Update: The answer is NO!!! Freelancentral contacted me and emphatically denied that their users details are being sold!! That is great news and makes me feel a whole lot better about service and privacy online. Apple should have made it clear to me that they found my details by browsing through the user profiles on Freelancentral.I blame Apple then for making use of the sites database irresponsibly.Freelancentral states that they strictly adhere to their terms and conditions:

We adhere strictly to our terms and conditions which state:"Any personal information that we collect about you will be used in the following ways only:5.1. internal marketing purposes: marketing analysis, measurement of traffic to and use of the website;5.2. marketing purposes: to inform you about new services on our site, competitions and offers which we feel could be of benefit to you (to include our newsletter, which you may unsubscribe from at any time);5.3. transactional purposes: communications with you in response to your queries and requests;5.4. sale and transfer: in the event of a sale, merger, consolidation, change in control, transfer of substantial assets, reorganisation or liquidation, we may transfer, sell or assign to a party to such transaction the personal information you have provided to us;5.5. administration and data management: disclosure to third parties required to perform services for us, under confidentiality obligations;5.6. legal purposes: where we are required to disclose by law or we believe such action is necessary in order to protect or defend our interests or the interests of our customers or users of this website; and5.7. compilation of our database to produce statistics of relevance to persons wishing to advertise their products/services on private vehicles."

I am a little bit upset with Freelancentral. On Friday I recieved a call from the Apple story somewhere or another. They wanted to know if I wanted to attend a launch of somesorts, something to do with music online, GarageBand and such. I gracefully declined and then got slightly ticked off with the call and invasion of my privacy. I received the call on my cellphone and wondered how Apple had come to find my contact details.Before hanging up I decided to ask where Apple had acquired my details, the lady from Apple gladly and gleefully told me that they had received my details from Freelancentral (which I sincerely hope I heard correctly otherwise I'm in trouble!!).I am not sure what the generally accepted consensus on this issue is but I feel that is a sort of betrayal of your users trust to sell their private contact information to large organisations that have nothing to do with the service offered by the website. My details might be freely available on the site and Apple might very well have visited the site and gone through EVERY persons' profile to find these details, but I highly doubt this.Basically what I am trying to get across is this: If you are in control of a database from a website that you run or own, keep the details of your users safe and clear from anyone who is going to intrude on their time. This will piss them off no end. In fact, I am on my way to Freelancentral right now to deregister. No, wait, I have just been to the site and there is no deregister option. Silly.[techtags: Spam, Database, Freelancentral, ethics, web ethics]