Dear Incredibly Bright Chaps over at Verisign,
I accidentally typed www.msnnn.net and
was redirected to a page that displayed your Terms
of Use for a platform that I have not signed up for, nor
do I wish to be signed up for:
Neil J. McRae(neil@DOMINO.ORG)@2003.09.16 08:40:54 +0000:
I do not wish to be bound to your terms and I do not agree
with them. Please take this as notice of such.
The best thing is that they appear to filter search results on some
basis. And they set cookies (long-term) to "store the preferences".
``Filtering attempts to block content containing explicit and adult
material. While no filter is 100% effective, Site Finder uses
industry-leading technology to identify explicit content and reduce
undesired results.''
The best thing would be simply to switch it off.
While folks got used to the strange MSIE error messages, they have the
same "learning curve" now again, but they also need to understand the
privacy implications.
``Third Party Search Results and Cookies
We use third-party companies to serve paid and unpaid search results and
other content to our Site Finder. In the course of serving these
results, these companies may place or recognize a cookie on your
browser, and may use information (not including your name, address,
e-mail address, or telephone number) about your visits to this and other
web sites in order to serve content to our site, improve the services
offered on our site, or measure advertising effectiveness of paid search
results. For more information about this practice and to know your
choices about not having your information used by these companies,
please visit
http://www.content.overture.com/d/Usm/about/company/privacypolicy.jhtml.’’
This is really ugly.
IANAL, but is this fair and common business behaviour?
As I am located in "Old Europe", I say "it's not" and it might have one
or the other legal implication in Germany.
Regards,
/k