A reader notified ZDNet Australia about the offending e-mail. "Spam annoys me at the best of times - but this one takes the cake. I received four copies of the included e-mail from an Australian Government site."
The e-mails were sent by The Source, a government Web site targeting young people, and promoted a competition for free Spiderman movie tickets.
The Source site links to the Department of Family and Community Services Privacy Policy , which states: "We will only record your e-mail address if you send us a message. It will only be used for the purpose for which you have provided it and will not be added to a mailing list. We will not use your e-mail address for any other purpose, and will not disclose it, without your consent."
"I have never consented to them using my e-mail address in a mailing list, and to my knowledge, have never ever sent them an e-mail for them to garnish my address from," said the disgruntled reader.
The editor of The Source, Adam Valvasori, admitted the mistake, saying he had received e-mail complaints and could understand why people were upset.
-I meant to just send to everyone once, but the database didn't remove multiple entries," he said. According to Valvasori, the e-mail addresses were from a competition ran during National Youth Week. The Source thought people would be interested because of the similarity of the Web site.
-It was a similar competition so we thought we'd e-mail them, but because of the stuff-up people have been getting pissed off," said Valvasori. -It was an oversight, and it won't happen again."
Way to many government agencies stuff up and then copout, without facing strong critisism or an enquiry. Our private lives are supposed to be private. Our email address are not supposed to be used without our approval.
It is obvious they are being used WITHOUT our approval. We all pay for these blunders thru increased Telecommunications charges.
If this can happen and they get off scot free, why can't it happen to secret agencies such as ASIO etc, who have even more power to snoop or monitor.