Of continual annoyance is the complete lack of transparency these services show. How is your score calculated? Is anyone manipulating it? What can you do to improve it?

Still, it doesn't matter, it's only a silly number, eh? No one takes it seriously, right?

Wrong. Yammer, the internal social network of choice for most businesses, have announced they're going to team up with Klout so managers can see employees' scores.

What was once just a daft badge is now something to be bought up at your annual performance review. Want that promotion? You'd better hope that spending all day getting retweeted by celebrities helps your "influencer" score.

No.

It's time to withdraw our consent from these leeches who take our data, run it through an obfuscated process, and then attempt to sell it back to us.

It's time to stop being held open to blackmail. How long before they start offering a paid for service to help you improve your score?

It's time to refuse to be placed in an artificial competition where the rules are unknown and the results arbitrary.

Here's how you opt out of Klout.

1. Visit klout.com/corp/optout
2. Ignore their self-serving hogwash and scroll to the bottom of the page.
3. Verify your identity with Twitter.
4. Fill in a very short form telling them to go to hell.
5. Hit "Submit".

Get on with your life and be happy. A number on a screen doesn't control your destiny; you do.

• Verizon Droid
• Stock Market
• Hotels

Errr.....? What? If you're following me on Twitter for any of the above, perhaps you'd like to consider your life choices.

So, I opted-out of Klout.

Their opt-out page is full of feel-good nonsense to try and convince people not to remove their own profile. It didn't work on me. They asked for my reasons for leaving, and this is what I told them:

Three reasons.

1) You think I'm influential about things that I've never tweeted about (Stock market? Verizon?)

2) I didn't ask to sign up.

3) It's taken you too long to offer this opt-out. If I'd known from the start I could have opted out, I would have been fairly relaxed. The fact that you've resisted for so long to offer the opt-out makes me think you're not trustworthy.

I am indebted to LoudMouthMan for taking Klout to task. I'm sure that without his persistence, Klout would still be peddling lies about me.

For a good overview of why "influence measument" site like Klout don't really work, read The Fallacy of Presumed Influence by Jonathan Macdonald.