On Mon, 28 Oct 1996 20:56:51 EST Roger Fajman <[log in to unmask]> said: >I don't know about Europe, but I've never heard of any law in the US >that would prevent an organization from forcing its employees to receive >certain email messages. Just to clarify, this wouldn't be a problem in Europe. However we do have laws to protect people from misuse of computer technology. As computers started to appear, companies (and governments) discovered that they could do all sorts of interesting things with them, which were not always unlawful because it just had not been an issue in the past. Laws were passed to protect society from this new threat. The laws vary from one country to another, but for instance, if a company (or government) has a computer file about you, they are required by law to allow you to examine this file, and to correct any factual error that you may point out. Sweden (and I think other Nordic countries) go even further and require all credit advice firms to send the "victim" a full copy of the report transmitted to their client, along with the name of the client. This means that when you apply for a credit card and the credit card company runs a credit check on you, you get a copy of the information that was sent to them (and an opportunity to have any factual error corrected), and you are told who ordered the report. Needless to say, these reports tend to be accurate and unbiased :-) There are also laws allowing you to demand anonymity on public databases (disabling CONCEAL on a list with "Review= Public" could thus be illegal, depending on the circumstances). There are cases where you can demand to be removed from a database (it is then usually acceptable to anonymize your entry so that it can be kept for statistical purposes). For instance, if you decide to cancel your subscription to a newspaper, you can demand that they stop sending you reminders or ads about their other publications. I'm pretty sure that keeping cross-vendor databases of people with their spending habits would be illegal unless the information is anonymous and thus used only for statistical purposes. If it's an internal customer database (ie not shared among vendors), it's probably allowed if you can make a case that you need this information to service the customer. You won't be surprised to hear that I get maybe 2-3 pieces of junk mail a week, of which 2 are from nearby food shops who somehow think I haven't yet noticed that (i) they are the only 2 groceries in the area and (ii) I need to eat food every day, not once every other month :-) If we could convince the food shops that their stupid ads have no impact on where we shop, there would be virtually no junk mail. Eric