2. 外语
  3. Recently Broadpoint Communications, a fledg-ling(刚起步的)media company, started handing out free long-distance telephone calls. In

Recently Broadpoint Communications, a fledg-ling(刚起步的)media company, started handing out free long-distance telephone calls. In

admin2013-07-02  77
问题     Recently Broadpoint Communications, a fledg-ling(刚起步的)media company, started handing out free long-distance telephone calls. In Britain, Dix-ons, an electrical retailer, is giving away Internet access.

    No wonder there has been a ravenous(贪婪的)response. The switchboard at Idealab, the company behind the computer offer, was jammed as a million people called on the day the offer was launched. Broadpoint has signed up 100,000 people in just under five weeks while Dixon’s Freeserve has become Britain’s biggest Internet-service provider after only six months.
    The beneficiaries of such offers will soon learn there is a bill. Although many do not yet realize it, they are giving away a wealth of information about their incomes, hobbies and shopping habits. This is used to direct advertisements, which they have to endure as part of the original deal. Broadpoint’s callers get two minutes of free talking time in return for listening to one 10-15-second spot. The unlucky computer-owners cannot remove the advertisements dancing around their screen.
    And the more they use their machines the harder they will find the advertisements to ignore. Advertisers can afford to be so generous only because the more they know about someone, the better they can target him with precise commercial messages. Even such a genteel(上流的)organization as the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra is using Broadpoint to approach three groups of customers in entirely different ways. Retired people are tempted by the appeal of the classics. Professionals hear about the exclusivity and sophistication of the concert hall. College students are asked to believe it is cool to tell their tuttis from their double-stops.
    Yet consumers may be underselling themselves. By handing out personal details piecemeal to lots of sources, they are failing to extract full economic value from the information. As well as receiving too many ads, they may suffer breaches of privacy, a particular problem on the web. Advertisers could do better, too. Even the most trusted are collecting only a very partial picture of their customers, and nothing about the customers of rivals.
    There may be a better approach, say John Hagel, a management consultancy. Mr. Hagel describes "companies will become the caretakers and brokers of information about consumers, selling it to businesses while protecting consumers’ privacy. "
    These firms, which the authors inevitably dub "infomediaries", would collect all available information about consumers, including tracking the websites they visit, where they shop and what they buy in the physical world. They would then sell relevant morsels(only with permission)of this data for a cash fee that would be handed back to the consumer. As brokers, the firms could also use the data directly to look for products or services that genuinely suit the clients. In such cases they would take a cut of the products’ prices.
What is the author’s attitude towards revealing consumers’ information to business?
选项 A、Indifferent.
B、Objective.
C、Supportive.
D、Negative.
答案D
解析 观点态度题。作者对将消费者个人信息出售给商家的看法可以从文章第三段以后的文字看出来。他认为消费者不能摆脱电脑上的广告信息很是不幸(hapless)，顾客通过将个人信息透露给各种渠道，反而不能从一种信息中萃取整体经济价值。所以其态度应该是反对的，选项[D]正确。
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