All they have done is create an account linked to your email address, essentially just a string of text. Not sure what you think is illegal exactly.

What celticninja said. I’d be surprised if any jurisdiction had a law preventing this; the US does not.

Their SMTP or Internet transit provider’s terms of service is another story. Some allow single opt-in subscriptions and memberships, some don’t, and some (most?) don’t mind unless it generates complaints.

Twoo is known for this (https://techcrunch.com/2013/08/03/a-year-of-spam-twoo/), so if you don’t like it, their SMTP or transit carriers are probably the only recourse, and probably doesn’t care.

As another person said it's just "semantics" so it's going to be legal.

They can't pretend that you checked the "I agree to the terms of service ..." checkbox just yet.

So technically they can't "make you a member" against your will they are just bringing you very close to becoming one.

That part is probably legal. Not sure what their TOS is, but their TOS might be unenforceable since you never had an opportunity to inspect or accept it before your account was automatically created for you.

(Disclaimer: Not a lawyer. Don't know much about law.)

Yes, facebook is doing the same thing (google shadow profiles). Really scummy practice, but nothing illegal there.

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.

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).