Vinnys House of Knowledge

If you are like me, your sick of spam, phone calls, and catalogs that you neither want nor requested. Well here are some tips to wipe the slate clean. On a side note, when dealing with corporations, a great resource to bypass automated menus is gethuman.com.

Privacy policies: Each company you deal with has one. Most of them will send a mailing with it attached. Well you need to read them to find out how to opt-out. Most of them entail sending in a form, or registering somewhere to not get anything sent to you.

A good resource for company opt out addresses is at privacyrights.org. They also have a sample form letter on what to mail them.

Spam: I have an article that deals alot with this. The most important thing to remember is to use a fake email address when you can, and use a large mail service like gmail. They have great anti-spam engines.

Credit cards: Call 1-888-5OPT-OUT to get removed from all three of the credit reporting agencies advertising. They constantly sell your data to financial companies with your best interests in mind (yeah right). This phone system is automated, and it tries to understand the name you are saying. If you have a weird spelling then your out of luck with the automation.

There is another method online of opting out of credit cards, the website is optoutprescreen.com. This is a new method and is operated by the same people. This site is great because it will allow you to opt out forever, you just have to mail in a form.

Phone calls: donotcall.gov hosts the national registry for blocked calls. Make sure all your phone numbers are on this, including cell phones. You need to re-register every five years, so keep up on it. Registration just needs an email address and is very quick. Unfortunately, governments and business who you have worked with before are exempt from this. The only way around this is when they call, ask to be removed or you will never do business with them again. Unfortunately, there is no way to stop automated government recordings. If someone has an idea let me know.

Mail Catalogs: There are three main perpetrators of catalog and junk mailings. The first one is the post office. They are by far the worst! Companies pay them to distribute mailing along their entire route, and there is nothing you can do about it. Call the companies and complain that they are killing trees and upsetting customers.

The second is the Direct Marketing Association (DMA) or evil as I call them. They are the company that keeps a database of everything you like, and sells it to anyone with money. You need to send a letter to them asking to be removed, they ask for a $1 fee, but that is nonsense, don’t pay it. They have a site that explains how to opt-out of alot more than mails located here. The address to send a letter to is: Preference Service, P.O. Box 282, Carmel, NY 10512.

The third perp is Abacus. They are a large database that sells information. To opt out from them, send an email to: abacusoptout@epsilon.com. Include your name and address. They will send you a confirmation once its done.

Good luck!