still keep your info forever etc. but we need to do what we can to stop feeding the beast. I agree with you about the charge to use my equipment to market to me. But since the inception of the internet they have weaseled their way into having their ads/texts etc. to be the equivalent of a phone call or sending out junk mail. They did this of course while refusing to accept any of the regulations in place at the time regarding phone calls or mail. While they set in motion the massive fraud, identity theft and abuse we now see. I remember 20+ years ago when those of us concerned about such things kept getting told by elected officials and law enforcement "That's just the internet" and it was their excuse to do nothing and any attempts to get action on fraud were usually met with frustration. Not because they couldn't take action but because they wouldn't.
I used to point out that if a salesman physically walked through a neighborhood selling vacuum cleaners door to door and was discovered by the people to have been using a different name at several different homes you could have the cops easily show up and ask the guy about making false representations by using a fake name. But one person on the internet is allowed to take out thousands and thousands of e-mail identities with each purporting to be a different individual and law enforcement shrugs their shoulders and goes "it's just the internet" as though the medium for fraud being digital somehow makes it just a nuisance rather than a crime. They could have policed all of this way better early on but didn't and I firmly believe it wasn't just ignorance of what would come that held lawmakers back but money played a big part also. So here we are.
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