Royal Mail analogy good, but....
The Royal Mail analogy posted above is good, but needs modifying. This is my take:
The Royal Mail signs a deal with a 3rd party, run by an individual with a track record in privacy invasion, to introduce a system (we'll call it "Postwise") which will supposedly stop malicious chain letters being sent to you.
To do this the 3rd party installs a machine in the sorting office that opens everyones mail and photocopies every single letter and envelope. To make it anonymous, your name is erased from the envelope (but your address is still on it of course).
These photocopies are sent to a data processing centre, located abroad, where they are read. The people reading your mail promise to ignore any confidential information, bank details, personal information, that they might just happen to see when reading your emails. They do however compile a profile, linked to your address, of everything you like or dislike based on having read all your personal and business correspondence that week.
If any of the letters are malicious chain letters the 3rd party notifies the Royal Mail who stamp the word "Chain Letter" on the envelope.
the 3rd party also cuts a deal with magazine publishers to cut out the normal, generic adverts in magazines and replace them with adverts targeted to you, based on all the information they have gathered on your address over the last week.
Even if you ask for no Postwise, all your letters are still opened and photocopied.
If you want to opt out you need to stick a post-it note on your letterbox saying "No Postwise Please". When the postman delivers your mail, if he sees your post-it note he crosses out any "Chain Letter" markings with a felt tip pen and delivers the original copy of PCPro rather than the customised copy full of adverts on viagra they'd prepared for you (well, you did write to your friend about your erectile disfunction problem this week). If the post-it note has fallen off, or he can't read your handwriting, then you get the targeted magazine.
Taking the analogy a tiny bit further, the Royal Mail's Chief Technology Officer would have been involved in the running of an illegal mail-interception trial whose existence was repeatedly denied at the time, and after the trial the RM CTO leaves to go and be CTO at the company doing the interception. Some two years later the truth begins to emerge...
Biting the hand that feeds IT
