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They're free to record whatever data they've gathered about you. Whether you become a "member" of their service is semantics.

I suspect this thread is an act of guerrilla marketing.

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It's not. I'm just a pissed of person annoyed by scummy user acquisition practices.

And I suspected that in EU, storing e-mail addresses without user's permission might actually be illegal.

The EU has the ePrivacy Directive 2002/58/EC. Article 13 prohibits the use of email addresses for marketing purposes. The Directive establishes the opt-in regime, where unsolicited emails may be sent only with prior agreement of the recipient.

The Internet is the wild wild west, lots of scummy practices (including shadow profiles).

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