Junk Mail Freedom

It's possible to stop junk mail from coming to your house. It takes bit of time and patience, but it's doable--and it's worth it! Save one item from each junk mail source, and tackle the whole pile at once.

Getting off existing junk-mail lists:

1) The easiest trick is this: most junk mail items come with a postage paid envelope or postcard enclosed. In the margins next to your name and address, write "No more mail please," and sign or initial it. Send it off to them (with their free postage!) and that's it! (I'll even do this when I have to affix a stamp!)

2) For the rest, you can either call their 1-800 number, and ask to be removed, or you can send them your own postcard. The postcard sounds like a pain, but it may in fact be faster than going through their phone trees! On an index card, write:

Dear Sir/Madam,
Please remove me from your mailing list right away. I am listed as: (include your name and address exactly as they have it).
Thank You,
(Your signature)

3) If you still get mail from a place you've notified, it means your address is being repeatedly re-sold to them! Try to figure out who the source is, and get off their mailing list right away!

4) Credit Card offers are tricky. The first place to start is at to tell the credit reporting agencies not to sell your name. You can do this easily at www.optoutprescreen.com

For CapitalOne (which send us most of our credit card offers), their opt-out phone number is 1-888-817-2970. I called this and actually got a person.

 

Prevention:

Always, when you sign up for a new catalog, inform them of your preference not to have your name passed on to other companies. Most catalogs will respect this! (Thank goodness!) Also, if you want to order one thing from the catalog, but don't want to get their future catalogs, you can tell them. I did this today, and it was no big deal, they hear it all the time.

Be wary of entering random contests, free offers, and such promotions that ask you to fill out your name and address. The main goal of such promotions is usually to harvest and sell your name and address to junk mail companies.

I suppose it can't hurt to register with the national Mail Preference Service that you prefer not to have your name sold. This is an anti-junk-mail list you can get on. Supposedly, there are companies out there that will cross reference their mailing lists with this list, and remove those names that are on it. Since this is totally optional, however, I'd love to meet the one or two companies that do that! I've been on it for years, and I can't say I noticed it's usefullness; but hey, if it makes you sleep better at night...

Email SPAM:

My trick for this is simple. Keep two addresses. One "clean" one to give to friends, and one "junk" one to use for signing up for stuff you don't trust. When the junk one gets riddled with SPAM, ditch it for a new one!

Also, beware of putting your "good" address online on any public website, since computer web-crawlers routinely harvest email addresses this way. To post your email address on a website safely, have your web designer "obfuscate" your email address (scramble the code so spam-bots can't harvest it). Email obfuscating programs can be found online, here is one I've used.