Tag: advertising

Opt out

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I received an SMS from motoring company Subaru this evening. I’d imagine that they have my number because we looked at buying a Subaru, before eventually not buying a Subaru. But they make you fill in all the information for marketing purposes (like this SMS) before you get to see the goods, and you comply, because you want to stay on the good side of the salesperson, just in case.

Decent deal, and… no… wait. That’s not why we’re here.

You’ll note that the sms has an opt-out.co link at the bottom. I chose to use it.
I’ve moved on since I signed up with Subaru. (Great car, small boot.)

It (the link, not the car) took me a site where I had to enter the cellphone number that they contacted me on. Fair enough – that’s clearly a only a campaign (9930) specific link. I entered my number.

On the next screen, they made me read the SMS message that they’d just sent me. That was a bit odd, since if it was the wrong message, there was no option to say “er… actually no – that wasn’t it”; there was just a continue button at the bottom. But ok, I’ll jump through your weird hoops. I clicked the button.

And when I clicked it, I got this:

“If you receive another sms from the current campaigns [sic] kindly ignore it.”

Wut? Really? Time for this gif, I think:

If I wanted to just ignore “another sms from the current campaigns [sic]”, I would have done exactly that. I don’t want to receive the sms to ignore.

That’s kind of the point.

I want to opt out. (It’s a difficult concept to grasp, I know.)

I’m no legal beagle, but I’m pretty sure that this really isn’t how this works.
This isn’t how any of this works.

I’m going to be on the lookout for another sms from the current campaigns [sic] and then when I get one, I am going to sue Subaru for every last cent that they have be really rather irritated about the whole thing.

Honestly, how difficult can this sort of stuff be?

Your phone is listening

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Here’s a VICE article about how your smartphone is listening to the things that you are saying, and is serving you adverts based upon the things that you speak about.

It’s entitled:

Your Phone Is Listening and it’s Not Paranoia

Sadly though, it does appear to have ignited quite a lot of paranoia about the fact that your phone is listening.

Am I the only one not to have known about this before?

I didn’t think this was news. I thought that this was common knowledge. After all, access to the microphone is often part of the permissions that you give apps when you download or update them.

Am I the only one not to be hugely worried by it either?

I’m not routinely planning terrorist attacks or coups d’état (although…?). And if I did, I’d make sure that my phone wasn’t right next to me. And even if it was, I’d probably only get served some google ads about terrorist attacks and coups d’état.

In fact, given that I am going to be served ads while I am on the internet, I have no issue with targeted ads. I’m wont to ignore them all anyway, but at least they might be of some interest to me.