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PC World New Zealand:

"Using free email services, such as Hotmail and Yahoo Mail, is no longer as easy and fun as it once was... Back in March Yahoo changed its privacy policy to allow it to contact users in all kinds of ways — by email, mail or even phone. It also reset users' 'personal profile' settings by adding and pre-selecting a new set of marketing option boxes. This was done to 'make it easier for you to manage the marketing communications you receive from Yahoo'. Funny, for something that is supposed to be good for me that doesn't sound like any fun at all...

"Unfortunately it's not just Yahoo that has adopted this policy. A growing number of Hotmail's 118 million users worldwide report the same thing. The boxes make it appear people have given permission for Hotmail to share their email address, date of birth and other information with websites run by Microsoft's partners. I recently told a good friend and Hotmail user about this and he rushed to change his personal settings and preferences — reasoning that if they weren't going to protect his privacy, why should he give away accurate personal information?

"Microsoft also wanted access to a huge database of names — which they have of course — but like my friend earlier, a lot of the names are bogus. I have no doubt they'd prefer a smaller, accurate database of paying clients than a few million billgatessux@hotmail.com fakes."

To change your Personal Profile in Hotmail, login and navigate to the Options page. Under the "Your Information" section is the item "Personal Profile". Click it to change your personal information and uncheck the boxes that say you don't mind sharing your information with Microsoft and its partners.

To change your information in Yahoo, login and click the link to Mail Options. Click on the link to Account Information. I had to re-enter my password and ignore a stupid demographic survey. I clicked the Edit button next to the Member Information section, changed the information, and clicked to update it. I then clicked the Edit button for the Contact information section and changed that information. Then I clicked the link to "edit my marketing preferences". I made sure that every No choice was selected, that the checkboxes to indicate that they are not supposed to contact me via postal mail or by telephone are checked. Then I finally clicked the Save Changes button. Whew!