Privacy and Deregistration

Hello

I have recently been on the receiving end of a mispent past in exploring the internet. Sometime ago I had registered myself for an FRREE! account at one of the major institutions that give away online web and email accounts plus a dozen other unuseful things. I had at the time elected to have no email no subscriptions and no anything else so I guess I was a bad candidate for their marketing but still interested in what is available.

After some time I recently received an email which I did not want nor wanted to receive in the future, but alastheir is no un-subscribe on the email just lots and lots of ads. So intrigued about this long forgotten membership went to the site to try to de-register myself.

Guess what, no avenue to deregister, in fact they wanted more information before I could proceed to getting any where near close to what might be deregistering from the mailinglist.

My question? Is this legal in the US. If I join at somepoint in the past and then change my mind some years later in the future to not belong to an organisation then not provided any avenue to do so, does this not contrevene my right to withdraw my support for this organisation?

What if that organisation supports some group which I do not want to be associated with, what if they provide information to parties that seek to take advantage of my demographic?

Sorry to be boring.

Ash

If some online company gathers your information then discolses it without consent then they are going against the 1999 Privacy Act section 2 (a)(i) and section 2 (a)(ii).

Further to that, no opt out clause seems to be against section 2 (A)(i) and (A)(ii). For this then they should be reported. Note that (a) and (A) are not the same.

Ashley: look at http://spamcop.net/ - they've got some relatively detailed info on what is considered spam and you can use their system for easy abuse mails. You get an email, copy its source, paste at SpamCop and click "Process Spam". It gives you all the relevant data and then you can click on another button to send an abuse report to any addresses that SpamCop thinks are responsible for anti-spam measures. It actually works sometimes.