Can a website legally create an account for you, against your will?

The answer to your question - "Am I just screwed, or what?" is you are screwed. There is no law that would require them to remove the information that you sent them. At least not any Internet law, you could address the situation in a New York court as per their ToS.

In an attempt to duplicate your situation I first joined the site, so that I could look at all of the information that would apply. I then made an attempt to duplicate your situation on another browser. Each time that I tried I received "Sorry, that user wasn't found". When I tried with my actual account information (email) I was sent reset info and the account name didn't change.

The only potential solution is to contact the site and either request a name change or account closure. http://www.ivillage.com/contact-us

While you are waiting go to your profile and set everything to private (sadly, you are correct in that you can't change your name) and don't use the account. They are browser specific so you can make a new account on another browser if you wish to use the site. BTW - If you use Chrome they will ask you to download an extension DO NOT. :-)

Only 202 misspellings in this post - I'm getting better!

Did you not read the ToA?

That's where you start to understand the legality of the situation.

Facebook acts similarly. You never delete an account. You "disable" an account. Not allowed to get rid of everything.

START READING YOUR Terms of Agreement instead of just clicking through.

You've given away your dead ancestors at some point and didn't know it. :\

It would also do you well to do your own research because the way the "law" works today, there are so many different precedents and loopholes and ways of interpreting and looking at things, especially in the area of "commercial code", and some companies are even wise enough to create their OWN "code" by which all things are judged...

But in short, I'm positive that it is "legal" because you allowed it without knowing the definitions of the words that were being used. You assumed you knew. Ignorance is not an excuse.

I'm sorry, that is how things are. I don't like it any more than you do.

Enjoy your day!

I don't know I village; I'm assuming you re-read the terms and conditions of the site when this happened? I'd assume it can't be illegal as use of an e-mail address isn't illegal once you submitted it to a site. I don't see anything there illegal.

I also had no legal source to back up this opinion and really didn't intend to answer the question till asked to.