This afternoon, in my personal e-mail, I found the March edition of “FENTYfile,” Mayor Adrian Fenty‘s monthly e-newsletter. It was full of news I could use about the resumption of street sweeping, the fight for voting rights, and the mayor’s new budget.

One problem: I never subscribed to any Fenty newsletter. In fact, I subscribe to almost nothing using that particular account, in order to keep spam away. And yet they found me.

The only way that the city could have known this e-mail address was from when I either (a) put in an Internet request for a bulk-trash pickup a few months back or (b) when I paid a parking ticket well before that. And I don’t remember perusing any privacy policy that implied the city would be sending me what is essentially pro-Fenty propaganda

So I called Fenty’s office. Spokesperson Dena Iverson says that, yes, this month the mayor’s newsletter is going out for the first time to folks who made requests for city services. But, she says, you are free to unsubscribe.

Indeed, the bottom reads, “If you would like to have your email address removed from this list, please follow the ‘Unsubscribe’ link provided in the newsletter above.” But I didn’t see the link at first. It was only after a third look that I saw it: It’s hidden in blue text on a blue background:

Says Iverson: “We’ll change that in the next one.”