that their luck can change."

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For a company who's motto is "Don't be Evil", they sure aren't putting up much of a fight in their slide towards wretchedness.

I love Google’s technology, don’t get me wrong. But I think Google has turned a page here. They have now enabled a piece of software that is hard to remove and forces users to look at a really bad page. In fact, Google knows that this provides users with a dramatically worse experience.

Of course, Microsoft has done this for years. If you type a wrong address into IE, it automatically comes up with an MSN search page. But I don't agree that it's hard to uninstall, just that people who don't know better won't realize that they CAN uninstall it.

I DO agree that this is a bad move on Google's part. If they are truly trying to create a better customer experience and make some money on the way, they made a bad move here. What they've done instead (and Dell too), is make some money by making a worse experience for the customer.

A former payday scum manager comes clean in a video released by The Center for Responsible Lending.

In this 4 minute video, Rebecca tells how payday loans are rarely two-week loans. Most of her customers came in payday after payday to renew the loan—after the first time, they couldn't afford to pay it off. Rebecca tells how she and her co-workers explained away the 400% interest rate, and how tough their collection tactics were. And she tells how she came to understand that rather than help her customers, these loans were "keeping them poor."

Now if Virginia would just kick out the whole industry like West Virginia did.

(Image used under: Creative Commons 2.0 [SRC])

I haven't talked about this before, but it's a problem that's been around a while. A lot of spammers will send full images containing their message instead of HTML or text because a spam filter can't recognize what's in a picture. Now that spammers have been seeing the results of advanced spam filters, they are moving more and more to image spam.

From the article I linked to, this is the most important piece of advice:

Disable graphics in e-mails you receive. Most e-mail services such as Microsoft Outlook 2007 and Mozilla Thunderbird automatically prevent graphics from showing in e-mails you receive unless you click on them or enable the graphics yourself. While this can slow things down a bit, it also reduces the chances that you will be caught clicking on a piece of image spam. You can also configure your e-mail account to only receive plain text, blocking rich text and graphics altogether.

The key is that if the image loads at all, even if you don't click it, the spammer can know you opened their e-mail which will encourage more spam.

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How does a sex offender get hired to do contracting work that could put him in close personal contact with potential victims? Aren't they required to report that they're a sex offender?

It wasn't like this guy was a one-time offender either. The article states that he had an "extensive history of violent attacks".

Though Niki was in no way harmed, you gotta be careful who you open your door to, even if they're coming from a brand-name store

It turns out that West Virginia has kicked out these sleazebag lendors. Now if every other state would follow their example, we'd have something.

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For the switch to digital from analog, Onstar's fantastic customer service tactic is to completely abandon all analog users.

Naturally, there are many people who are up in arms about this (especially the people that fell for Onstar's deceptive ad campaign linking their service to happy endings to extremely unlikely scenarios).

An Onstar representative was quoted as saying "PPPPBBBBBLLLTTTT!!!" while thumbing his nose.