Junk Mail: Satan in Internet Form
by: Bob-0

Well I opened my Hotmail account today, and lo and behold I have 30 messages, none from a single human being. It's been a year since I've gotten a message from someone I knew, and it was a Forward. So the question here is...Why do I put up with it? Why do I still have an account? Why don't I do some sort of virus attempt against these sadistic companies? Well, it's because I'm a gullible fool, there's no 2 ways about it. My dad needs my account to send out business information, and so my plan is to let my junk mail pile up, then wait untill my account is deleted, then just tell my dad Hotmail screwed me over and that I'm working on putting a major virus into their network. Of course I wouldn't dare do that, MSN is more powerful than the US government, I would have a guild of well-trained Jedi at my door if I managed to do that. Plus I'm not much of a hacker, I've never tried... *cough*.

Of course the ACTUAL mail isn't much better, if I've "already won 10,000$," then where the hell is Pat Sajak with my giant check? I mean anyone who believes these people and goes through those steps that they tell you to do is, without a doubt, the most pitiful waste of carbon ever. But I don't need to worry about actual mail until I get an actual job, and I love leeching off the government, so welfare for me! And they don't have to deliver my foodstamps I can run, barefoot, to the post office and receive them there.

Cookies are the tools that start this whole circle of hell, basically they're pieces of information that your computer sends to websites that you've visited. Now the purpose of this is unclear, but spying on people is the main objective, or as they like to put it: "cookies are used to display banners and ads based on the interest(s) of the consumer." Well this seems like good intentions, but who would've guessed that they'd sell my information to other companies? I know I didn't. I get ads for helping with my mortgage, I don't think that's one of my interests, but they'd know better than I would, after all they have been spying on me for the past 5 years.

Now you may be asking, "Bob, these cookies sure do suck, how do I get rid of these monstrosities?" Well you can't! There USED to be an option for it in Internet Explorer 4 and below, but they took the option out. Interestingly enough, with cookies switched off, you can't get into Hotmail, so you won't even be able to check and delete all of your junkmail, then your account gets deleted. They make sure that this whole process is as painful as possible.

Now, 50% of my E-Mail is quote "special offers." Take a guess at what the other half is... You guessed it, Porn! And it's all so inconspicuosly labled, "John S. sent this pic to me, Britney Spears dyking it out with Christina Aguilera, My web cam is finally up, etc." And of course this kind of shit only gets sent to me whenever someone else is around while I'm checking my E-mail, particularly my parents, and it's pertty difficult to describe to them, maybe they could read this editorial. Plus I don't remember talking to any John S, hearing about Christina Aguilera about ANYTHING for about 2 years, and talking to anyone about setting up a webcam. But the internet knows things that MIGHT happen too...

So all in all, I ask myself, "Websites are rich for selling our information, companies that take this money are rich in pleasure by annoying us because they're sadistic bastards, what do we get?" The answer is we get torn a third corn chute, and what could be better than that?