Pizza Hut Online Scam, Invasion of Privacy on the Internet, False Advertising Internet, Internet

About three months ago, I received an offer from Pizza Hut (while online) for a $100.00 gift certificate.

The offer looked to be authentic, was definitely from Pizza Hut, and I thought it would be nice to get some "free" food - who wouldn't? I clicked on "accept", assuming that my email address and name would be requested, and that I would receive a gift certificate from Pizza Hut for $100.00 USD.

Instead, I was thrown into page after page of offers from all kinds of businesses that I was not interested in. I did not click on any of the offers, and unclicked (unchecked) offers that were automatically "checked" by Pizza Hut's process. I never did complete their online process for the "gift certificate", and never received any confirmation from them that I had attempted to receive their offer.

When it became apparent that I would have to engage in additional purchases and/or agreements that I was not interested in to receive Pizza Hut's gift certificate, I attempted to back out of the web site pages, but was unsuccessful at doing so (I could not get back to the page where I entered my email address - it wasn't possible). I closed my browser window.

Almost immediately I began receiving emails that were detected by Yahoo to be Spam, and all of them have been. I'm guessing that I've received more than 1,000 of them at this point in time, and probably more. Pizza Hut shared my email address all over the internet without my permission. These spam messages include false offers of employment, false offers for cash, false offers for free products,  false emails regarding my financial status, and many, many really crude emails offering things of a sexual nature (e.g. viagra, male sex organ size, and sexually explicite titles which make my skin crawl).

I have been unable to unsubscribe from most of the spam emails as a result of McAfee advising that I stay away from the websites associated with the senders. I am now in the process of closing my email account - which I've had for many years - and which is used for web development contacts on the internet, which is one of the ways that I acquire income. My email address has been completely compromised in terms of privacy as a result of Pizza Hut's false advertising and online scam.

I attempted to contact Pizza Hut over the phone, and was not given any satisfaction by the representative who answered the phone, and I hung up after 5 minutes of run-around. I was attempting to ask them to contact all the people they shared my email address with - to tell them to take me off all of the lists I didn't ask to be on.

I have also sent Pizza Hut at least 2 messages on their website over the last several months, telling them that their false offer was not appreciated, and warning them that if they do not reverse the process of sharing my email address without my permission, that I will contact the appropriate authorities governing rules and regulations of internet privacy and false advertising, and that I will file a Ripoff Report against them.

Today, after clearing another 45 spam messages from my spam folder in my email account, I finally reached the limit of my patience, registered with Ripoff Report, and am filing this report about their behavior.

I noticed before I registered that I am not the only one who has an issue with this situation. Let it suffice to say that I will not ever eat at a Pizza Hut again, and that they have cost me a lot of $$$ in time as I must close my (business) email account, and move all my business info to another email account in order to avoid further sharing of my email address - something that I went out of my way to prevent from happening in the first place.

Thank you in advance for any action you are able to take to prevent others from being victims to Pizza Hut's online scam and invasion of privacy on the internet.