Change.org is an online petition website that has petitions on very many different topics. Change.org has been remarkably successful in allowing users to affect change by banding together at the grassroots level. Unfortunately Change.org has several darker sides.

In addition to being used for good purposes many people have used Change.org to attempt to pressure various agencies into an abridgement of consumer protections and rights under the guise of public opinion.

While these petitions are in themselves problematic, the bigger problem is that Change.org automatically presents users with new petitions as they sign ones that they are interested in. Often these are interesting and may in fact be petitions that would be signed by the user in question. Other times they can be petitions the user completely disagrees with.

Because of the placement and mechanism Change.org uses to to provide these secondary petitions it is very easy to accidentally sign a petition. Once this is done petition signatures are permanent and your name becomes attached as supporting the effort even if the petition is one you find particularly loathsome.

Tell Change.org that the ability to remove signatures is not an optional one.