dorian fraser moore

Changing a privacy policy and sending you SPAM

A trend that seems to be building

I've noticed something new happening of late. Companies that I've used in the past, who have my email address, seem to be sending me unsolicited email. I _always_ make sure I opt out of lists, and if not I'm pretty sure to check as soon as I've regietered that there is an unsubscribe function. If I can't opt-out, or the site looks at all dodgy, I don't give them my email address, or give them one that I can block instantly without loss of other services should it start being used.

But of late I've been receiving emails from companies where my detaisl seem to have been 'reactivated'. Offenders in the last 5 days are:

192.com
GX Networks
cdzone.co.uk

All of whom I have explicitly unsubscribed from their mailing lists, and all of whom continue to send me information.

192.com seem to decide that they can send you new unsolicited email every year or so, despite asking for the complete removal of my presonal information from their system.

The GX networks one is a legacy from XO communications who I used to be a customer of. I've asked several times to be removed from XO and GX's databases. To no avail apparently

CDzone.co.uk are a horribly inefficient on-line record sales company who I _never_ permitted to send me email except regarding my order [which took 5 months to appear].

I know that what these people are doing is illegal, and indeed I intend to report them to the data protection registrar, but this seems over-reactive when these companies should just remove my information from their records [except for legacy purposes] upon request.

The trouble with a lot of these systems that I see is that it's my word against their's. I know for a fact how I've handled all of these, but it's easy for the offending companies to say I did not follow their procedure or make any number of excuses about why the behaved inefficiently. I wish there was a way of officially registering these issues with a "3 try's and your out" type system to the individuals benefit. At the moment the weight is towards the corporations and that sucks.