This is a subject that we at Entertainment Engineers discuss regularly. There are so many ways to do things wrong in the digital world that we feel it our duty to continually question our ideas, and even more importantly, our motives.

As the years go by — or months, really — technology changes and extends its grip into more avenues than ever before. Where we once received junk mail, we now receive spam. It used to be difficult for companies to find your phone number or address, and you could ask your bank not to give personal information away. Simple things like these could save you from taking unwanted sales calls during dinner or receiving junk mail every day.

With every online magazine, store website, bank, phone company, etc. asking for your email address — to verify your information, to confirm your sale, to let you know when they have specials — spam is almost impossible to block. When spam blockers work too well, you lose contact with valuable customers or can’t get information from vendors when you actually want it. When they don’t work well enough, you get company ads and notices every ten minutes.

I’ve got to tell you, that I receive so much email from companies I do business with, and that I want to hear from, that has moved way past the spam level. I know it’s easy for companies to push a newsletter at me every day, but I don’t want it every day. I want to know what they’re up to, but on my own timeline, not theirs.

Privacy, to some companies, is not privacy at all. They get you by forcing you to click a checkmark in their “I accept your privacy terms” box, which I’ve never read and don’t know very many people who have read. And once they have your email address, you start getting “sponsored” emails from companies you’ve never heard of, don’t use, and often don’t have a use for their products anyway.

Usually, this is where I’d say, “I don’t mean to complain.” But the truth is, I do mean to complain, and frankly, I wish more Internet users would complain, and maybe some of this abuse would stop. Maybe companies would adopt Entertainment Engineering’s approach to privacy, which says we don’t send you anything you don’t specifically select to receive. (Honestly, you have to click on the box that says you’d like to receive information from our partners, or we don’t send it to you.)

Reasonable contact to us is a maximum of once a week for our magazine, and perhaps once a week for one of our partners – and we don’t even do that very often. The team at Entertainment Engineering talks about this a lot. We don’t want to abuse our readers, customers, or anyone who chooses to give us their email address. And we promise you that we won’t. What we will do is provide the best stories we can find, in a format that’s interesting and fun to read, and a timeline that makes us comfortable in the hopes that you are comfortable as well.

I’d welcome hearing from you if you think differently or have other ideas.

Terry Persun

terry@entertainmentengineering.com

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