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They forgot the last step: delete the promo emails from the company you never signed up for
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
If you give some information to any for profit company you can be sure they will use that information and if you decline the permits they are going to keep asking until you eventually miss click.
For example if you fill shopping basked, but abandon it after filling your information they can contact you once as "a friendly reminder" about the cart and they can keep that information legally for few weeks until they must anomize the data. And if you at some point clicked something where you accept the marketing permits they can keep that information "as long as the company thinks it is reasonable to keep and/or revelant information for their operation."
Source: Im part of the problem. Atleast for now.
The worst thing is that you gave them the permission to send emails to you, but you did not even notice it.
Note: there are a lot of services now that will sneakily get your signature/acceptance without you realizing it. The latest one I noticed was at the pharmacy, where you normally sign for your prescription, it now has one or more options that pop up before you sign for your actual medicine, and if you read what you're signing you see it's permission to text you special offers and promotions.
ALWAYS READ WHAT YOU ACCEPT, IF YOU DON'T KNOW, DON'T SIGN IT. If you're worried or pressured, just ask someone. We can't keep discarding our rights and privacy because we're worried about people in line behind us or worried how much time you're going to lose at least SKIMMING the user licence agreement. You can save yourself a lot of junk and hassle if you at least make sure the accept buttons and signature fields are actually for what you want.
I am glad I am using proton. I never give my real email to any website and create an alias for every website. That way, when I ever receive a spam email, I know exactly which company sold my data and I can turn that alias off permanently.
do you use "email+alias@proton" style aliases (afaik how gmail does it) or do you get an entirely new email address?
I use proton pass and it generates an alias with a prefix you give it, which helps to recognize what email it is, so this format: <prefix>.<random-generated-part>@passmail.net
So an example could be google.chasing645@passmail.net