{"id":1763,"date":"2008-04-24T05:00:54","date_gmt":"2008-04-24T12:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/getrichslowly.org\/blog\/?p=1763"},"modified":"2019-10-21T00:56:38","modified_gmt":"2019-10-21T07:56:38","slug":"how-to-stop-junk-mail-in-its-tracks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/how-to-stop-junk-mail-in-its-tracks\/","title":{"rendered":"How to stop junk mail in its tracks"},"content":{"rendered":"

This article is part of Financial Literacy Month.<\/em><\/p>\n

Most Americans receive a daily flood of junk mail. Some savvy citizens take a stand against the torrent. My friend Pam gets great delight from calling the sender of every catalog she receives in order to be removed from their mailing lists. This works well, but there are easier ways to deal with the problem. Here’s a list of four tools you can use to keep the marketers at bay.<\/p>\n

OptOutPrescreen.com
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OptOutPrescreen.com<\/strong><\/a> looks like it might be a phishing site at first. It’s not. It’s an official site established by the Consumer Credit Reporting Industry to allow consumers to opt-in or opt-out of credit offers. I did this the last time I posted about the service, and haven’t received a credit card offer in over a year!<\/p>\n

When you complete your request, you can elect to either opt out of credit card offers for five years, or you can opt out forever<\/em>. Not only will this keep your credit report and social security number from circulating to various companies, it will also cut down on the amount of junk mail you receive.<\/p>\n

This is a legitimate site, endorsed by the U.S. Federal Trade Commission<\/a>. (I wonder if similar sites exist in other countries? From the comments: The Canadian Marketing Association has a do-not-contact service<\/a>. Canada will be launching a do-not-call list in Fall 2008.)<\/p>\n

DMA’s Mail Preference Service
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OptOutPrescreen.com will stop the credit card offers, but wouldn’t it be nice to stem the flood of other junk mail? You can at least put a finger in the dike by visiting the Direct Marketing Association’s Mail Preference Service. The DMA website offers a menu of consumer information and preference services, including:<\/p>\n