My Organized Biz

Stop spam and unwanted mail in 360 seconds

by Jennifer Hofmann on February 2nd, 2008

Does anything peeve you more than getting calls, emails, and snail mail that you didn’t ask for? It wastes time and resources that you’ll never get back.

Good news? There are 4 easy things you can do to stem the tide drastically, complied here for your pleasure.

Fake plastic cards and insurance offers

Under the US Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), there are four credit companies (Equifax, Experian, Innovis, and TransUnion) that may include your name on lists used by creditors or insurers to make “preapproved” and “prescreened” credit or insurance offers. Nice.

Fortunately, this same act permits the consumer to opt out from this service. So, if you want your mailbox devoid of credit offers and those little simulated cards, go right to www.optoutprescreen.com.

There, you can complete the form electronically for a 5-year reprieve or get a permanent one by mail (see site for address). I did the 5 year electronic option. I admit it felt a little odd giving my SSN and DOB, but it’s a VeriSign secure site (I checked) and I figure they probably have this information about me already anyway since they run credit reports.

This took less than 2 minutes to complete and removed me from all 4 lists at once.

Junk mail

The Direct Marketing Association manages consumers’ information which enables businesses to send out direct marketing mail. Like junk mail. They also train companies to use their information strategically and they lobby in DC. Yikes.

Don’t want what they have to offer? Here’s the site.

There you can choose to opt-out electronically or by mail as well. However, they will ask to verify your identity by using your financial information. Meaning: you can either submit your info online with a credit card number (no charge) or you can snail mail your info with a check for $1 which covers the processing.

Personally, I get annoying direct mail pizza coupons and non-profit solicitations all the time, so this seems like a great list to opt-out from. However, I was unwilling to hand over my credit card number. I’m sure it’s fine, but I just felt skeptical – as well as irritated by this arbitrary hurdle.

All told, the process took less than a minute without actually getting out the credit card.

No more email “enhancement” offers

Now, this is cool. DMA also manages this email “preference service” in which you can opt out of unwanted email solicitations. It’s good for 5 years and was a breeze to complete. Note: Not all people who send spam subscribe to this DMA service, but with the daily barrage of spam, we can use all the help available.

You complete a double opt-in by clicking the link they send to your email address. A day later, I’m actually seeing less spam.

 It took way less than 1 minute. Easy peasy. The site.

National (US) Do Not Call List

Lastly, there’s my favorite US government site: DoNotCall.gov. This is what I proudly call “my tax dollars at work.” I love this service.

You can add three phone numbers at a time to opt out of receiving those annoying dinner-time and Sunday morning phone solicitations. It’s all about quality of life, folks!

They also do the double opt-in by email and it took one minute to complete. Job done. (Note: If you’ve a vindictive streak, the site also has a page where you can rat out companies that defy the NoNotCall order.)

Now that you’ve completed these 4 steps in under 6 minutes, go out and enjoy doing something fun with all the free time you’ve just created for yourself!

All information presented here was obtained from the websites themselves and the opinions are from my own experience. You know, in case you were wondering. :)

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POSTED IN: Declutter and downsize, Technology Tips, Time Management