Back in the summer of 2021 I was a member of the Elgiganten Kundklubb, the customer club the Elkjop group runs across the Nordics, and like a lot of members I was buried under marketing emails. So I did the obvious thing and went looking for a way to switch them off. What I found instead was the problem that has taken five years to put right - the only way to stop the marketing was to cancel my membership of the club altogether. I wrote to their Data Protection Officer on 30th July and set out, in plain terms, why that arrangement breaks the law. Under Article 21(2) of the GDPR every person has an absolute right to object to direct marketing. Under the ePrivacy Directive, marketing by email is only lawful where I have given my consent, or where there is an existing customer relationship and I am offered a simple way to opt out both at the point my details are collected and in every message after that.…