Compared with other viewdata and electronic mail services, the IBM-Sears Roebuck Prodigy service is extremely cheap – $10 a month plus the cost of the phone call, and no usage charges – but many potential subscribers may still find the price too high: you see Prodigy pre-screens everything that goes onto its bulletin board, and the software sends every new user through a series of sign-up menus, ending with a full four screens warning you that Prodigy now has the right to use for its own purposes any information about you that it might collect from your use of the service – it sure feels like Big Brother is watching you, comments the Newsbytes stringer in Atlanta, although of course you are really being watched by Mr Sears and Mr Roebuck – and Big Mother up there in Armonk, enough to give the conspiracy theorists a field day.
