I recently received an email from a popular graduate job website (prospects.ac.uk) that I haven't used in a while suggesting I use a new feature. It contained both my username and password in plain text. I presume this means that they have stored my password in plain text. 

Is there anything that I can do to either improve their security or completely remove my details from their system?

UPDATE: Thanks to everyone for the advice. I emailed them, spelling out what was wrong and why, saying that I will be writing to the DP commissioner and will be adding them to plaintextoffenders.com.

I got a response an hour later: an automated message containing a username and password for their support system. Oh dear...

There isn't really much you can do, other than contact the website and try and explain them how bad of an idea and practice it is to store (and email) passwords in plain text.

One thing you can do is report any offending site to plaintextoffenders.com - a site (currently a tumblr blog, but we're working on a proper site soon) which lists different "plain text offenders" - sites that email you your own password, thus exposing the fact they either store it in plain text, or using a reversible encryption, which is just as bad.

With everything that's happened with Sony, again and again, people become more aware to the dangers of sites storing sensitive details unencrypted, yet many still aren't. There are over 300 sites reported, with more reports coming every day!

Hopefully, plaintextoffenders.com helps by exposing more and more sites. Once this gets enough attention on twitter or other social media, sometimes sites change their way, and fix the problem! For example, Smashing Magazine and Pingdom have recently changed the way they deal with passwords, and no longer store nor email the passwords in plain text!

The problem is awareness, and I hope that we help the cause with plaintextoffenders.
