Tips for stopping junk mail and telemarketers

Want to stop junk mail and get rid of telemarketers for good? Follow Sid Kirchheimer'a step-by-step instructions from his book "Scam-Proof Your Life."

Here's an excerpt:

Stop Junk Mail & Telemarketers
Just say no. Each year, more than three million Americans discover that credit accounts have been falsely opened in their name; of these, at least 400,000 can blame the crime on stolen mail. But in the space of an hour, you can deter both direct mailers and telemarketers. To decline vulnerable mailings (such as credit-card applications) and put an end to most unwanted phone calls, contact the following:

* Credit Bureaus Opt-Out Line. Call 888-567-8688 (888-5-OPT-OUT) from your home telephone (so it can be checked against an address database) or visit www.optoutprescreen.com to stop preapproved credit-card and insurance offers from reaching you by mail or phone. (The source for these come-ons is lists sold to companies by the credit-reporting agencies Equifax, Experian, TransUnion, and the smaller Innovis.) If you call, you’ll get an automated voice- response system that requests your name, telephone number, and Social Security number; don’t worry, they have it already as part of your credit history. Whether you call or go online, you can opt out for five years or permanently; if you choose the latter, you’ll be sent an additional form in the mail that must be mailed back. Your opt-out “vote” goes into effect in about five business days, but do not expect to see a noticeable reduction for roughly one month.

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* Do Not Call List. If you haven’t done so already, by all means register your phone number with the National Do Not Call Registry, maintained by the FTC. Once you have registered your telephone numbers at www.donotcall.gov or by calling 888-382-1222, most telemarketers are barred from calling you. (They’re subject to steep fines if they do call, so casually ask them to supply some identifying details.) You will still receive calls, however, from any charitable organizations, pollsters, or even commercial companies with which you have “an existing business relationship.”

* List Brokers. Pooling information gleaned from phone books, public records, and other sources, these companies prepare and sell mailing lists to businesses. To remove yourself from all of their lists, you’ll have to contact each one individually. (Preprinted mailing labels to ease the task are available at www.fightidentity theft.com/junkmail_labels.html.) Details on reaching the four largest list brokers appear below.

* Direct Marketing Association. The DMA is a trade group whose 5,200 member companies use the telephone, mail, and the Internet to pitch their products directly to consumers, bypassing such intermediaries as traditional bricks-and-mortar retail outlets. The DMA offers half a dozen ways for you to opt out of receiving solicitations from its members. According to DMA spokesman Louis Mastria, this should stop about 80 percent of such offers within several months. To take him up on his offer, try one or more of the remedies detailed in the sidebar on page 258 (“Junk Mail: None for Me, Thanks!”).

In most states, if you have already signed up on your state’s registry, your telephone number should appear on the national registry as well. Of the 25 states that maintained state registries as of January 2006, 17 had shared their lists with the national registry. If you live in Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Tennessee, Texas, Wisconsin, or Wyoming, you may want to add your number to the state registry as well. For a list of state “do-not-call” registries, visit www.ataconnect.org/GovernmentAffairs/StateDoNotCallLists.html. The federal registry is free; some states charge a small fee to delist you. 

Don’t snub those stuffers. The opt-out contacts listed above primarily deal with unsolicited mail and telephone calls from companies you have nothing to do with. But what about stopping the spread of your personal information from companies with which you already do business? Your protection: Once a year, financial institutions are required to inform their customers how they use their personal information, and what opt-out rights those customers have. “The trick is that these notices often come in envelopes stuffed with other correspondence,” notes Eric Gertler, author of the landmark "Prying Eyes: Protect Your Privacy from People Who Sell to You, Snoop on You, and Steal from You." “Because of this, many people unknowingly discard them.” These notices sometimes provide a mailing address (or, more rarely, a phone number or a website address) that permits customers to stop their financial institutions from sharing their personal information with unaffiliated third parties. This is that rare offer you truly should not refuse: Taking them up on it may halt junk mail that originates from totally unsuspected sources.

Even if you don’t take this step, you can always stop the spread of your personal information the good old-fashioned way: Contact your bank, credit-card issuer, or insurer and inform them you are opting out of sharing. As you may have come to suspect by now, that will constitute only a partial solution. Opting out stops a company from supplying your personal information to third-party firms, but that company can go right on furnishing the data to its subsidiaries or affiliates. Gertler, the former CEO of Privista—an identity-theft protection and credit-management company—cites the hypothetical example of a customer who banks with Citibank: “Even if you opt out, your information may be passed to any of Citibank’s affiliate companies, such as its credit-card division or its mortgage component.”

Waive that warranty card. When you buy a new toaster, it’s easy to get burned long before the bread pops up. The source of the tsuris is the warranty card included in the packaging. “Warranty cards are primarily used by the product’s manufacturer to profile you,” explains California identity-theft attorney Mari Frank. “They will then sell that information to others, who in turn send you mailings for their own products and services. That’s why warranty cards so often ask you for your household income, how many kids you have, what your hobbies and interests are. But you should know that unscrupulous employees can easily get their hands on your warranty-card info, then use it to steal your identity.”

Your protection: Provided you keep the receipt, a product is under warranty for the designated period whether you return the warranty card or not. If you unwisely choose to “register” your purchase with the manufacturer, submit the warranty card bearing nothing more than your name, address, and date of purchase. (If required, enclose a copy of your receipt.) In the same mailing, specify that your personal information is not to be distributed to others. There’s no need to answer any other questions.

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