You Will Read Our Ads, And Like It

sheister writes "over at myciti.com they are asking members to agree to a new set of terms before using the service, including "'..we may display advertisements and promotions of all kinds on our web site(s) and you agree not to disable any technology required or utilized to serve or display such advertising;' Has anyone else noticed pushy Terms and Conditions like this on the web?"

Comments

Re:Who cares?

[Wonko42]

Honestly, how would they be able to figure out that you are using a local proxy program to filter out all their advertising?

Easy. They look at their logs and say, "Well now, it looks like the user from 12.34.56.78 loaded our front page, but none of our popup ads! And it appears a user from that IP is logged on as 'johnsmith'. Looks like it's time to fire off a legal threat to Mr. John Smith!"

Not that they'd have a snowball's chance in hell of winning any kind of legal action for something so silly, but it's totally possible for them to correlate their log data to determine which users are blocking ads. A workaround would be to use something like the BannerBlinds plugin for Mozilla, which still loads the ads, but then removes them from the page layout when displaying the page.

that's fine with me

[pjgeer]

Your ads do run under lynx, don't they?

Noticed? Not me.

[tchdab1]

"Has anyone else noticed pushy Terms and Conditions like this on the web?" My browser and ISP both have ordered me not to answer this question.

Re:Who cares?

[sweetooth]

Unfortunatly if part of the reason you are blocking ads is bandwidth conservation then banner blinds doesn't do you nearly as much good as not loading them in the first place. This is one of those things like not loading images at all, or only loading images from the originating web server etc. Of course those have thier own issues. For example many sites use dedicated servers for image serving like images.slashdot.org. Then again, if you are trying to conserve bandwidth you probably could care less if the pages standard graphics load either.

Re:Who cares?

[Deanasc]

which still loads the ads, but then removes them from the page layout

Part of the reason I want to block ads is that I'm on the campus network and restricted to the total amount of bandwidth I'm allowed in a month. If I go over I get cut off. So anything that cuts unwanted bandwidth is good. Anything that forces me to give up precious bandwidth is a really bad thing.

In otherwords if they force too many ads down my connection I loose my connection and they loose a customer. When will they realize forced advertising is a bad idea? (I know, probably never.)

Why's a BANK need to push advertising this hard?

[orthogonal]

On first reading this submission, I assumed myciti was a content provider of some kind. And I figured, if I wanted their content that badly, I'd just pay for it. More likely, it wasn't something I needed more than I need my peace -- and buzzy banner ads manage to disrupt my peace far far more often than they encourage me to buy anything. After all, I've already given up reading washingtonpost.com at home, as I'm not even able to register with them using Mozilla.

But myciti.com isn't a content provider; it's a banking/investment service. Presumably, if I take the trouble to browse there, it's because I think I might want to see what services they offer.

But apprently they assume their services are so worthless that before I'd purchase those services, I'd have to be overcome by their advertising. Or they think their marketting position is so precarious, they must have a captive audience.

Or perhaps they're confident in their services but want to subject me to ads for their third-party affiliates? Is citibank worried they can't profit without selling my eyes to third parties?

Whatever the case, it appears that citibank isn't doing so well. Either their products don't sell without extensive, in-your-face advertising, or the company isn't profitable without selling marketting in addition to investment products.

Either way, it seems a good indication -- one might say an invitation even -- to stay away from citibank.

And that's what I'll be doing, thanks.

Try 1wrestling

[Tabercil]

Try surfing www.1wrestling.com with Norton Internet Security's Ad Blocking feature switched on... you get shunted to a No Access page saying:

"We're sorry, but our site relies on the revenue we get from advertisers to bring you the quality content you see each day. Consequently, we no longer permit access from users who use Ad blocking software."

Re:I don't see it.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

I checked both the terms & conditions linked at the bottom of the page, and the privacy policty just above it. I didn't see any reference to advertisements of any sort.

Oh, they're sneaky alright. You have to enter your info and such, and then you click through to

My Citi User Agreement ... Please read the My Citi User Agreement carefully - it includes disclaimers of liability and other matters of interest to you...

4. Marketing.

By selecting "I Agree" below, you acknowledge and agree that: (1) we may display advertisements and promotions of all kinds on our web site(s) and you agree not to disable any technology required or utilized to serve or display such advertising; and (2) you confirm the decision you made during the My Citi registration about whether or not to subscribe to receive marketing messages via e-mail from Citibank. In each case, such advertisements may be customized based upon information you may have provided us or upon information concerning the accounts and services that you access or use via our web site(s) in order to tailor them to your personal interests.

Notice that not only do you agree to read the ads. You also give them carte blanche to use your personal, confidential data in "customizing" those ads. ("John, we see your bank balance is really low. Why not use your Citibank Premiere card to pay some of your bills?")

I liked myciti.com but this seems pretty obnoxious.

Slashdot Ads

[smallfries]

Strange that in this discussion, which is about being forced to accept advertising, nobody has mentioned Slashdots policy or the thread that got bitchslapped for debating the pro's and con's of disabling the ads here...

Now, what are the odds that this post is modded offtopic?