Good Opt-Out Site
 

Just thought I'd share this - I get several (annoying) junk mails a week, usually from companies trying to hawk insurance. I noticed that they all use the same "opt out" site, which you can go to in order to permanently opt out of any/all future "offers" of this sort. Just thought I'd share - if you guys are like me, all you want is to be left alone by these sorts of "direct marketing" idiots. A day with an empty mailbox is a good one...

www.optoutprescreen.com

You can opt out for five years by a few mouse clicks or permanently by printing out the form and mailing it in (which I did). Enjoy!

If you get an email from a stranger pointing you to this - check the link. Since you are entering all your persnal information you want to make sure it is going to the right place.

I poked around and verified that the above site is legitimate. But my personal "Phish Philter" went on alert.

• Name
• Address
• Social Security Number
• Date of Birth

Uhm, yeah, why would all this info be required for someone to NOT send crap to one (or more) designated mailing address?

What I read was that the site is run by the credit reporting companies. They will flag your credit profile with your opt out request - and that information alllows them to flag the right record. Paranoia only gets you so far....... Caution, a little farther.

...and reading, farther yet. (meaning I should have read more closely, I suspect)

I believe it's TransUnion's affiliate. So said all the "literature" I received anyway.

Next step is to freeze all my credit reports. I'm trying to totally drop "off the radar" from these clowns. I'm sick of their crap.

I remember reading a story years ago in grad school about a guy in Colorado who heated his house for an entire Rocky Mountain winter using nothing but junk mail - he got on every mailing list he could possibly get on and had a high-efficiency stove to burn the stuff. Kinda' funny actually.