I was just idly going through my credit card statement this month when I discovered something: there was a small section at the back of the statement entitled "Important information please do not ignore" that said that my current and historical data was going to be shared with their Group companies and vendors. It went on to say that unless they heard from me within 15 days, it would be assumed that I concurred with this. This sharing of information was being done ostensibly to "serve me better".

"Serve me better" my ass. I bet you weasels are going to sell this information to some direct marketing company who will then start bombarding me with spam.

If they had wanted to be upfront about it, they would have a) sent me a separate letter about this instead of using the fine print that nobody ever bothers to read and b) made the opting out the default action (i.e. if they didn't hear from me within 15 days, they would assume that I didn't want them to share my data).

On a similar vein, have you noticed that, whenever you sign up for something in a website, you have to uncheck the box that says "Please use my email address to bombard me with spam"?