Do you receive newsletters from electronics companies? I do, quite a lot actually, and I need them because they provide me with topics for these news items. I know that these newsletters are used to track its reader’s surfing behavior so I am very careful with them and try to avoid clicking on the links that they contain.

 

This week I received a newsletter from Tektronix – the well-known manufacturer of all kinds of measurement equipment – which raved about them selling refurbished instruments. I thought that this might make a good news item and so I clicked on a link in the newsletter to see what this was about. After looking around a bit on the page that opened and on some other pages too I had collected enough material to write a small item, which I did.

 

Five minutes later the phone rang. The display showed a UK number meaning that it was a direct call, not relayed through Elektor. It turned out to be someone from Tektronix who had followed me on their website and now wanted to sell me some measurement equipment. This made me angry. I unsubscribed from their newsletter, replaced my nice news item by this rant and decided to never ever visit the Tektronix website again. That’s what happens when you start harassing people, they walk away.