[Big Joe]

Terms and conditions are a nightmare. For a start they are seldom written in English, I should say English that unless you are a corporate lawyer you will have no chance of understanding. As I said the moment you do something online you create an online presence. The more you do the greater the presence. There are now intelligence gathering companies that specialize in OSINT (Open Source Intelligence ) OSINT is information that is freely already out in the public domain about you. These people use a whole host of search engines (not just google) but highly specialised search engines that pull out all kinds of information all of which has been put out there by you and me when we sign up to groups, utilities etc. They pull all this data together to create a profile on the individual which may be used as a recruitment tool or for general intelligence purposes. Sadly all this information can be used and is often used for the wrong reasons and a good example as Margaret said is charities and other cold callers. This is the cost of using the internet. Having said that before the internet how did we manage to do all the things we now do online when you had to physically go and see people and talk to them????