I get countless Linkedin, Fartbook, Twatter and worse

> invitations from people I know and I delete them without comment because =
I
> know it is not their fault.


A potentially **VERY** important point here.

Yu can ALMOST trust the larger more visible providers to not do anything
too too bad with your permissions - the like of Facebook may try to sell
your soul and our address book, but they are unlikely to do you real harm
[tm] (if the forging is not so deemed) because they are held to account by
the greater community and in due course by due process caused by mas social
indignation.

This may not be the case with small evil organisations lurking behind the
facades of "get this free and marvelous xxx here". You can do yourself real
long term harm by blithely agreeing to web forms without detailed scrutiny.
 Even with detailed scrutinyyou ay need to be a competent lawyer to realise
that you may be signing away the rights to your first born.

If I agree to EULA's from smaller organisations I try to keep a copy on
disk - and If I am even slightly uncertain I actually skim read + the fine
print. I've backed off and not agreed to quite a few.

This applies to more than just web forms. I and my wife flew on an
eponymously named Asian airline from Jakarta to Kuala Lumpur. Accident
insurance was offered at about $2.50/head for reasonably good cover. Enough
for your children to have a good wake with. I read the fine print and
declined the insurance. They pushed the insurance throughout the process
and afterwards The fine print specified that access to all your medical
records, past and future,  would be legally accessible  to the insurer to
use as they wished (resell etc) in perpetuity, with this right surviving
your death and not being revocable by yourself or your estate. Further, the
insurance cover offered only applied in airspace outside the country of
departure. As we flew up the length of Indonesia and turned right into
Malaysian airspace only to approach KL for landing, about the only portion
where the 'insurance' applied would have been in the final minutes of the
flight, if then. One suspects that such a pack of scum bags had some other
proviso hidden in the fine print to exclude this last part as well and that
the main aim of the form was to obtain saleable access to your medical
records in perpetuity PLUS $2.50 for their troubles. The airline concerned
substituted water for coffee with my pre-paid meal "due to customer demand"
(coffee available for extra $) and alleged it had been voted airline of the
year by its customers. (Maybe only the water drinking ones). Caveat
non_Emptor. Good views, but that was not their fault.



      Russell
--=20
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