[thelist] Fed Up!

[Andrew Forsberg]

>Many sites have a little "gotcha" in their signup process . This is 
>usually a checkbox that says something along the lines of "Site XYZ 
>ocassionally sends out special offers from our partners. Uncheck 
>this box if you don't want to receive such mail".
>
>The sad part is that this box is almost always checked by default 
>and sometimes the language is made really obscure so people won't 
>bother reading all of it.

Well, when it comes to newsletters and the like, this would be the 
logical thing to do from a marketing perspective. The site is trying 
to add value, and encourage return custom, by sending out a 
newsletter. If it's unchecked by default, then the user has to be 
paying attention :-) -- if it's checked by default then the user has 
to break a negative inertia to uncheck it.

But I do *definitely* see your point re the: 'we're going to sell 
your address to everyone and their dog' aka 'Site XYZ occasionally 
sends out special offers from our partners...'


-- 
Andrew Forsberg
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the pander - http://thepander.co.nz/
uberNET - http://uber.net.nz/