>> Whether some fields are or are not "required" doesn't really matter to
>> me in this case. When there is a line for "income" [not required] and
>> another for age [*=required], etc, as shown below, the ole RED FLAG just
>> goes right up the pole --> who are these people and why do they need
>> to know this stuff anyways?

They are people who want to sell advertising space, either on their website,
or in their messages, or in messages you post (which I personally find
really annoying.)  People who might advertise want to know the demographics
of the users of the service, so they can properly target their ads (which
THEY pay for.)  The questions you're answering are VERY standard for
consumer-oriented things.

It's the same "scam" as all those free engineering magazines - advertisers
pay the costs so you don't have to, and in return they get to know that
there ad ends up in front of xxx thousand engineers who have some say in
purchasing the parts that they're advertising.  (Engineering magazines have
slightly different standard questions than consumer services, of course.)

You have to decide for yourself whether the value you receive from the
service is worth the value you provide to the advertisers.  The privacy
issues are PROBABLY not serious, but you have to trust the provider on that;
for all you know they could be matching ip addresses to income levels to
figure out where to concentrate cracking attempts...

BillW

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