They now require you to quickly profile yourself before you can read their articles. For a start, the implementation is botched because the site will time out if you try to access it with cookies blocked (many sites don’t know how to properly handle cookie-blocking browsers.)
Well, I tried my usual profile, an Afghan woman born in the late 19th century, and here’s what I got back: "Please enter a valid Year of Birth." So if you were born in 1898, go shoot yourself, you’re invalid. OK, 1900 works.
Since there’s absolutely no value for me to give real information about myself to 99% of web sites that ask for it, I’ve made it a policy to feed them with the less credible bullshit I could come up with. I understand publishers want to profile users to answer advertiser requests. But my experience with what I’ll get back from giving away my privacy taught me it’s useless. Except the usual "greetings Olivier" that I couldn’t care less about, I have yet to see a site which does anything even remotely useful to me with my personal profile, except maybe Amazon.com which still has lots of room for improvement in that department, and they’re an etailer, not a content publisher.
Join me and make Afghan rich old ladies the fastest growing segment in online demographics. You need to make $200K or more a year. I can’t wait to see the special offers they’ll specifically taylor to our needs.
"Greetings Ayesha, check out our premium Cruise & Golf opportunities, exclusively for people who like you can afford the best life has to offer, and enjoy it too!"