Information Engineer

I was wondering what a majority of people think about these type of advertisements. To me they are just an annoyance – taking precious real estate on MyYahoo page But I know that a lot of gullible people out there fall for these – wasting time and more importantly signing up unwittingly for unwanted junk mail and in some cases falling victim to fraudulent schemes and identity theft.

While I totally respect the right of the advertisers to put such offers out there, the question that I have is that as a serious portal, should providers like Yahoo, AOL, MSN and others worry about the kind of content they are presenting to their customers. You know that alcoholic beverages are widely advertised – but not in Disney’s publications and media outlets.

I would happily shift my patronage to portals that enforce a certain level of scrutiny on what’s being put out there – unfortunately none of the portals do that right now. What do you think – do you think it’s time that the industry got together to come up with standards – or maybe it’s time for one of these vendors to make a risky bet on a different business model and steal customers away.